Talk:Game studies

There is much more to ludology than "video game studies". Video games are a subset of games, yes, and worthy of study on their own. But the meat of ludology does NOT rely upon video as a medium; it is about human-culture-system interaction in the contrived context of a game. Ludocrat 07:17, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. This article should be under "ludology" or (preferably, as the term "ludology" is loaded, to Frasca's dismay) "game studies."

The whole "ludology vs. narratology" debate barely exists outside a handfull of academic papers. Moving page to Ludology. - Tzaquiel 07:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

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So what is the term to describe the science studying *all* games, not only video/computer ones? --213.227.93.57 16:20, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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I thought I would point out that the text on this page is identical to the text on this other page: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Ludology

I don't know who's copying who, but it seemed worth mentioning. --Omeomi 02:22, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

They're copying Wikipedia. TheFreeDictionary is a Wikipedia mirror; see Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Def#TheFreeDictionary.com. --Mrwojo 05:02, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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I'm confused... this entry claims that Aarseth is a ludologist, whereas I have read in other sources (can't name them right now) that he is primarily a narratologist... I read Cybertext, and seem to recall that he was fond of arguing that, even when a traditional narrative isn't explicit, gameplay allows the user to construct their own narrative of play, which seems it would put him more in the narratology camp... can anybody comment or clarify on this? Thanks. --Anonymous 11 Aug 2005

You could call Aarseth a "renegade", in a way. Originally a narratologist, he did not agree with certain assertions his fellow researchers made and "founded" ludology. You may want to check out the following link which sheds some light on the issue: http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/vigilant --84.130.121.151 17:39, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

"Ludology" = "video game studies"?

Hang on — isn't "ludology" defined as the study of games, implying all games? The wiktionary definition wiktionary:ludology seems to think so. If this is so, isn't it a bit misleading to say that ludology is a synonym for "video game studies"? This article should be at "video game studies" or "video game theory" or whatever, and of course linked to from (and perhaps touched briefly on at) ludology, even if ludology is a small field. Neonumbers 14:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Literal translation of the German WP's article intro:

Ludology (lat. ludus = game) is the study of games and refers to the still young transdisciplinary branch of research dealing with the aesthetical, cultural, communicational, technical and structural aspects of the phenomenon of "game" from a cultural and structural science perspective. Its main focal point is the history, evolution, analysis and theory of digital games.

The term is most common in the Anglo-Saxon language area and typically used synonymously with (video) game theory, though not only corresponding to mathematical game theory, which is limited to certain game types, but to the much broader theory of games in general.

However, in the narrower context of the "ludology vs. narratology" debate, ludology describes the paradigm that regards simulation as the core concept of games. Hence, the more neutral term game research is often used alternatively.

FYI, "Structural science" (or "Strukturwissenschaft" as there seems to be no equivalent in English) is defined as a science that predominantly deals with revealing structures and developing concepts and methods on a highly abstract level, which can then be found and used in a broad, interdisciplinary range of fields. The prime example is mathematics, others are systems theory, linguistics, informatics, cybernetics etc. --84.130.121.151 09:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a bit of a thorny issue. Basically, ludology can be used to describe game studies... except that there's also a particular theoretical orientation that identifies as ludology, and so referring to game studies as a whole as ludology is POV. Accordingly, I've moved this to Game studies. Phil Sandifer 00:51, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

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The article seems to use the holodeck as an example of narrativism. This seems ludicrous, surely it's a far better example of simulationism. The 'fun' of the game comes from the simulation of a complete, real-seeming environment within which the participant ('player') can act as they please. Think Grand Theft Auto, The Sims etc. Have I got the wrong end of the stick here, can someone clarify?--SilverMt 12:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Simulation can be quite an abstract process, with little or no sensual resemblance to the "real thing". Its system usually describes specific aspects of a model of reality (or even something completely unreal); just think of Pong vs. Tennis. The holodeck is used as an example for narrativism, because it's a (fictional) device predominantly used for "playing a story"; characters become "real", players develop an identity, or as the narrativists put it, it's "constructing sense". However, the main ludological argument is that narrative (i.e. storyline, characters, player identities, sense) is often an important part of games, but does not define them, since many games lack it completely, like Tetris, for instance. Cutting right to the chase: all games include simulation of some kind (more or less realistic), but only some include narrative. --84.130.93.20 01:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

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I think the problem is complicated by the fact that videogames are not simply a subset of games; they are rather a cluster of artifacts circulating around the intersection between digital media / software culture, screen media culture, and games in the traditional sense. Many videogames aren't really games at all (e.g., Elektroplankton) or are in a gray area at best (e.g., The Sims), yet definitely fit in under the category of "videogame studies."

At the same time, I recognize the need to study games as such as an autonomous field of inquiry. My suggestion: ludology should direct to "game studies," and "videogame studies" should be treated as a distinct field of its own. Whuber (talk) 19:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

a few comments

I work somewhat in this field (though more from a CS/AI perspective) and with a number of well-known people in it, so a few comments based on my knowledge of it. "Game studies" is more or less becoming the grudgingly accepted name for the field, insofar as people bother to name it at all. "Ludology" now has too much baggage so people generally avoid it unless talking specifically about Frasca's approach, and even Frasca's close collaborators (like Ian Bogost) don't really use the term much. The two main journals in the field are Game Studies and Games and Culture (the latter cleverly avoids coming up with a name for the field by just using a descriptive phrase).

The article should in any case probably focus less on these foundational debates, or spin off the ludology v. narratalogy debate to a separate article, and expand coverage of what it is that people actually do in the field. Some things worth covering, with a focus on the areas I'm familiar with (mostly somewhat practice-slanted) include:

• newsgames and other persuasive games (see also Bogost's Persuasive Games [MIT Press, 2007])
• interactive narrative and its possibilities and status (see also Façade)
• code studies and humanistic readings of computer code
• more generally the relationship (or not) between the field and computer code; e.g. arguments over procedural literacy (though that term/discussion predates the field, it's been revived recently); "platform studies" as an approach (see Montfort's "Combat in Context" in Game Studies); and so on
• Some comments on the field's forerunners, many of which have been revived and retroactively incorporated (often quite influentially), most notably Johan Huizinga's 1938 book Homo Ludens and especially its "magic circle" concept
• the "are games art?" question, and somewhat relatedly, the production of games (or something resembling games) by artists, often as absurdist concept art, but occasionally with real games in mind (e.g. Bill Viola's collaboration on The Night Journey)
• Probably a bunch more from a non-practice-oriented approach I've left out

--Delirium 03:08, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

References

I think some work needs to be done on the citation front. We've got two different styles, which I can't believe is ever a good thing, and there does not seem to be any section to which the parenthetical references refer. Some input would be great, but if there are no objections sometime soon I will go through and convert everything that I can to footnotes. -- The Fwanksta (talk) 21:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

go ahead, please --83.60.59.251 (talk) 17:51, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Change the parantheticals to ref tags...    Jhonka 00:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Case in point, (Aarseth, 2001) is missing an entry in the list of references 130.89.155.116 (talk) 13:42, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I would really appreciate it if the (Aarseth, 2001; Eskelinen, 2001; Eskelinen, 2004) citations were given proper URLs. I conducted google scholar searches for some of these, and found some writings, but they may not be the actual source intended. 128.206.28.105 (talk) 19:44, 17 June 2014 (UTC)Joe Hilgard

Readability?

While well written, this really isn't in encyclopedic format... "Introduction" contains history, characterization, theories... This page simply reads like an essay. see Television Studies for a better way of organizing information. You shouldn't have to read the whole page to understand this topic.    Jhonka 00:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Importance

I've bumped this topic up from mid to high because this article is so vital to the "games and sports" portal that more attention needs to be called to the fact that it needs cleaning up. This is equivalent to if the Psychology portal had a poorly written article on Psychology.Darqcyde (talk) 16:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Ludoliteracy

This article is structured closely after the introductory chapters of Jose P. Zagal's dissertation Ludoliteracy. Most suspicious is the way it discusses the multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of Game Studies. The language throughout is also stylistically similar. People have already mentioned the strange parenthetical citations, and while these follow a widely-disseminated style (I think APA?), the fact that the style of citation is the same as the citations that appear in Zagal's dissertation raises red flags. Shouldn't this article cite the dissertation as its source? Rumirumirumirumi (talk) 17:39, 28 December 2011 (UTC)