Theory

There are two ways to understand this question: What makes us, humans, play games? What makes games playable and enjoyable? The first question is a question for the study of humans, namely cultural studies like anthropology. There is also the view of evolutionary biology, psychology or biology in general that can shed some light to the question by explaining play as a function for other purposes. Namely, this is one of the possible answers: function or for what other purpose does play exist. There are several possibilities, like maintaining social integrity, teaching small children about rules behavior etc. ...

A discussion I had with some local rpg-players got me thinking about the history of rpg-theory in Finland. The best known of theories was the one based on the text known as the Turku School Manifesto (it was displayed online not long ago, but I can’t seem to find it anymore). It meant that for a long time, role-play - and especially larp - was viewed through these concepts. For those that don’t know, Turku School ideas were based on the idea of immersion, or the player “becoming” more or less, the character. That idea has been elaborated and criticized since, but for (roughly) a decade, it was the way theory worked (in Finland), at least in practice if not in all discourses of theorists. ...

It’s not something I usually write about1, but I read a few (older) posts by Thanuir about railroading, and I thought about commenting those posts. I’m basically going to claim that 1) railroading is not (entirely) bad, 2) it happens in all games, and 3) it is not even a very good way of talking about the phenomenon, instead one should use the terms Montola uses. This is a warning, so that if you already agree and (or) know what I’m talking about, you can skip the rest. ...

I noticed something when I happened to watch a tv-program on games. It seems (and this is in no way rigorously analytical, just a hunch) that a (computer) game has “role-playing elements” if there is any progression in the abilities of character played. ...

I’ve finally read something I’ve been meaning to read for a long time: the manifestos Dogma 99 and The Manifesto of the Turku School. While I understand, at least partly, the motivation behind these texts, I have to strongly disagree with both of them on some important facts. This is not surprising, as both we’re written in a polemical style, especially the Turku Manifesto, it being a witty version of the Communist Manifesto. ...

On Matthijs Holter’s article in Lifelike: Holter argues that we (the writers, students and - ) should stop talking about immersion. He admits that there is something called ‘immersion’, but that it isn’t constructive to use immersion as a term in writing about role-playing games and theory of role-play. I disagree and this is why: ...