Ludology Examination

"Ludology" is the name of a good gaming weblog and a word describing the study of games. Now "games" means everything from Monopoly to Metroid, things that are completely plotless like toys (Tetris) and things that barely allow any user participation at all (Squaresoft's Bouncer). What use is the word "games" then and how could you ever hope to ludologize? Jussi Holopainen from the Nokia Research Center has written Games Without Frontiers to work through these questions. It's a preliminary stab - declaring some parameters and a general need for game study. His bibliography is good looking, as is his project - since the Finnish mobile phone giant has launched a handheld mobile phone/portable gaming device, they've been investing some money in game research. Game research - that sounds delicious.

Comments

[jane]

i'm glad our buddy gonzalo frasca got due props - he's the first citation!

[Stewart]

The article has moved to a new location. Also, the english word game (at least as it is generally understood) is a pretty lousy translation for "ludus". Play is much better. Cf., these Latin-English dictionary entries: game - play.

[hyhy]

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