playing with videogames

[abstract:] Playing with Videogames documents the richly productive, playful and social cultures of videogaming that support, surround and sustain this most important of digital media forms and yet which remain largely invisible within existing studies. James Newman details the rich array of activities that surround game-playing, charting the vibrant and productive practices of the vast number of videogame players and the extensive ‘shadow’ economy of walkthroughs, FAQs, art, narratives, online discussion boards and fan games, as well as the cultures of cheating, copying and piracy that have emerged.     Playing with Videogames offers the reader a comprehensive understanding of … Continue reading

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shell of ghosts

Here is a snippet from the recent ↑interview with William Gibson, which Bryan Alexander (who ↵pointed me to it) ↵liked especially: It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable. It would be harder to accurately imagine what New York City was like the day before the advent of broadcast television than to imagine what it will be like after life-size broadcast holography comes online. But actually the New York without the television is more mysterious, because we’ve … Continue reading

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speed thrills

It seems like ↑just.be in meatspace somehow ran into Thomas ‘↑Panter‘ Pilger, who in 1997 “spread throughout the ↑COMPET-N tables like a plague. By August, he was the first to do the third ↑DOOM 2 episode (Map 21-30) on Nightmare skill and was primed for the ultimate DOOM 2 honor, DOOM 2 Schwarzenegger. Almost a year in the making, Thomas ‘Panter’ Pilger finally achieved the impossible by recording all 32 maps of DOOM 2 on Nightmare skill in one demo in 49:49.” ↑John Romero‘s reaction to Panter’s feat: “I grabbed the demos and I’ll run them as soon as I … Continue reading

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finally …

  … it seems that I have succeeded in cramping the necessary feedback-loops into my inner cybernetic system responsible for controlling my motor functions. Now I can perform a circle jump and come out of it with 500+ units per second (ups), and yesterday night I reached 1012 ups by single-beat strafejumping on cos1_beta7b’s red track. That’s one small step for a trickjumper, one giant leap for Teh_Lamerer. … Continue reading

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snaking and strafe-jumping

  Screencap from ↵Team iT‘s movie “DeFrag”. The gaps between the floor elements to be seen in the background could not be crossed without the technique of strafe-jumping. Run done by cyrus. The currently featured game innovation at ↑GIDb is the ↑first use of snaking in the game ↑F-Zero GX (2003):  Snaking is a technique that takes advantage of the “mini-boost” technique that is popular in many racing games. Basically, the players have to powerslide into a turn, and upon release, gets a slight boost of speed. Now, by applying this technique repeatedly, especially on straightaways, a player can constantly … Continue reading

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infinite trajectory

  It happened at the Fighternight #5. At some indefinite moment during nighttime I took my headphones off, leaned back in my chair, and allowed my gaze to wander around aimlessly. Suddenly my eyes locked on the screen of a guy sitting behind me. There was ↑Q3A-gamespace, not uncommon, but an avatar cruised along a wall, through midair, following an unbelievable trajectory, the latter marked by a blue-glowing sequence of blasts from the plasma-gun—for the first time in my life I watched a tricking movie. My reflections on tricking are already jotted down (↵piling up—playful appropriation of gamespace and ↵appropriation … Continue reading

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speed runs

Tomi Salo has run through the complete Max Payne 2 (MP2) game in 33 minutes and 30 seconds! Speed Demos Archive carries a collection of video-evidence of so called ‘speed runs’: “A speed run is a video of a player striving to complete a video game in as fast a time as they can manage. Sound easy? It’s not! A large number of tricks are usually used, possibly skipping whole areas of a game in the process, and there will always be mistakes.” Among goodies like a Half Life 2 (HL2) run by David ‘marshmallow’ Gibbons in 2:14:58, and several … Continue reading

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