Dissertation notes/essays

Eugene F. Provenzo (Video Kids: making sence of Nintendo)

"Provenzo's work lacks some nuances: he seems to be a technological determinist, arguing that games do not give players the possibility of control and modification, therefor players subordinate to these instructions and obey mindlessly. perhaps games do not let players directly modify the conditions of play, but players, in their phenomenological experience of the game, have the capacity not to subordinate to the game, not to be totally determined by its rules." ---(This brings up the subject that it is important to take into account that games are designed objects with a set of pre-determined rules. Do games just offer the illusion to freedom of space and actions? and if so what are the boundaries to this?) 

Ethical Agents in game.

The game as a system with rules needs to be considered as a simulation of a world when players engage in activities which guide and reward by that same system; we have to think about the player as ethical agents. 

Ethics of game:

Games force behaviours by rule: the meaning of those behaviours, as communicated through the game world to the player, constitute the ethics of computer games as designed objects. 

Games rules - Salen & Zimmerman's quote -

" rules are the inner, format structure of games." rules have also operational values: they limit what players can do, and they also reward certain actions; they create the winning conditions and the limits and boundaries of the game. 

Zimmerman 3 rules: 

• Constitutive
• operational
• implicit