Language Games/Game Languages: Examining Game Design Epistemologies Through a ‘Wittgensteinian’ Lens

Recent theorizing around games and notions of play has drawn from a pool of mid-20th century scholars including such notables as Johann Huizinga, Gregory Bateson, Roger Caillois and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Through his articulation of the concept of language as a type of game, Wittgenstein has been both adopted and critiqued for purposes of circumscribing what are now commonly held as the necessary constituents of games including their systemic nature and the acquiescence of their participants to an agreed-upon rule structure: a set of rules which Wittgenstein likens to the ‘grammar’ of language (Salen and Zimmerman, 2001;Suits, 1978; Juul, 2005; Wittgenstein, 1953; Finch, 2001; Brenner, 1999). Although thus far Wittgenstein has served as a pillar of 20th and 21st century game theory canon, this paper adopts Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games not for purposes of examining games, but for purposes of examining the design of games.  The pursuit of this paper is to utilize Wittgenstein’s lens of the language-game to investigate what it is that informs and consequently shapes and reinforces game design epistemologies in an attempt to encourage a reflexivity about the design practices behind the games we create

Stacking the Deck for Learning: What Educational Game Designers Can Learn From Card Games Designed by Kids

This paper details the results of an exploratory informant design workshop in which nine 10-12 year olds were asked to design their own card games with the aim of having them incorporate information about West Nile Virus into their design. This paper details the workshop process in its entirety and considers the rule systems, allowable choices, artificial conflicts and conditions of victory incorporated by the children into their games. This paper concludes by evaluating the participants’ game design choices, the manners in which content was incorporated and their potential usefulness to future educational game design pursuits

Language Games/Game Languages: Examining Game Design Epistemologies Through a ‘Wittgensteinian’ Lens

Recent theorizing around games and notions of play has drawn from a pool of mid-20th century scholars including such notables as Johann Huizinga, Gregory Bateson, Roger Caillois and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Through his articulation of the concept of language as a type of game, Wittgenstein has been both adopted and critiqued for purposes of circumscribing what are now commonly held as the necessary constituents of games including their systemic nature and the acquiescence of their participants to an agreed-upon rule structure: a set of rules which Wittgenstein likens to the ‘grammar’ of language (Salen and Zimmerman, 2001;Suits, 1978; Juul, 2005; Wittgenstein, 1953; Finch, 2001; Brenner, 1999). Although thus far Wittgenstein has served as a pillar of 20th and 21st century game theory canon, this paper adopts Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games not for purposes of examining games, but for purposes of examining the design of games.  The pursuit of this paper is to utilize Wittgenstein’s lens of the language-game to investigate what it is that informs and consequently shapes and reinforces game design epistemologies in an attempt to encourage a reflexivity about the design practices behind the games we create

Play and the Private

Over the past half a century or more, historical, anthropological and philosophical examinations of the concept of play have remained largely situated in the arena of ontological discussion. In these previous interrogations of play, the notion of play has been assumed a priori, been defined stipulatively in relation to larger frameworks of games, or discarded altogether. This work adopts Wittgenstein’s Private Language argument as a lever to unpack the usefulness in looking at play from an epistemological perspective: paying special attention to linguistic cues, ostensive relationships and associated activities around those things players call ‘play’ within specific, behavioral, situational and linguistic contexts. This paper explores how unraveling the term ‘play’ in this way can potentially afford us a new perspective on play as an epistemologically dynamic phenomenon

The Eyes Have It: Measuring Spatial Orientation in Virtual Worlds to Explain Gender Differences in Real Ones

Here, we explore how 3D, networked virtual worlds - in particular Second Life, which enables users to create and modify their own environments - can act as a kind of \u27virtual\u27 laboratory for studying gender difference. By tracking users\u27 eye movements as they navigate a virtual rendition of the Morris Water Maze (the \u27gold standard\u27 for measuring gender difference in spatial orientation, navigation and mobility), this work constitutes an empirical basis for claims that we have attempted to make in the context of ethnographic work with female and male video game players, both novice and expert: that mastery of, and the ability to competently navigate through space, both real and virtual, is as much (if not more) learned and acquired, as it inheres in the bodies and brains of differently-sexed subjects

Exploring the notion of ‘Grinding’ in massively multiplayer online role playing gamer discourse: the case of Guild Wars

The grind in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) has been described by game studies theorists as an inscrutable, paradoxical convergence of work and play (Dibbell, 2006; Yee, 2006), troubling previously held notions about the carefree nature of play as advanced by seminal theorists such as Johan Huizinga (1951). However, despite the recent academic fervor around MMOGs, examinations of the grind offer little insight into why players grind, and even less about what the grind means to its practitioners. Studying the collected forum and interview texts of a six-year old MMOG community, this dissertation adopts a Wittgensteinian approach to discourse analysis in an effort to learn more about the grind and what it means to the players who practice it. This ‘mapping out’ of the grind’s meaning in the Guild Wars community is intended to both start and/or contribute to a dialog in game studies that examines how play can be situated theoretically with respect to phenomena so often construed as undesirable by its players while also providing a functional instrument for others to adopt in their further analysis of this phenomenon

A Gendered World: Students and Instructional Technologies

Gender has become a significant issue in the various discussions related to the use of computers and instructional technologies (IT) in higher education. Are gender differences relevant in the students' learning process and their use of technological components in their courses? Is gender significant in determining the use of IT by students in colleges and universities? Does the study of how gender influences students' use of software and presentation formats, throw light on other general behavioural aspects of academic computer-users? This study uses surveys, both direct and online, of students in universities and colleges to explore whether gender is a critical variable in understanding what is labelled as user-friendly computer instruction and learning, Internet searches, and presentation software tools. It also seeks to explore whether and if so why, women students, as distinct from the men, do or do not embrace IT in their learning endeavors or use the new technological tools in handling their courses

Globalization of prurience: The Internet and the degradation of women and children

Globalization of prurience: The Internet and degradation of women and children by Indhu Rajagopal with Nis Bojin This paper explores some key questions: How does the Web facilitate the production and dissemination of pornographic materials? How, and why, does pornography that depraves and corrupts unwary children, and exploits women, go untrammeled through the Web

Introduction To Special Issue: FuturePlay Selected Papers

This special issue of Loading… brings together a selection of the most highly reviewed papers from the annual ACM FuturePlay 2008 International Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology conference that was held in Toronto, Ontario, November 3-5, 2008. The conference had over 170 attendees over the three days and included keynote addresses from Don Daglow (Founder/President/CEO of Stormfront Studios), Ben Sawyer (Co-founder of Digitalmill, Co-founder of the Serious Games initiative), Katie Salen (Parsons, the New School for Design), John Buchanan (Relic Entertainment), Ken Perlin (New York State University), and Jackie Copland (Electronic Arts)