links for 2010-07-16

“When artists become inter­est­ed in sport, “they become ter­ri­bly anx­ious that they could be con­fused with the quote-unquote nor­mal fans,” said Hans Ulrich Gum­brecht, a pro­fes­sor of com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and author of “In Praise of Ath­let­ic Beau­ty” (Belk­nap Press, 2006). “So intel­lec­tu­als, when they play games, they can­not just play nor­mal games. It has to be intel­lec­tu­al­ized.”” Guilty as charged I guess. But when are these ‘new sports’ art, when are they design and when are they just muck­ing about?

“We need first to acknowl­edge that today’s play­ers are aware of the mag­ic cir­cle – they are often will­ful­ly and hap­pi­ly par­tial­ly with­in it and play­ing con­cep­tu­al­ly with their sense of pres­ence there­in at any giv­en moment, regard­less of how immer­sive the game is. Sec­ond, we need to offer them more than the mere abil­i­ty to enter and exit that cir­cle. We need to let them touch it, manip­u­late it, and explore and test its lim­its.” I object to some of the stereo­types in this essay, and have trou­ble grasp­ing what is meant by the term “immer­sive sim”. But I can only agree with the point that any­thing of impor­tance in a game should be in some­thing a play­er can act on. The rest, frankly, is dressing.