Pac-Man
Game
Documents about Pac-Man
Article
A Short and Simple Definition of What a Videogame Is
This paper, presented at the DiGRA 2005 conference, proposes a short and simple definition of the videogame: a game played through an audiovisual apparatus that can be based on a story.
- The paper proposes a short, reusable academic definition of the videogame as a game played through an audiovisual apparatus that can be based on a story, intended as a foundation for future videogame design methods.
- The author argues that serious videogame studies only began in recent years, even though the videogame industry was already more than thirty years old at the time of writing (2005).
- The definition is grounded in established game theory, drawing on Caillois, Huizinga, Zimmerman, Crawford, Kramer, and Juul's account of automation and rule enforcement.
DiGRAJan 2005
Whitepaper9 pages
Expressive AI: Games and Artificial Intelligence
Michael Mateas's paper argues that as graphical gains yield diminishing returns, game development is shifting its attention toward artificial intelligence, and that AI-driven art and entertainment forms a new interdisciplinary agenda linking games studies, design practice, and technical research, which he names "expressive AI."
- Mateas argues that as graphical gains yield diminishing returns, game development is shifting attention toward artificial intelligence, and proposes "expressive AI" as an interdisciplinary agenda linking games studies, design practice, and technical research.
- Game AI is defined as the production of behavior that players read as intentional, distinguishing it from game physics: Asteroids' asteroids and water simulations generate behavior without inviting psychological interpretation, whereas enemies like Pac-Man's ghosts invite readings of goals, desires, and moods.
- The paper positions game AI as a "white box" vocabulary for analyzing and designing games, complementing the "black box" vocabularies of design patterns and humanistic game studies that deliberately ignore implementation.
DiGRAJan 2003
Whitepaper15 pages
Gameplay Rhetoric: A Study of the Construction of Satirical and Associational Meaning in Short Computer Games for the WWW
This study examines how short web-based computer games construct rhetorical meaning that extends beyond their interactive mechanics, focusing on satire and allegory.
- The study argues that short web-based games communicate satirical and allegorical meaning through rhetorical devices rather than through story or simulation, so meaning persists even when gameplay is rudimentary.
- Satirical effect in these games is produced mainly by incongruity, pretense via parody and low burlesque, surprise, superiority, exaggeration, and violence, drawing on Feinberg's taxonomy of satirical technique.
- Allegorical meaning relies on conceptual mappings such as "life is a journey" and on metonymic relations, which the author's pilot game Vanitas Game uses to express mortality.
DiGRAJan 2002
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