Comments on: Be the ball…

By: Jeff Murray

Jeff Murray — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:37:13 +0000

Quick update … Gordon Calleja has just published his PhD Thesis on ‘elements that influence player involvement in digital games, ranging from their general motivations and attractions to a detailed analysis of moment by moment involvement in game-play’. Although it’s not directly related to control input devices, there are certainly some interesting snippets of information about how players are motivated and drawn into gameplay. I think it’s great to see such qualitative information being shared like this, since he went to the trouble of making it available as a download from his site. Hats off to Gordon! It may be downloaded in pdf format here : http://www.gordoncalleja.com/phdthesis.html

By: Jeff Murray

Jeff Murray — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:38:34 +0000

In the future, the Wii will be a Yu. Named after ‘The Great Yu’, first ruler and founder of the Xia Dynasty, The Yu 大禹 will submerge users in a big bubble for an un-detirmined amount of time. Everything inside the bubble will seem real to the player and he/she will be reminded every 4.3 years to stop playing games and visit his/her family

From Wii to Yu.

I’ll get my coat.

By: Jeff Murray

Jeff Murray — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:08:35 +0000

Thanks for the comments, guys.

I want to try and follow this post up sometime, since I find it really interesting that companies like Atari were trying to do exactly the same thing during the 70s and 80s with their arcade machines as Nintendo are trying to do with the Wii. The whole idea of computers becoming an extension of the physical body is perhaps beyond what I could do justice to, as a writer, but it’s such an interesting field that I’d like to take it a little further if time will allow.

I’ll see if I can find the ‘Nature of Things’ episode, as it sounds interesting. Thanks for the comment and I will make sure to update as / when I find any associated materials.

By: Steve Murray

Steve Murray — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:06:02 +0000

Nice write up.

I play Call of Duty a lot. Thinking along your lines a little, I become totally immersed as a “1st” person in the game. How’s it going to feel playing CoD 22 on the Wii I wonder?

By: Tony Walsh

Tony Walsh — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:26:11 +0000

There was an old ‘Nature of Things’ (CBC) episode from the 1980s that discussed how our sense of physicality extends to inhabit familiar non-physical spaces. If I recall correctly, they were talking about how drivers “feel” the boundaries of their car… I believe in the same episode they were also relating this to the ‘phantom limb’ syndrome. The idea is that if we become familiar enough with an extension of our physical self, our brain’s interpretation of where our body is fills that extension. I’ve experienced this with video games, so I relate to your post.

I hope you update to point out sources of additional info, should you find it, I suspect research on this topic is rather obscure. I’ve been looking for info on the subject as well, and I’m pretty sure I’m not typing the right things into Google.