Egenfeldt-Nielsen
Dept. of Digital Aesthetics & Communication
IT-University of Copenhagen
sen@it-c.dk
Paper:
Exploration in computer games
- a new starting point
Biography
PhD student IT-university of Copenhagen, master degree in psychology, founder of Game-research, reviewer Game studies, and student officer Digra. Authored two Danish books on computer games and education, written several articles in the field, and regularly give talks on the subject.
Abstract
Space, vast lands and dungeons... It is not by chance that Space War and Adventure are among the best known of the first computer games. Both clearly appeals to the player's curiosity, and desire to explore unknown territory.
When exploration ceases, the game comes to a stop...
For some time it has been clear to me that the importance of exploration have remained largely unexplored by game research. Sometimes it is used as a subset of a larger theory or analysis, however I believe there are strong reasons for giving it more attention.
The case I want to make in this paper is that exploration is an essential part of computer games. I will concentrate my argumentation around exploration as a basic drive for playing computer games. To achieve this I will look at exploration in computer games from two different perspectives: A player perspective and a system perspective. The argument is that each perspective is a different optic for understanding the exploration of the game. The system perspective denotes the rules necessary to play a game, and the player's exploration of these. The player perspective explains the phenomenological game experience, where meaning is central to the exploration.
In a condensed form my argument will be as follows: All computer games start with the player constructing a state of tension (a conflict), which is relinquished through the ongoing exploration of the game universe. A computer game is characterized by an ability to support different optics of explorative activities. The primary goal of this article is the description of the two optics rules and meaning.
To establish these concepts I will draw on the theorist Kelly, Suits, Frasca, Juul, Jenkins, and Csikszentmihalyi, Aarseth, Tosca.
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