Jesper Juul is a video game theorist and assistant professor in video game theory and design at the Centre for Computer Game Research Copenhagen where he also earned his Ph.D. His book Half-Real on video game theory was published by MIT Press in 2005.  Additionally, he works as a multi-user chat systems and casual game developer. His blog, The Ludologist, can be found at http://www.jesperjuul.net /ludologist

Abstract:

In 1977, there were no “hardcore” players of video games: Every video game had to be created with the assumption that players had no understanding of video games, genres, and controllers. Thirty years later, video games are primarily designed for players with extensive knowledge of video game conventions. This is how video games gained a specialized audience, but lost the general public. In this perspective, video games have long ago become a developed “art”, created for connoisseurs, by connoisseurs with a deep understanding of the medium. Using examples, I will discuss the rise of the hardcore gamer market, and how video games are once again opening up to new players via new platforms like the Wii, and via casual games.

For more information or to show an interest in attending please contact Henrik Bennetsen - bennetsen@gmail.com

For more information or to show an interest in attending please contact Henrik Bennetsen - bennetsen@gmail.com

My returning to the States now marks the official (looong story) start of my work as content manager for the L2 research project at Stanford University. More details on this later. Basically I was a little written out after my thesis, so blog updates have been far between and few. Feeling myself coming back now, so with any luck and stuff that I need to bang on about then this blog should spring back to life again.

The important distinction that gets lost here is between collectivism and collective action. Wikipedia is not the average result of the efforts of everyone who ever typed www.wikipedia.org into their browser, but rather the work of a dedicated relatively small core of people empowered by technology that have taken the “collective action” to build a free online encyclopedia. Interestingly Lanier states the distinction well this himself, but fails to apply it:

The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we’re devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.

Apart from that and committing a Godwin on the first page I do believe that he has a number of valid points; prominently that the lack of an identified author makes Wikipedia a source where intentionality is harder to evaluate.

A voice should be sensed as a whole. You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning.

The history function shows a number of seemingly equal edits by often anonymous authors. This makes a Wikipedia a source that should be double checked, but let’s face it name one source where this is not true. He also writes:

A desirable text is more than a collection of accurate references. It is also an expression of personality.

I do believe that this is true for a number of texts, but would like to questions whether this goes for an encyclopedia? You engage with such a work in a nonlinear fashion in order to quickly obtain an overview over a given subject, so whilst being cute and subtle has it is place Wikipedia might not be it.

The collective can be stupid, too. Witness tulip crazes and stock bubbles. Hysteria over fictitious satanic cult child abductions. Y2K mania.

I we can agree on the distinction between collective action and collectivism then I can only sympathize with this view.

Lanier also discusses the race to be the most meta and I would really agree that the whole web 2.0 paradigm has brought us an astounding amount of aggregators and that the focus now needs to go back to producing great content.

He is very determined to make his point about Wikipedia and a few places he really looses me:

In describing the survey that showed that encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia had similar levels of accuracy he states:

The items selected for the comparison were just the sort that Wikipedia would do well on: Science topics that the collective at large doesn’t care much about.

So Wikipedia is strong on science and that gets turned into a bad thing? I mean you can hardly argue lack of diversity, but I’d be interested to know what subjects would have constituted a better basis for comparison.

In another place he compares Myspace and Wikipedia:

Myspace is a richer, multi-layered, source of information than the Wikipedia, although the topics the two services cover barely overlap. If you want to research a TV show in terms of what people think of it, Myspace will reveal more to you than the analogous and enormous entries in the Wikipedia.

I find this hard to argue with to the point of failing to see any relevance in the statement at all. These are two very different beasts, trying to do very different things altogether.

Something is lost when American Idol becomes a leader instead of a follower of pop music. But when intelligent design shares the stage with real science in the paper of record, everything is lost.

If the first statement was true then that would really be a sad state of affairs, but I am not sure it is. Culture these days is way more granular than it has ever been and a lot of the most interesting stuff happens in the online undergrowth that seems more vibrant than ever (I am trying very hard to resist the mention of the long tail here). The mass media has not found a way to capitalize on this, so they’re spewing American Idol at us, but are we really listening?

The second statement fills me with anxiety because I fear that he is right and that says a lot of negative things about our world right now!

All in all I really enjoyed this very well written piece and I hope that I succeeded a little bit in not just being knee jerk defensive, because I fundamentally believe that Wikipedia is something beautiful that has the potential to be something great.

The first time I heard of Danger Mouse was when he put out the outstanding Grey Album. A mashup of vox from Jay-Z’s The Black Album & The White Album by the mighty Beatles. The fading giant EMI did not like this one bit and served our little mouse friend who was forced to comply. This again led to some tasty civil disobedience; Grey Tuesday (First Monday piece on this) courtesy of the good people at Downhill Battle. These people think culture has always been made by talented people who got inspired by other talented people, just like science actually. Imagine our world if scientists were not allowed to incorporate each others works. If you can go here. Then I’ll get off my soapbox for a while and just be happy that our little friend is now back with Gnarls Barkley. Their Crazy is appropriately the first single ever to go number one in the UK based just of download sales. Catch a fantastic live performance of it and check out BBC ONE’s bit on them.

]]> http://www.henrikbennetsen.com/?feed=rss2&p=103 http://www.henrikbennetsen.com/?p=102 http://www.henrikbennetsen.com/?p=102#comments Thu, 25 May 2006 22:11:30 +0000 Henrik Bennetsen http://www.henrikbennetsen.com/?p=102 I am about one month into my thesis and things are moving along nicely, so I thought I’d give it a quick plug here. I went and saw Cory Ondrejka at Linden Lab out in North Beach a few months back. He told me that 75% of people in Second Life had created something from scratch in the last seven days. You may ask: “Created what exactly?” but it seems like something that deserved a second look. I always try to boil things down to the bare essentials, so I formulated this question:

Do creative people become SL residents or do SL residents become creative people?

This forms the basis for the qualitative analysis of creativity in Second Life I have now embarked on. At SLCreativity.org I intend to pour my thoughts into the wiki and blog about my thoughts as they pop into my head along the way. You are hereby formally invited to join in the conversation.

I created this website as a way to think to about games. Games, as in computer games, are the subject of my next book, GAM3R 7H30RY. I am interested in two questions.

1. can we explore games as allegories for the world we live in?
2. can there be a critical theory of games?

All in all, an envelope-pushing endeavor, in both form and content. Eventually, GAM3R 7H30RY will be published by a conventional press, but between now and then we’re trying to investigate new creative strategies in the peer-to-peer environment. We call this a ‘networked book’ — the book as social software. We’re hoping to spark discussion about that as well.

This interests me for so many reasons.

[Via Boing Boing]

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