11 slides to change the world Miguel Sicart Computer Game Theory Spring 2005

Computer games are... rules (formal systems) played (experienced by users) in virtual environments (worlds created with computer technology)

Games might be a medium, but we know they operate as cross medial, cross cultural devices, linked to technological development

Mapping game genres the genres we use to classify computer games are not precise - we need to think about how they are designed, played and modified to create new, specific genres

Game analysis has to fit the medium and the target games can be seen from many different perspectives: all the players involved in the business want different answers. Target your analysis

Narratology vs. Ludology: the war of the Roses games tell stories and are formal systems of rules. This debate was “fictional”, but posed the right questions about what games are, and can be.

Then Espen said very clever things about fiction

Games are about space the magic circle is not real but half real and the space conditions the game mechanics

Games are arts or better, they can be arts: the art of game design is the art of simulation, the art of balanced rules, the art of compelling game spaces.

Politics, Ethics, Games games are powerful rhetoric objects because they are experiences designed with embedded values. Pity that they do not believe in the matureness of the players or of games.

all this summarizes in 2 slides

Computer games are rubbish

but we can change the odds

mmmm, I actually used 14 slides...

Damn! (and this is the 15th - Doh!)