 | The Older Non Gamer - Part 1: Dating the TONG
“Are you having fun with your imaginary friends?”
If you have ever trawled a dating
website then you will know that gaming does not exist. According to my
research nearly 100% of the population likes romantic walks on the
beach and candlelit dinners instead.
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| Environmental Gaming
In today’s environmentally challenged world of
greenhouse gases, climate change and toxic wastes there seems to be
little that the average gamer can do to help. After all computers use
power and computer games need computers.
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 | Player Types in World of Warcraft
Last century Richard Bartle classified player types within text based MUD’s in a paper called Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs. They went something like this:
Achievers: players who want to accomplish goals and be better than everyone else
Explorers: who want to know all about the game and game world
Socializers: people who enjoy the social aspects of online play the most
Killers: players who enjoy imposing on other players
(You can find Bartle’s paper here: http://...
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| Video Games as the New Frontier
Video Games as the New
Frontier
Once upon a time
there was lots and lots of unknown places in the world. There were new
continents to discover and the world’s highest mountains to climb. Even when we
did all of that we just knew that by the year 2000 we were all going to be
taking space ships to new colonies. Except we didn’t. So where does your average
man or woman go exploring nowadays? Where is the wild west, the Mars, the
Everest of today? What is the new front...
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| To Cheat or Not to Cheat?
Have your ever cheated in a game? Bought gold, become invincible or just
helped your self to just one little health pack? Have you botted your way to
uber status or just wished your character could run a bit faster? I sat down the
other day and thought about all the games that I have played and realized that I
too was a cheater.
My cheating days started early with our first Playstation and Tomb Raider 2,
where a simple routine released all weapons and topped up your ammunition. Th...
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| Games are Spatial Stories
An extremely brief
history of video games as an academic study has two main opposing camps. On one
side you had the narratologists who were interested in videogames as narratives,
who were therefore often concerned with how games could tell better stories. On
the other side you had the ludologists who advocated that video games should be
studied as games and a form of play, arguing video games could not be viewed in
the same way as existing media like film and television. One of th...
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| The Hairy Problem of Advanced Consoles
The Hairy Problem of Advanced
Consoles
A Bad Hair Day in
Console Land.
Having been forced to avidly read a large number of video game magazines for my research I like to imagine I have a puny mouse-atrophied little finger on the pulse of game development. Thus it is that I have noticed a new problem that is emerging to plague the ranks of developers everywhere. The escalating graphic capability of the next generation consoles has advanced so far that opportunities...
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| Why Gnomes Have No City
Why Gnomes Have No City
Architecture in World of Warcraft
Have you ever wandered around Azeroth in World of Warcaft and wondered why the Gnomes lost their city? After all they once lived in splendour in Gnomeregan. I know there’s a detailed back-story about why it all happened but I can’t help thinking that there is another reason. Wherever you find a gnome there is always some weird gnomish machine in the background. I get the feeling that gnomes just aren’t inte...
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