Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds - Softcover

Juul, Jesper

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262516519 ISBN 13: 9780262516518

Publisher: MIT Press, 2011

Synopsis

Video games as both a departure from and a development of traditional games; an analysis of the interaction between rules and fiction in video games.

A video game is half-real: we play by real rules while imagining a fictional world. We win or lose the game in the real world, but we slay a dragon (for example) only in the world of the game. In this thought-provoking study, Jesper Juul examines the constantly evolving tension between rules and fiction in video games. Discussing games from Pong to The Legend of Zelda, from chess to Grand Theft Auto, he shows how video games are both a departure from and a development of traditional non-electronic games. The book combines perspectives from such fields as literary and film theory, computer science, psychology, economic game theory, and game studies, to outline a theory of what video games are, how they work with the player, how they have developed historically, and why they are fun to play.

Locating video games in a history of games that goes back to Ancient Egypt, Juul argues that there is a basic affinity between games and computers. Just as the printing press and the cinema have promoted and enabled new kinds of storytelling, computers work as enablers of games, letting us play old games in new ways and allowing for new kinds of games that would not have been possible before computers. Juul presents a classic game model, which describes the traditional construction of games and points to possible future developments. He examines how rules provide challenges, learning, and enjoyment for players, and how a game cues the player into imagining its fictional world. Juul's lively style and eclectic deployment of sources will make Half-Real of interest to media, literature, and game scholars as well as to game professionals and gamers.

About this title

About the Author

Jesper Juul is Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design, and Visiting Associate Professor in Comparative Media Studies/Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds and A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players, both published by the MIT Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262516519
• ISBN 13: 9780262516518
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244