Lately I've found that not only are many, many people trying to provide language and understanding to games, through a purely academic approach. This is the sort of stuff that gets lots of well-respected academic papers published and drives the machine of several high-brow mailing lists and message boards, but doesn't necessarily improve games.
This is, of course, the nature of all academia. Anyway, these links got started from reading Ren Reynolds' links page, but I can't claim to have read very deeply into these to really get a feel for what's going on, so blame him. Expect to read the term "probability space" a lot. Apparently this is a phrase that's likely to end up in Newsweek once some editor decides he gives enough of a crap about games to hire someone who doesn't actually play them, but wants to think really deeply on the subject.
antifactory.org: Most recent entry is "Why Games Aren't Interactive," which is sort of a contrapositive (but not really) to Raph Koster's "A Theory of Fun" speech, delivered at the Austin Game Conference. (though not nearly as involved, or illustrated.)
GameMatters: Started two weeks ago by 3DRealms CEO Scott Miller, most of the links still point to "dukenukem.typepad.com". This is ostensibly updated when he's not working on Duke Nukem Whenever. Though he does have a lot to say -- I especially like his short four-point essay on game royalties, called "The Royal Tease Game," which he threw up yesterday, and "Max Payne: The Making of a Franchise." Not very academic, but I'm enjoying it so far. That might be the reason right there.
TotalGames.net: Might be discounted as just another tightly-wound games industry review site, but they're trying to be insightful. Consider the "Adult Games, Child's Play" discourse on game maturity. Just remember when the original Grand Theft Auto designer compares his game to Pac-Man, he's not talking about GTA3.
GameDevLeague: The ravings of Treyarch/Activision ... whatever Jamie Fristrom, who also writes for Gamasutra a lot. Recently he argued that Activision's marketing of "True Crime" was a failure.
Posted by j at December 2, 2003 04:22 PM