I had the pleasure of attending a Women in Children's Media (WiCM) event this evening.  Jesper Juul gave a presentation entitled 'Gaming in the 21st Century.'  It was a good basic overview of the gaming world for the audience, many of whom work in the television industry. 

Audience members were asked to put their favorite video game on their nametag.  Jesper pointed out that it was interesting that about half the audience chose a game from the 70s or 80s, like Pong, Ms. Pac-Man, or Tetris.  One of the main points of his presentation was that the casual game genre is making a resurrgence in recent years.  In the 90s, games trended toward becoming complicated, and lost many players in the process.

Now that I think about it, it's also interesting that when I first arrived, the direction was to write your favorite video game character on your nametag.  The direction was soon changed to write your favorite video game, not character.  WiCM is an organization that traditionally focuses on television and print media, and those are very character driven industries.  Video games really aren't.  There are some games and game series that have strong characters that players identify with, but those games are an exception.  To pick a popular example, many people are fans of Mario games, but few people are fans of Mario himself.  Fans of Mario the character do exist, but it's more common to be a fan of the experience of playing a Mario game.  So, one challenge that people who move from a career in children's television to video games may find difficult is producing a meaningful experience, but not necessarily strong characters.  This is significant, because children's television and books have always excelled at making compelling characters.

Here are my notes of Jesper's presentation, such as they are:

Jesper: Author of half-real & A Casual Revolution books

NYU Game Center, currently offering a few classes
will offer a two-year master's in Game Development in 2-3 years time

Why study video games?
Major part of contemporary culture
65% of US households play -> more video game players than non-video game players
crime in society is going down, video game sales are going up.  :)
there’s a lot of money to be made!

First computer game: Spacewar! 1961 MIT
Senet - 3000BC  games older than novels

More fiction in video games than non-digital games.  Board games and card games are abstract.  But what does it do?

Cooking Mama - You can’t do everything you could normally do in a kitchen. Can’t order take out, you can only slice food one way, etc.  Games have rules that aren’t explained by fiction, like Mario coming back to life 3 times, $200 for passing ‘Go’ in Monopoly.  Fiction is not always implemented in rules: Car never runs out of gas

The industry:
Developers, publishers, platform owners, retailers
Roles: Game designer, programmer, artist, producer, QA tester, etc.

Where does the $60 go?  Forbes 12/2006 break down

2005/6 Casual Game explosion, Wii, Guitar Hero/Rock Band, Bejeweled big business, Diner Dash - not about graphics, renewed focus on what’s going on in front of the screen = in the living room
2005 = death of: promoting new games as having better graphics, promoting to young males, games sold only in boxes

GameZebo, 182 users interviewed in summer ‘08, 93% female, 35% several times a day

Casual games fit into a player’s life
often feature positive feedback more than negative - Peggle is a huge example of this.