Introduction

Recently I used the term "embodiment deficit" in a lecture. The lecture was podcast and one of the listeners emailed me, saying that he could not find the term anywhere online, and that he would like to read more about it. The fact is, I made that term up, as artists do sometimes. In a scholarly setting, though, making words up without stating that fact, and without explaining why the term is necessary, is not beneficial to the discipline. A good example of dealing with the problem is the useful dictionary relating to game studies which Jesper Juul wrote in connection with his book Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, 2006, MIT Press. So, with apologies, I am listing here some terms I find useful for the discussion and understanding of New Media.

Papers by Greg Niemeyer et al.

Title Description
Joint Balance text document of an unpublished paper describing the Joint Balance research project, which allows players to control a game by shifting their weight (rtf format).
Optimality at Play Text summary of an NSF proposal describing research into optimization of decision making skills through gameplay.
   
   

Postings by Greg Niemeyer et al.

Title Posting Content
Coding from right
to tfeL		 At a splendid residency this Spring in Cairo's leading non-profit gallery, the Townhouse Gallery, I had a chance to develop one of our games, "Good Morning Flowers" at a youth center in old Cairo. The kids, between the ages of 4 and 16, lined up to play the game, and, when their turn was up, told me what they did a nd did not like about the game. Since I had all my tools there, I went about implementing their ideas for improving the game while they were playing. Of course, all in English. I started looking for Arabic programming or scripting languages, so the kids could read what I was doing, and so they could perhaps learn some elements of programming.

I could not find a single programming language or scripting language which is not based on English. The more I discussed this matter with friends, the more I realized that it should, in principle, be easy to translate a programming or scripting language into Arabic, and while we are at it, into Korean and Hebrew, and to create a parser which can translate those languages into machine code. It would also be relatively easy to translate a basic manual into Arabic.

With such a language, members of non-English communities would face one less hurdle when they start learning how to program. Even basic languages such as HTML, Javascript, Java, or a learning language like Processing would, once translated, become a bridge across the digital divide. For some, crossing that divide would mean access to new job markets, and a path out of dependency and poverty. Just knowing one programming lanuguage allows users to think in terms of coding, and once that way of thinking becomes a habit, learning other languages becomes much easier.

The costs of such a project, including an outreach program to make the multilingual programming tool available to many others. would run in the millions, but it would be less expensive than the shame of the digital divide by any measure. With such a ground up effort, communities might teach themselves that computers speak any langugage we instruct them to speak, and would be able to use computers to help in self-organization. Maybe we'd even see some ideas from Arabic language, thought and culture expand and reform the set of Western new media tools: Just remember what the 0 did for us! Likewise, we'd perhaps broaden the range of gameplay culture, which is predominantly formed by Asian and Western culture at this time. Just remember chess, or should I also write ssehc.

   
   
   

New Media Jargon

adaptive game design Games adapt to a players skill level in at least three ways. In multi-player games, players challenge each other. Well matched players can elicit increasing skill levels in each other through feedback loops of mutual and diverse challenges. In single-player games, wise level design produces challenges of increasing difficulty. Adaptive games adjust the game challenge to the player(s) on a turn by turn basis. If a player achieves a given challenge, the game engine increases the difficulty of the next challenge. If a player struggles, the game engine decreases the difficulty of the next challenge. Because this adjustment is adaptive to individual performances, it is a prolific teaching and testing strategy. Adaptive game design is not limited to increasing and decreasing challenge. Advanced interaction analysis can also produce adaptive changes in game rules, gameplay and interface functionality. An example of an adaptive game is the computerized GRE test.
embodiment
 The process of absorbing a non-bodily interaction into the performance of the human body by imagination and habit.
embodiment deficit
 The capacity of humans to extend their bodies to include technically mediated experiences may be limited. A person may reach such a limit, as the amount of bodily experiences exceeds the amount of mediated, embodied experiences. The embodiment deficit is one possible result of that state. A person may seek any kind of physical experience to compensate for an embodiment deficit, including playful, intense physical experiences without any particular purpose, such as skatebording or dancing. Another outcome of excessive media experience may be self-alienation.
learning by playing, n. Learning by playing is a concept describing the educational value of play as a part of informal learning. People usually learn by doing or by studying, but already Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi realized that "there is much seriosity in child's play". While he mostly meant that playing is an essential part of growing up, we can now observe how childern encounter vast bodies of knowledge successfully by playing. In playing, they absorb patterns of behaviour (rules) and play according to them towards defined or undefined outcomes (winning, losing, getting distracted, inventing new rules). the importance of learning by playing is not in encontering new content by playing, but in testing and exploring new rules through exploration. Playing a game allows for exploration with indemnity. However, the lessons learned in games carry over to real life elegantly. The lessons learned can strengthen a character, can improve perceptive or cognitive performance, and can transmit fundamental strategies in social, political and economic relational behavior.
magic circle, n.
A magic circle is the temporal, physical and mental space which players of a game create and occupy as long as they play. In a card game, the magic circle includes the table at which the game is played, and the time from the moment cards are being mixed to the moment the last player stops playing. In pervasive games, a magic circle is more complex to define because it includes public and private spaces which are not readily recognizable as magic circle spaces by non-players. In that case, the magic circle is defined by the presence of players, and their relations to any playable space, the presence of rules. In the pervasive game ilovebees, any public phone booth was potentially within the magic circle.
metaplay n. Metaplay describes the effects of playing which carry beyond the magic circle of a game (see also perversion, transdiegetic). Metaplay is discussed often in the context of violent games; When and how do violent games provoke and inspire violent actions beyond the magic circle? Metaplay is also discussed in the context of social networks emerging as a result of gameplay, especially in the area of pervasive games.
replay, n. non-interactive, computer-generated rendition of event-path of a given instance of gameplay, for example full-motion video footage of a racing game played previously.
replay value, n. Replay value describes a game's success in terms of the desire of the player to repeat the interactive experience of playing a given game. The replay value of a game is high, if the player returns to play a game again after the first round ends. Tetris is a classic example of a game with high replay value. Colloquially, such games with high replay value are referred to as "addictive." Games with low replay value are likely to provide unsatisfying interactive experiences, or insufficient incentives for the required interactive effort.
playtest, n. and v. The process of playing a game while it is under development, to test rules, game engines, game objectives, and replay value. Game designers usually observe players carefully and suggest changes to rules on the fly to improve gameplay. Designers also note and evaluate player suggestions.
toy, n. A toy is an object designed or designated to be played with and lacking predetermined rules.