From sales figures and interviews, we know that many people outside the typical video game audience play small downloadable video games like Zuma, Diner Dash, or Bejeweled. Such small video games are known as casual games, and have unsuspectedly become a major industry during the last few years. However, video game studies have so far mostly focused on foundational issues ("what is a game") and on AAA games, big games purchased in stores. In this article, I try to remedy the situation by examining the historical development of the casual game sub-genre of matching tile games, to see how their game design has evolved over time, and to discuss the opposing perspectives that players and developers have on video game history.
Are virtual objects real? I will claim that the question sets us up for the wrong type of conclusion: Chalmers (2017) argues that a virtual calculator (like other entities) is a real calculator when it is “organizationally invariant” with its non-virtual counterpart—when it performs calculation. However, virtual reality and games are defined by the fact that they always selectively implement their source material. Even the most detailed virtual car will still have an infinite range of details which are missing (gas, engines, pistons, fuel, chemical reactions, molecules, atoms). This means that even the most detailed virtual object will still have fictional aspects. Rather than argue that virtual objects are, or aren’t, real, it is preferable to think of overlaps and continuities between the fictional and the real, where even the most painstakingly detailed virtual reality implementation of a non-virtual object is still art: a human process of selection and interpretation. Virtual reality should therefore not be philosophically understood just as a technological implementation on a trajectory to perfection, but as a cultural artifact which derives its value in part from its simplification and difference from its source material.
Background Most cancer treatments today take place in outpatient clinics; however, it might be necessary for some patients to be admitted to hospital departments due to severe side effects or complications. In such situations, support from family and social relations can be crucial for the patients’ emotional well-being. Many young adolescents and children whose parents have cancer describe how they are not seen, heard, or listened to as the worried relatives they are. Within the intensive care unit, it has been recommended that early supportive interventions are tailored to include children of the intensive care patient; a similar approach might be relevant in the oncological setting. To our knowledge, no studies have explored how to involve young relatives who are visiting their parent at an oncological department. Recently, a framework for developing theory-driven, evidence-based serious games for health has been suggested. Such a process would include stakeholders from various disciplines, who only work toward one specific solution. However, it is possible that bringing together different disciplines, such as design, art, and health care, would allow a broader perspective, resulting in improved solutions. Objective This study aims to develop tools to enhance the social interaction between a parent with cancer and their child when the child visits the parent in the hospital. Methods In total, 4 groups of design students within the Visual Design program were tasked with developing games addressing the objective of strengthening relations in situ during treatment. To support their work, the applied methods included professional lectures, user studies, and visual communication (phase I); interviews with the relevant clinicians at the hospital (phase II), co-creative workshops with feedback (phase III), and evaluation sessions with selected populations (phase IV). The activities in the 4 phases were predefined. This modified user design had the child (aged 4-18 years) of a parent with cancer as its primary user. Results Overall, 4 different games were designed based on the same information. All games had the ability to make adults with cancer and their children interact on a common electronic platform with a joint goal. However, the interaction, theme, and graphical expression differed between the games, suggesting that this is a wide and fertile field to explore. Conclusions Playing a game can be an efficient way to create social interaction between a parent with cancer and a child or an adolescent, potentially improving the difficult social and psychological relations between them. The study showed that the development of serious games can be highly dependent on the designers involved and the processes used. This must be considered when a hospital aims to develop multiple games for different purposes.
Editors' Introduction There is no question that games have operated as a cultural enigma for media and cultural studies. And there have been many attempts to categorise what is actually going on with electronic games. On a straightforward level with the amount of carnage that is associated with shooter games, the number of "accidents" that occur in simulation games from car-racing to jet-fighter pilot activity, and the usual 3 lives of the standard video, arcade, and computer game it seems eminently reasonable to see that the first forays into its study were from those seeking answers and relationships to violent society-ills. Psychologists and criminologists have provided by far the largest pool of literature over the last 20 years about electronic games and have worked on correlations between the simulated gameworld and real-life. Similarly, because the background of so many critical analysts of games is from studies of film and television, it makes sense that there have been many only moderately successful attempts at overlaying theories of the subject and narrative for working out the machinations of gameplay. One of our contributors has tried to write about the frustration of this experience of linking games to past cultural theories, and failed. Instead, he has created a game that isolates on the squarepeg-roundhole quality of games/gameplay and their linkages with theory. Jesper Juul in his "Game Liberation" challenges us to identify the uniqueness of the object of study and thereby pushes us to create a new variation that underpins the pleasure/pain repetition of the game experience. The player is a game theorist, tired and true, who like Juul wants to isolate on the special quality of the game for critical analysis and therefore must eliminate the conjectures that might emanate from these past cultural theories and envelope the game. Of course, this reading of the game can't be done while you are playing. You (at least the three "lives' that constitute "you" in the game) have to keep shooting to blast away these imperial theories that try to colonise gameplay; through that process of playing the game you gain an insight into the experiential quality of games. If you ever attain the fourth level you have the ultimate pleasure of eliminating what Juul has called the pathology theories and achieve what everyone wants: their name in lights in the game's "Hall of Fame". You are invited in this final "article" of the game issue to strip everything back and play the game. Click here to play "Game Liberation"... Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jesper Juul. "Game Liberation." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/liberation.php>. Chicago style: Jesper Juul, "Game Liberation," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/liberation.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jesper Juul. (2000) Game Liberation. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/liberation.php> ([your date of access]).
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