Half-real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional WorldsA video game is half-real: we play by real rules while imagining a fictional world. We win or lose the game in the real world, but we slay a dragon (for example) only in the world of the game. In this thought-provoking study, Jesper Juul examines the constantly evolving tension between rules and fiction in video games. Discussing games from Pong to The Legend of Zelda, from chess to Grand Theft Auto, he shows how video games are both a departure from and a development of traditional non-electronic games. The book combines perspectives from such fields as literary and film theory, computer science, psychology, economic game theory, and game studies, to outline a theory of what video games are, how they work with the player, how they have developed historically, and why they are fun to play. Locating video games in a history of games that goes back to Ancient Egypt, Juul argues that there is a basic affinity between games and computers. Just as the printing press and the cinema have promoted and enabled new kinds of storytelling, computers work as enablers of games, letting us play old games in new ways and allowing for new kinds of games that would not have been possible before computers. Juul presents a classic game model, which describes the traditional construction of games and points to possible future developments. He examines how rules provide challenges, learning, and enjoyment for players, and how a game cues the player into imagining its fictional world. Juul's lively style and eclectic deployment of sources will make Half-Real of interest to media, literature, and game scholars as well as to game professionals and gamers. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 14
... EverQuest inside Tetris . It is not that it is graph- ically impossible to place EverQuest inside a game of Tetris ; it is just that it does not make sense . These categories can work on a purely textual level as well as in the mind of ...
... EverQuest : The graphics project a world with trees and skeleton monsters . Graphics are probably the most important way in which games project worlds . Sound In the same example , the sound is less expressive but , certainly , the ...
... EverQuest is something of a combination of the old and new , combining 3 - D graphics with the text - based MUD ( multi - user dungeon ) game of the 1980s . Consequently , much of the action is also described using text , as in the ...
Contents
Video Games and the Classic Game Model | 23 |
Rules | 55 |
Fiction | 121 |
Copyright | |
2 other sections not shown