Where Do We Fall, Guys?

BackgroundVideo gaming and competitive gaming (esports) are gaining more and more recognition in society as well as in research. Increasingly, health-related topics are the focus of research on video game and esports players. Although video gaming is often associated with energy drinks and fast food, no studies have yet examined the players’ dietary behavior. Therefore, the aim of this cross-sectional study is to investigate the dietary behavior and additional health-related data of video game players and esports players in Germany.MethodsBetween July and October 2020, 817 participants (87.1% male; 24.2 ± 6.9 years), divided into video game players and esports players, were surveyed via an online questionnaire about their dietary, health, and gaming behaviors. Descriptive statistics were performed on all questions. To investigate statistically significant differences between video game players and esports players, the Mann–Whitney-U-Test and Kruskall-Wallis-Test were used. Partial Spearman correlations were used to examine possible associations between dietary behavior, health status, well-being, and video game playing time.ResultsWater was the primary source of fluid intake for the players (10.9 ± 7.0 l/week). The average weekly consumption of energy drinks was 0.4 ± 0.9 L. Energy drinks (rho = 0.14; p < 0.01) as well as soft drinks (rho = 0.14; p < 0.01) are positively correlated with the video game playing time. Participants ate 7.5 ± 10.4 servings of fast food per month, which has a positive association with video game playing time (rho = 0.13; p < 0.01). In contrast, vegetables (1.7 ± 1.6 servings/day) and fruits (0.9 ± 1.0 servings/day) are eaten almost daily.ConclusionIn this survey, the dietary behavior of video game players and esports players is similar to that of the German general population. Nevertheless, there is a need for improvement. Especially energy drinks, which are already documented to have adverse health effects, should be limited. In addition, the consumption of fast food and meat should also be reduced, and healthier foods such as fruits and vegetables should be increased instead. Early education and support regarding the associated risks with unhealthy foods is important within the target group.

Video Game Internal Turfs and Turfs of Play

This dissertation explores the potential of a virtual reality serious game to help people understand the complexity of a nature-based attraction, and leverage this to cultivate a connectedness to the ecosystem, working towards increasing pro-environmental behaviour. Specifically, this research examines what design considerations are necessary in working towards these goals. To this end, the opportunities in the tourism space for serious games and virtual reality were investigated through a site visit and subsequent pilot application. The opportunities were used to create a set of objectives for a virtual reality serious game artefact. Through several iterations the artefact was developed and modified, and was used to analyse the design considerations relevant to building a videogame around a nature-based tourism attraction. Further to this, design considerations around influencing a player’s connectedness to the attraction were investigated. Iterations One and Two were developed as part of Associate Professor Alexandra Coghlan’s project on VR games and reef conservation through tourism. The final iteration formed part of this dissertation. Utilising a Design Science methodology, the artefact was developed through a series of iterative activities. The Design, Play, Experience (DPE) Framework, a serious game specific extension of the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) Framework, is used to guide the development and evaluation process. While design considerations for creating serious games exists in literature, theory has neglected those specific to nature-based attractions and those around creating a connection between real-world attractions and players. Through the iterative process, a virtual reality serious game is created around the Great Barrier Reef, the chosen nature-based tourism attraction context for the work. Involvement in the project during the Pilot, Iteration One and Iteration Two was as a paid employee for Associate Professor Alexandra Coghlan. Through the first two iterations of design science, the work identifies a series of design considerations for creating virtual reality serious games about nature-based tourism attractions for visitors. From a gameplay perspective, designers can look to engage players with non-typical elements of the attraction, while using both completely player-controlled and completely simulated events and actions from the attraction to show the attraction’s complexity. Towards teaching visitors about the attraction, designers shouldn’t focus on accuracy but interpretation when representing the environment and allow the player to conduct detrimental activities so they can see the consequences of those actions. Designers can utilize virtual reality to showcase unique perspectives, both from a literal vantage point in the attraction, and to help embody the player as the attraction. Finally, designers can create a visual language that separates the videogame components and the simulated real-world components to ensure visitors know how to interpret various elements. Through the final iteration of design science, the work identifies several more design considerations pertaining specifically to creating a sense of connectedness between the visitor and the tourism attraction. Designers should highlight knowledge about the attraction that pertains to its struggles or threats not necessarily to for visitors to remember, but to create emotional moments. Designers should find ways to evoke different emotions from a typical visit to the attraction or find ways to evoke similar emotions towards different elements of the attraction. Designers can consider the emotional journey the visitor goes on while playing the videogame and make clear connections to the real-world attraction through various stages of their journey. Designers can highlight actions that mimic pro-environmental behaviour in the videogame to help visitors continue those actions in the real-world. The findings seek to better enable videogame creators and designers to create systems around complex ecosystems, towards encouraging pro-environmental behaviour in players. The significance of this dissertation is that it gives videogame designers new lenses to look at their designs through, to better capture the complexity of an ecosystem into a simplified, interactive and educational videogame, while ensuring their videogame brings people closer emotionally to the attraction.

Doom Guy Comes of Age: Mediating Masculinities in Power Fantasy Video Games

Since the early 2000s, the video game industry has seen extraordinary booms in product development and market growth, with the total number of video game players globally reaching 2.69 billion by the end of 2020. Despite the rapid growth of the industry, there is little recent data investigating the time adult video game players spend sedentary playing video games and the time they spent engaged in physical activity. The purpose of this quantitative, cross-sectional, non-experimental survey study is to describe the frequency and duration of video game play and physical activity in adult video game players. Participants completed an online survey, evaluating their demographic and health history information, video game play, and physical activity behaviors. The study used data from a total of 221 participants (Males = 153, Females = 68). The mean age of the participants was 27.29 (SD 7.27) years. Of the 221 participants, 145 identified as casual players, 50 amateurs, 24 semi-professionals, and 2 professionals. The participants spent over five days per week and an average of 26.56 h per week playing video games. Personal computers were reported to have the longest duration of play of the four platforms investigated (17.59 h per week). The total amount of time participants spent engaged in cumulative moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) was an average of 15.43 (SD 16.79) hours per week. The majority of this time was spent engaged in occupational physical activity (5.11 h per week). Participants spent 2.39 h per week engaged in leisure time MVPA. Our results indicate an increase in VG play compared to 2018, suggesting United States adult video game players may be more at risk for detrimental effects to their physical health. This could be attributed to the habits formed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the influences from video genre game play mechanics, and the social aspects of playing video games with friends. Future research should focus on developing research methodologies that will objectively measure adult video game player frequencies and durations in video game play alongside extensive observation of different video gameplay mechanic genres and their relationships with physical activity.

Monitoring emotions and cooperative behavior

Take a digital game world, throw it in a blender, add some information and research skills, sift out the word educational and maybe, just maybe, we have a new and effective way to teach our students bibliographic instruction. As the video game industry momentously grows into one of the most dominant forms of digital entertainment, moving from geeky adolescence into a mature entertainment juggernaut reaching audiences young and old, the academic community begins to pay heed. In reality, the recent academic focus on "game studies" is actually a return to an educational examination of video games that began in the 1980s when personal computers and their pre-packaged games began to spread. This re-examination of educational gaming has been spawned by video game ubiquity as well as the commercial success of the gaming industry. There is also significant evidence suggesting that enhanced problem-solving skills and knowledge have become unpredicted byproducts from well-developed stories in games. Subsequently, there are innovative game studies courses and programs popping up all over university curricula and campuses. Programs from communication studies and media studies to English and computer science are all incorporating elements of game studies into their programs. Some new programs are being formed, shyly avoiding the video game label, while others, such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison's groundbreaking Games, Learning & Society Program, boldly proclaim their focus on games. If game studies is becoming a widespread area of research, should information science also be looking at ways of incorporating this area into its field, and if so, how can this integration be appropriately accomplished? In a 2003 poll, 69% of teenagers reported that they spend time playing video games each week and 25% of those polled reported playing at least 11 or more hours per week (Gallup Poll, 2003). Educators and librarians need to be aware of these kinds of statistics if we want to know our users. In truth, librarians and information scientists are already paying attention to the video game phenomenon, either by conscious strategic planning and programming or by fulfilling user requests for information on the fly at the reference desk. Video game sales continue to grow, and as gaming becomes a permanent pastime for teenagers, public libraries in particular are realizing the need to re-examine the scope of their collections and services by looking at the gaming medium from a fresh perspective. New approaches include developing collections of video games, developing and providing special gaining programs by hosting gaming tournaments (otherwise known as LAN parties for the gaming community) and offering gaming advisory services similar to the traditional readers' advisory services provided for the hard core reader seeking recommendations from well-read librarians. (See the papers by Gallaway, Gullett, Neiburger in "For Further Reading.") Of course there are legitimate concerns surrounding the decision to support or not support video games as a new medium for libraries, including the expense of supporting various gaming platforms. However, many of the arguments against moving into the video game realm seem a little déjà vu, mirroring the arguments against the collection of film and other non-book media in libraries. Librarians who fought to collect films and music are aware that their original arguments supporting these new collections, which insisted that alternative mediums would draw people into the library to expose them to the book collection, have not proved at all accurate. And perhaps that is a good thing. New types of collections invite new types of users, and the library becomes a more multifaceted place. Music lovers are not necessarily readers, nor should it be our mandate to insist that they should be. Of course, video game appreciation has not yet reached the same acceptance level as music appreciation. Nonetheless, with new technologies, the way people use libraries is changing, and the collections and services offered by libraries are consequently changing and evolving to stay relevant and to meet the needs of the public. Along with staying abreast of the latest and greatest video games, it is important for information specialists to be aware of the technologies at work in the video game industry. For library collection purposes, adding video games is not quite as straight forward as purchasing music or film on DVD. There are several platforms or gaming consoles to consider when purchasing games, so deciding which one to support could be a difficult and costly decision. Planning and strategy will be key for the library to be successful in these collection endeavors. Along with the public interest in supporting video games and game playing in libraries, librarians and information scientists are also analyzing video games from the learning theory perspective, particularly in the academic library community where bibliographic instruction plays an important role within curriculum and lifelong learning. The flow of information in the digital age is changing the way publishing takes place, which has an impact on research techniques as new mediums and tools are learned and assimilated into the scholarly research process. As well, as people begin to take on "real" virtual identities online, virtual societal rules are being formed as the rules for the physical world are not always appropriate or sufficient. One area that has recently been identified as something particular to the online world — and specific to video games — involves the development of virtual economies. Non-existent fictional items used in game-play are being bought and sold on eBay (Steinkuehler, 2005). Incredibly, virtual game currencies are at work in our real world. This economic anomaly alone seems to indicate the importance of paying attention to the influence of video games in our society. The power of video games to teach cannot be denied. Scholars in the field of game studies are well aware of the peripheral and accidental learning that goes on behind the scenes as a child, teenager or adult engages in an interactive video game. Harnessing the power and creating the recipe for success are more difficult. Remember the failure of the recent past when educators espoused the glories of edutainment, only to watch as that industry failed to leave the ground. Given that the idea to use games to teach is not a new concept, why should we go down this road again? One reason has to do with the generation of younger people and their use of technology (Prensky, 2001). They are born and bred using games. They are being trained to be visual learners with a preference for active learning and intolerance for purely passive learning in traditional lecture-style teaching. The potential for building a video game to incorporate knowledge and information is appealing to educators. Librarians with an aptitude for technology and an interest in promoting active learning in training modules will find the idea of incorporating library instruction in a video game just as attractive. It's one way to get beyond the boredom that students often associate with library instruction. In the past, educational video games have struggled to prove their effectiveness. There are many reasons for the edutainment bust that occurred shortly after the first wave of excitement about using video games to teach. Companies simply could not sustain themselves and compete with huge commercial gaming companies. As the intelligence and complexity of video games grows, there is again a fierce interest and desire to analyze the learning that results from game play. This interest and the success in the commercial gaming market encourage the educational community to look again at ways to incorporate technology in teaching in order to reach learners in innovative ways. Avoiding past mistakes will be the only way to succeed if we continue to strive to apply gaming in our teaching. One way is to take the focus off learning. We can model our educational games after commercial games. Unexpected learning seems to happen in successful commercial games whose prime goal is to entertain. Also, current developers of gaming products and tools need to be aware of the reasons behind the past failure of edutainment. If developers take the focus off learning objectives and drop the educational adjective in the description of our games, we can simply adopt the Marshall McLuhan adage and trust that the medium is the message. This concept will undoubtedly raise concerns among educators who know well that good teaching begins with clear learning objectives. Also, administrators often demand method to the madness in innovative teaching, especially when a lot of money is being devoted to new and potentially risky endeavors. These concerns are understandable, but we can't simply dismiss the powerful learning that goes on as students interact with complex games full of rich stories, complicated instructions and interfaces. And that is not considering the social skills that are developed through the communication that goes on outside of the game environment in the fan communities. We need to try new approaches if we want to be successful in applying games in education. If we build games that do not focus so much on objectives, the players will be more motivated to play — especially if the objectives of the game do not center on learning particular skills or knowledge, but rather on engaging the player in complete immersion in the game world. Complete immersion will be the best measure for success of an educational game — or any game, for that matter. Librarians stand apart from other educators, as bibliographic instruction in many academic institutions is already located on the periphery of the curriculum. Librarians in the business of bibliographic instruction have the freedom and experience of trying new things because reaching our audiences and getting buy-in from the administrators and learners has always been a struggle. The ideal situation would be if we can incorporate information literacy and research skills into a game that teaches information literacy. Many librarians are aware of and support the argument that bibliographic instruction is most successful at "point of need." Merging the idea of game-based learning and library instruction flies in the face of the "point of need" theory, but it need not compete with it; instead, the two teaching approaches should compliment each other. Another way to avoid failure in development of games with an eye at educating players in particular concepts is to involve the players in the design and development of the games and to constantly test players throughout every stage of development, getting feedback from users on everything from storyboarding to graphical interfaces. Usability testing is important in any tool — especially one involving interface design, and for the educational video game such testing is also important. Of course, whether a game is "playable" may not result in its ultimate success. Commercial developers and game players will tell you that a good game is one where you lose complete track of time while playing. Wasted efforts will be the greatest fear of educators and librarians involved in game development. In all likelihood, the pedagogy in the game itself will not be a flaw in a failed game — it will be the inability to find that intrinsic fun factor, that magical ingredient that motivates people to play. A user needs to find the game fun or addicting in order for it to be successful. Accomplishing a successful game is going to prove to be the most difficult task of the educational game developer. The fact that game studies programs are becoming very popular will help our endeavor as we will have well trained students — undoubtedly dedicated gamers — who can help us succeed. In fact, the next wave of commercial video game development is moving into player design — where game players actually build the games they want to play (Borland, 2006). This can only assist us in usability testing as gamers become very articulate about why they find certain games fun. Another benefit of the video game as a learning tool is that the player can go at his or her own pace. Games can be built to adapt to the player's skill level to make it truly interactive. With games, players get immediate feedback. As gaming becomes more popular, players begin to progress into the building mode. We can eventually tap into our students' skills and get their buy-in to our learning games by seeking their help in building the games. Involving players in the development is important, but the developers should also have an interest in games and game-based learning. Developers need to be passionate about teaching and reaching students at a different level — one that is not necessarily measurable in traditional ways. Finding ways to measure game design effectiveness will be the next difficult task for educators and game developers. Understanding common learning patterns will be important. For instance, people do not begin a new game by first reading the manual from cover to cover. Most players prefer to learn the basic moves in the game and then begin the exploration on their own. The learning is completely interactive and immersive. The unknown and the discovery factor in learning and playing a game are a big part of the appeal. Being thrown into a new environment and learning to survive is half the fun. Imagine if our students viewed learning how to use the library in the same light as they do learning how to navigate around a new world in a video game. They need not fear it — the discovery should be fun. If we can borrow techniques from video games, libraries might be able to push past their intimidating reputations. Another reason the video game is potentially an excellent framework to teach information literacy skills, has to do with the fact that many game players often partake in secondary research to assist them in their game play. Secondary material supporting game play is vast — many current scholars in game studies are taking a close look at the skills players develop in seeking out information and at ethnographic analysis of the communities formed around particular games. This secondary literature goes beyond simple strategies and game cheats. Much fan-written fiction and literature is completely extraneous to what was conceived by the original game designers (Steinkuehler, 2005). Another interesting phenomenon involves websites devoted to classic video games. Nostalgic programmers and players have developed software to support original games of the 70s and 80s. This software enables the now 30-something child who grew up playing games on the original PCs to emulate their experience as a child. Finding game literature could be an excellent search topic for librarians to use in order to interest students when teaching basic research skills. The topic is meaningful and fun because the skills players learn in their independent gaming research are completely transferable to the academic world. The proliferation of game studies programs on campuses creates the potential for librarians and information scientists to tap into groups already developing and evaluating games. Some librarians may have an aptitude and desire to learn new skills, but for many, creating a good teaching tool that is fun and effective will be the prime concern, so making use of resources that are already available will be key. A wonderful aspect of the gaming community is a natural inclination to share knowledge. Also, a new thrust for user-driven games will only encourage the proliferation of free support material and software. There are many open source tools available for game development. Similarly, those librarians interested in using games to teach would benefit by sharing templates and game engines that can be easily adapted for other libraries. We know that our users are gaming. Let's tap into these skills and interests and use games to teach. Let's add interesting gaming-related programs to our public libraries in order to encourage information literacy and help our libraries evolve the way they need to in this next phase of the information age.

The number of video game and eSports players is steadily rising. Since little is known about their health behavior to date, the present study examines the demographics and health behavior of video game and eSports players. In this cross-sectional study, data on demographics, health status, physical activity, nutrition, sleep, and video game usage were assessed via a web-based survey of n = 1066 players (91.9% male; 22.9 ± 5.9 years; body mass index (BMI): 24.6 ± 4.8 kg/m²) in Germany in 2018. The majority of respondents (95%) reported a good to excellent health status. Two thirds (66.9%) engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity for more than 2.5 h/week. The average duration of sitting and sleep time was 7.7 ± 3.6 h/day and 7.1 ± 1.3 h/day, respectively. Mean fruit and vegetable consumption was 2.7 ± 1.8 portions/day. Video games were played for 24.4 ± 15.9 h/week on average. Partial Spearman correlations revealed poor positive associations of video game play time to sedentary behavior (rho = 0.15; p < 0.01) and BMI (rho = 0.11; p < 0.01), as well as a poor negative association to self-reported health status (rho = −0.14; p < 0.01). These results indicate the good subjective health of this target group. Nevertheless, the high amount of video game play time and its poor negative association to health status indicate a need for specific health promotion strategies for this target group.

Adversaries in video games would seldom be created to rely on predefined behaviour trees to respond to various player behaviours and fulfil simple goals in order to deliver an experience designed by the video game developer. While this is adequate for most games, immersion and the intended experience of the video game would be compromised when the adversary is faced with unexpected player behaviour, which would usually end up confusing the adversary’s artificial intelligence (AI). This occurrence is known as a “sequence break”, which is an event that occurs when the behaviour tree is poorly designed and contains known exploits that could either significantly reduce the difficulty of dealing with the adversaries or allow the player to bypass them entirely. Allowing adversaries to adapt to player behaviour as the game progresses using adversarial reinforcement learning would provide a dynamically evolving experience in which the user would be continuously challenged depending on their cleverness, forcing them to play the game as intended without the use of exploits. Inadequate adversarial AI in video games can make a game more boring or frustrating depending on the set difficulty level determined by the game developer. In this study, past and current implementations of AI in video games are explored, including the unique innovations which can be found throughout the video game industry regarding video game AI adversaries.Keywords: artificial intelligence, adversarial reinforcement learning, video games, behaviour tree

Basketball is a very competitive sport, in which the behavior of basketball players is the key factor to win. If we can fully predict the behavior of basketball players, then we can benefit more easily (successful defense or successful score). In this case, many basketball teams have set up a professional analysis team. The main work of these teams is to make statistics on the behavior of basketball players according to the basketball game video. According to the statistical results, we can predict the behavior of basketball players. However, simple statistics can not cover the complexity of basketball players’ behavior on the court, so although the statistical results have predictive utility, there are defects in the utility level. At this time, we need to use more advanced behavior prediction methods to predict basketball players’ behavior according to the basketball game video, this paper will take the improved RBF network player behavior prediction method as the research object, discuss the basic concept of RBF method, and then put forward the application scheme of the improved RBF network player behavior prediction method. Finally, taking the basketball game video as an example, the behavior of the players in the game is predicted, and then compared with the results, the effectiveness of this method is verified by the comparison results.

Video Games and the Future of Learning

The results of an experiment with 91 Japanese participants confirmed the hypothesis that players of a Prisoner's Dilemma game would cooperate more with an in-group member than with an out-group member in the simultaneous game but not in the sequential game. The game used in the experiment was constructed such that each player gave his or her partner a portion of his or her own endowment of 300 yen. The group membership was created on the basis of participant's preferences for Klee's or Kandinski's paintings; each participant played the game once with an in-group member and once with an out-group member. In the simultaneous game, the two players decided simultaneously how much to give to the partner without knowing what the partner would do. In the sequential game, the first player made the decision; then the second player followed with full information on the first player's behavior. All the participants in the sequential game in fact took the role of the first player. The differential effect of the partner's group membership had been predicted on the basis of Yamagishi and his colleagues' argument that expectations of generalized reciprocity from in-group members is the source of in-group favoritism in a minimal group. A group is clearly distinguished from a mere aggregate of people. People who sit in the waiting area of an airport, for example, hardly constitute a group, nor do all people who wear eyeglasses. They share certain characteristics such as sitting in the same place or wearing eyeglasses, but this does not make them a group. The defining feature

Shooter video games for personality prediction using five factor model traits and machine learning

Waiting is an everyday activity that is often present in video games. Waiting situations in games can take place during, for instance, loading screens, turn-based action, and cutscenes. Experiences of waiting can encompass a variety of emotions in players, such as anticipation, frustration, and boredom. Thus, understanding how waiting relates to players’ overall experience can be beneficial when designing or analysing games. However, academic discussion on waiting in games is quite scattered, and there is no comprehensive overview available on the subject. This paper contributes a semi-systematic literature review on the topic, augmented with a follow-up survey study. Based on the survey findings, we outline five perspectives from which waiting experiences can be analysed. These are 1) causes of waiting, 2) player goals for waiting, 3) player behaviour when waiting, 4) felt experience of waiting, and 5) player reasoning and decision-making. Our findings give an overview of sources of waiting in games and highlight that, in addition to affecting players' emotions, waiting is an aspect of gameplay that has an effect on players' decisions and behaviour.

Reviewed by: Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds Sheila C. Murphy Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds by Jesper Juul. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press 2005. $36.00 hardcover. 225 pages In 2002, eager to expand my teaching on digital media to a new area, I embarked upon creating an undergraduate course on the culture and form of video games. At the time, I found myself groping for critical, humanistic, academic texts that took video games seriously. There were only a few to be found—most notably Mark J. P. Wolf ’s The Medium of the Video Game and Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell’s anthology From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Instead of a wide range of academic work on gaming, I found a plethora of journalistic accounts and popular texts on video game play and history—coffee-table books that could accompany the retro Atari t-shirts my students bought at Urban Outfitters. I consequently looked to other places for new media writing on interactivity, comparative accounts that looked at games and movies, and work from literary and critical theory on narrative and play. I faced my first class—forty-two eager young men and three brave young women, all of whom were deeply passionate about video and computer games—and together we tried to have some rigorous fun understanding how video games are an interactive medium, aesthetic form, and cultural force. Click for larger view View full resolution Today my version of that course bears only a passing resemblance to its first incarnation, thanks in large part to the rapid emergence [End Page 142] and development of video game studies as a viable academic field. One can now study video game design and theory at a handful of top universities, and academics interested in teaching or researching video games can join in the collegial conviviality of video game scholars at conferences dedicated to the subject, engage online through communities like those found at gamelogy.org and digra.org (the Digital Games Research Association), or access peer-reviewed scholarship on video and computer games via the online journal Game Studies ( www.gamestudies.org ). Universities even have begun to develop video game archives so students can access hard-to-find titles and key works from the early history of video games. Likewise, the students of video games have changed a bit too—today I find my students are as likely to be aspiring screen-writers who want to write for games as they are to be fanboys whose first language is Nintendo. This nascent field (or sub-field) of video game studies has emerged only recently out of media studies, philosophy, critical theory, and new media design. Most of the credit for the rise of the field of video game studies goes to scholars like Jesper Juul, as well as Ian Bogost, Alexander Galloway, and Steven E. Jones. One thing that sets Juul’s Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds apart from much of the other work on video games, however, is his resolute commitment to discussing the merits and failures of video games as symbolic systems and experiences on their own terms and according to their own logics, rather than relying too much upon comparisons to other media. Juul is an expert at this strategy—he isolates the essential “gameness” of games (how games are structured by rules)—and places that quality in conversation with what games represent and how gamers interact with both those rules and representations. While such an approach might seem too essentializing to some, it is exactly what the new field of video game studies needs at this moment, and it picks up on conversations about such crucial qualities as game time, space, and narrative initiated in The Medium of the Video Game.1 In order to teach and talk about video games, we must first have a set of common terms and an understanding of what it is that makes video games a unique medium. Consider the early Atari game Pong (1973), which Juul discusses in great detail. The rules of Pong are incredibly simple and stated at...