Games

"This is the universe! And I'm placing stones one by one on that. Like I'm increasing the number of stars one by one... I'm making the universe. It's like I'm a God. I'm going to become a God! On this Go Board."

"All you are is the Go you play."

"Tatta hito-ban to uchihajimeta wa sakujitsu nari."

"Go is an ancient board game that takes simple elements — line and circle, Black and White, stone and wood — combines them with simple rules and generates subtleties that have enthralled players for millennia. Go's appeal resides not only in its oriental elegance, but also in practical and stimulating features in the design of the game. Go's few rules can be demonstrated quickly, and grasped easily. It is enjoyably played over a wide range of skills. Each level of play has its charms, rewards and discoveries. A unique and reliable handicapping system leads to equal contests between players of widely disparate strengths. Go is uniquely flexible and rewards patience and balance over aggression and greed. An early mistake can be made up, used to advantage or reversed as the game proceeds. There is no simple procedure to turn a clear lead into a victory. Go thinking seems to be more lateral than linear, less dependent on logical deduction, and more reliant on a "feel" for the game, a "sense" of form, a gestalt perception of significant patterns. Beyond being merely a game, Go can take on other meanings to enthusiasts: an analogy with life, an intense meditation, a mirror of one's personality, an exercise in abstract reasoning, or, when played well, a beautiful art in which Black and White dance across the board in delicate balance. But most importantly for those who play, Go is challenging and fun."

"The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe."

"I've always loved games. When I was in high school I read a book about Go and realized it's the best game. I was an exchange student in Japan mostly because I wanted to play a lot of Go, and in the year I was there, there wasn't much else to do. There was a chess master that said, "If aliens exist they might play chess, but they certainly play Go." ... There's something beautiful that happens when simple rules lead to a complex system. It also teaches me patience and composure and handling ambiguity. ... I think it's helped a lot with my business, or at least it's shaped my style of management. ... Go is all about handling ambiguity. For example, do I want a region of the board to be well defined or undefined? Beginners stress out too much about leaving territory unclaimed or stones half-captured. But you learn often that's advantageous. I think a big part of running an early stage start-up is not freaking out about things being left undefined."

"Hoy, 9 de septiembre de 1978, tuve en la palma de la mano un pequeño disco de los trescientos sesenta y uno que se requieren para el juego astrológico del go, ese otro ajedrez del Oriente. Es más antiguo que la más antigua escritura y el tablero es un mapa del universo. Sus variaciones negras y blancas agotarán el tiempo. En él pueden perderse los hombres como en el amor y en el día. 9 de septiembre de 1978, yo, que soy ignorante de tantas cosas, sé que ignoro una más, y agradezco a mis númenes esta revelación de un laberinto que nunca será mío."

"It is a game of patience and influence. I think as a strategy game it is the best. Its strategy helps a player that is weaker take out a much stronger opponent, which Atari had to do with a big manufacturer in Chicago in the early coin-op arcade business."

"It feels like the gamers are finally in charge of our games. I like that. I trust that crowd so much just because of our Kickstarter campaign. We never approached our audience this way. Usually we make a game and it’s like we gift it to the players. But this time the players gifted us with the ability to make the game. And like all of my successes, PencilTest and the Kickstarter backers lifted the ceiling off of me. I hope I’ve done everyone right. I really want to honor the investment people have made in this game. It’s important that it succeed and it’s important that this model work for other games and developers too."

"Unlike novels or movies, video games are an interactive medium where the player's actions drive the story forward, so I had actually wanted to allow players to manipulate the evidence themselves earlier on in the series."

"Games can be art, and they can be significant and all the glorified things that we want them to be,” Swift said. “But if you ask a kid if their toys are important, they’ll say yes, and please don’t take them away."

"What’s great about games in particular is that it’s a socially acceptable way for adults to imagine. Take for example a fantasy that has you as a big, burly weapons expert. You run through buildings gunning down bad guys, saving the day and becoming a hero. “If you start telling all your coworkers that you just imagined that, they’d think you were certifiable."

"Playing video games is like playing tennis or running or traveling. It’s an interest. When a couple participates in a hobby together it’s exciting. The more a couple has in common, the more validated they feel by one another."

"Of course another layer of challenge came from the fact that, like most other developers at that time, we were still feeling our way with 3D. Things like camera and character control presented a lot of interesting new challenges and required us to try out a number of approaches before we settled on solutions that seemed to work."

"Video games are a prevalent and increasingly expressive medium within modern society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the field has attracted exceptional artistic talent. An amalgam of traditional art forms—painting, writing, sculpture, music, storytelling, cinematography—video games offer artists a previously unprecedented method of communicating with and engaging audiences."

"Show me your children’s games, and I will show you the next hundred years."

"This industry has some profound issues in the way it treats women."

"Many studies show the link between playing ultra-violent video games and violent behavior. We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions."

"Past video game play in excess of 3 h/wk correlated with 37% fewer errors (P<.02) and 27% faster completion (P<.03). Overall Top Gun score (time and errors) was 33% better (P<.005) for video game players and 42% better (P<.01) if they played more than 3 h/wk. Current video game players made 32% fewer errors (P=.04), performed 24% faster (P<.04), and scored 26% better overall (time and errors) (P<.005) than their nonplaying colleagues. When comparing demonstrated video gaming skills, those in the top tertile made 47% fewer errors, performed 39% faster, and scored 41% better (P<.001 for all) on the overall Top Gun score. Regression analysis also indicated that video game skill and past video game experience are significant predictors of demonstrated laparoscopic skills."

"GamesBeat: Do you like an open world better than a more story-based game? What do you think of those different directions?"

"GamesBeat: What do you think of the first-person shooter genre today?"

"This underrepresentation of women even pervades television commercials, where women not only appear less, but are also more likely to be portrayed as secondary characters supporting a male character when they are present (Ganahl, Prinsen, & Netzley, 2003). The same trend holds true for video games, where female characters are less likely to be heroes or main characters and, when they are included, they tend to dress in a manner consistent with stereotypes (Dietz, 1998). Female (vs. male) video game characters are also more likely to be sexualized and scantily dressed, while male characters tend to be hypermasculine and violent (Dill & Thill, 2007). And, consistent with research on other media effects, sexist content does affect consumers in a content-consistent manner. For example, media consumption in general (Swami et al., 2010) and frequency of playing sexist video games specifically are both associated with greater benevolent sexism (Stermer & Burkley, 2015). In another study, greater video game playing over one's lifetime was found to correlate with hostile sexism (Fox & Potocki, 2016). Together, the research shows that the way gender roles are portrayed in media can influence consumers’ own attitudes."

"I used to go to game events and feel like I was going home ... Now it's just like... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?"

"... if playing ultraviolent video games is one of your great pleasures in life, then virtual mayhem can become even more enjoyable in the wake of a biohappiness revolution – if you so desire. That said, as an embarrassed player of first-person shooters myself, I hope posthumans will do something more edifying."

"We said we’d never make a video game unless we really did it hands-on. We’re both gamers, we both grew up as gamers and we both respect gaming as an art form, just like musical theatre so to us it wasn’t just ‘oh go and do something like that’. Once we’d finished Book of Mormon, South Park: The Stick of Truth really was our other big project, and right now it’s this."

"We know that women gamers face harassment and stalking and threats of violence from other players. When they speak out about their experiences, they're attacked on Twitter and other social media outlets, even threatened in their homes. And what's brought these issues to light is that there are a lot of women out there, especially young women, who are speaking out bravely about their experiences, even when they know they'll be attacked for it."

"It's tough to "buy American" when a video game sold by a U.S. company has been developed by Japanese software engineers and packaged in Mexico."

"That may be possible, but if there is no script, I will be out of a job! It will not be in the very far future that one character in a story will have full artificial intelligence, but I think it is pretty difficult to make all the characters with AI. That's in the very far future..."

"There seems to be a lot of retro-game nostalgia in recent years. Perhaps it’s because so many gamers have reached that age where they want to look back, or maybe it’s because of how easy it is to tweet out ‘Hey, remember this!?'"

"Video games are meant for you to be immersed in an exciting and creative alternative reality and have fun with friends. Adding present-day political bullshit kills the vibe."

"We always think of the road not taken, of something in the past. 'Wow, what would have happened if I married so and so, or took that job in San Diego…' But you rarely think that each and every second that goes by is one of those moments. Like this second that just happened. And that one. And the one that's going to happen in a second." Potentially, each of these seconds could alter a game in a profound way. Just as they can in life. The easiest thing for us to imagine is that our lives, and the story we are playing, are pre-designed, solid. But neither gaming nor life has to be like that. In both, we can alter and decide in a way that is surprising, ultimately freeing."

"Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children."

"The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players , whereas the other camp repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects. At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay."

"Back in the day, Sega said we couldn't show our real names, thus everyone went under nicknames in the game credits."

"As I'm a woman myself, when I make games, I try not to just have them be male fantasy figures, as people needing to be rescued. I like to make female characters people of both genders can relate to. But we are seeing more strong-willed women in games geared towards female audiences."

"I think girls tend to like RPGs, like Final Fantasy. Girls who play games like that seem to get more of a desire to work in this field. I usually don't think to make games strictly for a female audience, myself, but I think my RPGs attract a larger female audience. Violent, war-themed titles seem to attract an overwhelmingly male audience. I think if companies want to get more girls to play their games, they should keep this in mind."

"We producers don't think that FFVIII is much harder than FFVII! However with FFVIII, we have tried to bring in a mode of play which requires more active thinking from the players. Yes, you can play it all the way through without thinking much about strategy or combination of energies but you have to move very, very slowly. However, if you become more involved with the game and think more 'actively', it's much more fun. The harder you think, the better you play. It's wrong to say simply 'easier' or 'harder'..."

"I played the Mortal Kombat arcade game in their office for half an hour. I turned to [former Midway Games chief] Neil D. Nicastro and I said, “This is Star Wars meets Enter the Dragon. This is not just an arcade game. This is a whole phenomenon.” I said, “If you give me the rights to this, I promise you I will produce this, not just in movies, but in every medium in the world.” He looked at me and said, “You’re full of crap! It’s just an arcade game!” That began a three-month process of me trying to convince them that it was more than just an arcade game. They didn’t believe it… I finally just wore them down and they optioned the rights to me for an insanely short amount of time, which now I would never do, but it was my first deal at my company."

"Several theoretical perspectives explain how exposure to computer games, especially violent games, can lead to imitative behavior. It is clear why these theories of TV violence might easily be applied in a gaming environment. Perhaps the most comprehensive theory to date is the general aggression model (GAM), which comprehensively integrates central elements from several earlier aggression theories. Included in the model are elements of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1994), which focuses on the audience member's attention to the modeled behavior, retention of that behavior, ability to imitate, and motivation to imitate the behavior. Furthermore, social cognitive theory concentrates on the model, noting that admired and rewarded models are more likely to be imitated. As such, the theory focuses on both the contextual cues (e.g., whether violence is rewarded) and the cognitive structures that lead to imitation. Script theory (Huesmann, 1986) is also integrated into the general aggression model. Script theory focuses on learned and activated scripts, arguing that we might learn to respond to situations in particular ways based on situations that have been repeatedly modeled for us. Therefore, in a new situation (e.g., a conflict), we might draw on scripts observed in the media, such as those containing violence. Also included in the general aggression model is cognitive-neoassociative priming theory (Berkowitz, 1993; Berkowitz & Heimer, 1989), which draws largely on network models of memory. Given that memory is organized through a network, ideas can prime or active related thoughts. Berkowitz argued that exposure to media violence, especially over long periods of time, could serve to create a rich, intricate memory network of hostility and violence for heavy viewers. The result, according to priming theory, is that exposure to media violence could then readily activate hostility and aggressive thoughts. In addition to cognitive-neoassociative priming theory, Green's affective aggression model (1990 explains that increased in aggression after exposure to media violence could result in hostility and negative affect. Furthermore, Zillmann's (1983) excitation transfer model focuses on the mechanism of physiological arousal as the cause of increases in aggression after exposure to violence."

"The general aggression model also explains that exposure to videogame violence can increase aggressive behavior both in the short and long term by noting that aggression is largely based on existing knowledge structures or existing mental scripts that are created by the process of social learning (Anderson et al., 2004). That is, individuals can learn new skills and information by watching the behaviors of others, especially if those behaviors are rewarded, performed by attractive actors, or do not cause pain or suffering fort the victim of aggression (i.e., sanitized violence). In the short term, both personological and situational input variables can lead to aggressive behavior. Personological variables include personality variables such as aggressive disposition, current states, beliefs, attitudes, and so on. Situational variables are found in the environment surrounding the person and include factors such as aggressive cues (e.g., playing a violent videogame), being provoked, or feeling pain. Both of these inputs can impact the present internal state of the person. For example, aggression may become more likely if an individual has an aggressive disposition and also plays an aggressive videogame. This may lead to feelings of hostility. Then, given the opportunity to retaliate against someone who has insulted the person, for example, that individual may behave more aggressively than someone without those personological or situational factors in place."

"Cantor (1994) has used Piagetian developmental theory in order to explain and predict what images frighten children at different stages of cognitive developmental progress. Wilson and Weiss (1991) have also used Piagetian developmental theory in order to understand children's responses to news media. Kremar and colleagues (Kremar & Cooke, 2001; Kremar & Valkenburg, 1999) have utilized Kohlberg's theories of moral development in order to understand how children of different ages respond to depictions of interpersonal violence in the media. Because Kohlberg argues that judgments about right and wrong are based on a different decision matrix for children of different ages, it makes sense that how children interpret violence, a potentially immoral act, may differ for younger versus older children. For example, children younger than age 5 tend to use the guidance of an authority figure in order to determine between right and wrong or may simply consider the outcome of an action in making such a judgement. Older children, in contrast, may consider the motive of the actor in order to decide whether an act was wrong (Kohlberg, 1984). In summary, child development, whether studied in the context of cognitive development, moral development, or emotional or social development, has provided a solid framework-one that focused on the child more than on the medium-to understand the responses of a group that is qualitatively different from its adult counterparts."

"The research on computer and videogames and children has received considerable research attention in recent years. The earliest work examined the simple relationship between computer game play and aggression, whereas more recent research has utilized an experimental approach in order to test issues of causality between the two. For example, early research found a correlation between overall videogame exposure and real-world aggressive behavior in children from 4th to 12th grade (Dominick, 1984; Fling et al., 1992; Lin & Lepper, 1987). Early experimental work (Cooper & Mackie, 1986; Irwin & Gross, 1995; Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gorden, & Rodasta, 1988; Silvern & Williamson, 1987) also found some support for the notion that violent videogame content can increase aggression; however, technological advances in the field of electronic gaming have rendered much of the very early research in this area all but obsolete. What does more recent research tell us? Violent videogames can influence aggressive cognitions (Anderson et al., 2004; Anderson & Dill, 2000; Kirsh, 1998; Tamborini et al., 2001), as well as aggressive affect, leading to feelings of hostility (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Tamborini et al., 2001), and have been found in survey research to be associated with aggressive delinquent behavior, even after controlling for aggressive behavior (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Anderson & Murphy, 2003; Anderson et al., 2004)."

"In their narrative review of the empirical literature, Dill and Dill (1998) concluded that short-term exposure to violent videogames increases aggression. Similarly, Bensley and Van Eenwyk (2001) conclude there is evidence that playing violent videogames can increase short-term aggression in young children. Meta-analyses conducted on the research on violent videogames have also supported an effect of game play on aggression. The first such comprehensive study was conducted by Anderson and Bushman (2001). Across all studies included in their meta-analysis, the authors found that exposure to violent videogames was positively associated with increased levels of aggression. Anderson (2004) recently updated with original meta-analysis and concluded that when only those studies with the soundest methodological approaches were used, results showed even stronger effect sizes, suggesting that methodologically weaker studies actually underestimate the true effects of exposure to volent videogames. Another meta-analysis by Sherry (2001) using 25 studies found evidence for a small effect of videogame play on aggression. However, Sherry also found that effect sizes have increased over time, with more current studies producing stronger effects, presumably due to the greater realism of today's games. Game type was also important, as games classified as human violence or fantasy violence were found to be more strongly related to aggression than sports games."

"Computers also appear to have an effect on visual intelligence. For example, playing Marble Madness, a game requiring children to visualize and manipulate objects in their minds, was found to enhance spatial skill (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 1994), although playing a game that requires the visual tracking of an object on a screen also improved this type of spatial skill outside of the computer environment (Greenfield, De Winstanley, & Kilpatrick, 1994); playing the computer game Concentration-a learning game-improved iconic representation skills (Greenfield et al., 1996). Therefore, there is some evidence that computers, even computer game play, can improve visual skills outside of the computer environment. However, for long-term positive effects to occur in the classroom, computers must be integrated into the classroom and not simply placed in it. Similarly, much research is needed on the use of computers in the home in terms of their influence on cognitive and academic growth in children."

"Isn't it scary to think about the impact a game can have on people's lives? That said, I really admire them for the time, energy and money that they spend on their costumes..."

"I think one of the most important attributes a designer can have is…not only the ability, but almost the unconscious constant experience of putting yourself in other people’s heads and watching them as they have an experience. Building an experience through the eyes of someone else is incredibly challenging. I think that’s what makes great designers. A bunch of my meta-points that I’ve drawn out over the last 20 years are about that, how you put yourself in other people’s shoes."

"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games."

"What you have to keep in mind as a collaborator — that’s why we get very uncomfortable when it seems like we’re getting singled out. We as game developers. It seems trite to say so, but it’s a group effort, a team effort. So much of it is being in the right place at the right time with the right people and the right ideas. It seems wrong for any person to be elevated like you’re the author of this thing. You can’t even remember sometimes whose ideas were what, because it’s this big messy wonderful process."

"Once all the bugs have been squashed and the testers are having lots of fun playing the game from beginning to end, the process of submission begins. A strict process of certification must be passed, and when complete, the game is ready for duplication and distribution, on its way to a store near you!"

"Once the technical and artistic vision of the game is planned, people can be brought onboard to start the main production work on the game. Artists build the environments, characters, and objects for the game world, and designers write the dialog and start making things function story-wise. The most difficult part of this stage is that everyone is working with partially complete technology, since the game programmers are also working to create the functionality of the engine and game systems. It's a careful sequencing of work that allows us to complete this stage, similar to trying to film a movie while technicians are still building your lights and cameras. Once the bulk of the work on the game is complete, the bug database starts to take over as the driving force in development. The list of remaining tasks starts to dwindle, and the team works through the enormous task of perfecting the millions of details that will make it a solid game. Quality assurance testers also take center stage, providing valuable feedback about what's fun and what's not, in addition to spotting bugs. Designers work throughout this phase to improve the balancing of the game, making it more fun and exciting with every day."