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GameStudies.org
By Justin Hall

Compared with the articles by Ryan, Juul and Bringsjord, The Gaming Situation verges on the tangible. Here, author Markku Eskelinen puts it simply: "Outside academic theory people are usually excellent at making distinctions between narrative, drama and games. If I throw a ball at you, I don't expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories." He explores the space and time of games: the ways games might be analyzed along a spectrum of configurability, how much control the user has over space and time. Such moments of game-specific exploration, places where theory concerning interaction is tied to the games themselves, are all too rare in this first issue.

Besides delving briefly into anchored game theory, Eskelinen lists specific criticisms of video games at large; talking about, for example, ways of conditioning the player's perception "...But for some reason I can't blacken my opponent's screen." It appears that this poor fellow has never enjoyed Deus Ex, or even Counter-Strike. Within the first ten minutes of Deus Ex, anti-government terrorists shoot you with tranquilizer darts that blur your perception and add a sort of drunken motion to your movements (later you can do the same to them). In Counter-Strike (1999), players make extensive use of "Flashbang" grenades that serve to blind an opponent. Besides being wildly popular, both Deus Ex and Counter-Strike have won countless editorial and developer awards for excellence and innovation. At risk of sounding too much like a hardcore gamer, these two games are a part of an electronic entertainment canon that any game theorist should study if they care to hold forth on the shortcomings of modern game design.

Eskelinen does have some valid lamentations and areas for exploration, and reading over some of his criticisms might provoke a game producer to design some more unusual challenges. These ongoing discussions could prove valuable for an industry that could use an injection of studied consciousness. Still, ensconced members of the game development community are unlikely to accept input from someone who doesn't front more game knowledge.

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