Pleasure - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 42

thus far, genre, activity profi ling, and aesthetics, in order to show how they comple-
ment each other.
TASKS
In this chapter we used an aesthetic of games to analyze three classic games and
then used Janet Murray's enabling features of games to see how their strengths and
limitations arose.
You might like to have a go yourself now:
1. Choose a different classic game and do the aesthetic analysis yourself. Use
Murray's enabling features to explain any strengths and/or limitations you
have identifi ed. Your objective for this task should simply be to get used to
applying these ideas for yourself.
2. Choose a more recent game that you are familiar with and have enjoyed
playing and again do an aesthetic analysis of it. Your objective for this task
is to try to come up with some justifi cation based on your analysis for your
enjoying the game. You might like to use GIL to view the activity profi le of
your game and see how this helps.
3. On the whole, older, classic games don't have profi les in GIL. Try drawing
up your own for the games we have discussed in this chapter. Select which
activity groups apply to Spacewar, for instance, and decide how important
they are. Use the “Activity Sliders” in GIL to set up your profi le and “ Find
Nearest Games” to see which modern titles have similar activities to those
you have entered.
Many of the sources for further reading have been referenced already as this
chapter has progressed but we will quickly review them and point out their potential
contributions. For an excellent introduction to the aesthetics of interactive media in
general, and interactive storytelling in particular, Janet Murray's topic, Hamlet on
the Holodeck (1997), is an excellent and very readable starting point. Doug Church' s
short but insightful article on FADTs is well worth studying (Church, 1999). “ Place-
holder” is an excellent starting point for considering narrative potential in more
detail (Laurel). For those interested in pursuing co-presence, Sherry Turkle' s topic
should be required reading (Turkle, 1997). To fi nd out more about the history of the
text adventure and how it evolved into interactive fi ction, you should consult Nick
Montfort's topic Twisty Little Passages (2005) .