# reviewing five minutes with katherine isbister jesper juul usually rules. this time however it's like someone's surreptitiously taken the industry's dirty black penny and written / performed a *slightly* embarrassingly-uncritical five minute fluff piece in the somewhat thin guise of a (serious 'garme jurnalizm') interview with the improbably named katherine isbister "jesper juul and katherine isbister." get your head around that. who needs badly conceived vidyagarm characters when we have industry sanctioned professionals a little too ready to play the academic fool. let's hope the rest of the book isn't as well written as it appears to be in this interview a lightly parodic remix via robert what > without movies (these) books may as well be fiction > ~ the mighty stephanie sterling as david 'emotions' cage in "how garmes move us" katherine isbister wants to be seen as politely examining the ways in which video garmes can influence 'emotion' and 'social connection' - whatever the heck that means. below "playful thinking" series coeditor jesper 'too cool' juul 'interviews' ir about ir hot new academic supermarket paperback dj juul: yo! you've previously written something or other about character design and about the design of user interfaces for garmes. what on rare digital earth prompted you to tap out a book about emotions in garmes specifically? ki: hi jespie! my awesome other books were written for garme designers and developers to help them improve ir amazing craft. i wrote "how garmes move us" primarily for people who aren't immersed in garme making. this book aims to help a *cough* broader set of readers understand the design innovations that have taken place in the medium that shape how we feel when we play dj juul: vidyagarmz aren't a medium ki (not listening): over time i realized many people i talked to about garmes outside the developer community had vague sometimes sensationalist notions about how garmes make players feel. as a culture(tm) we haven't yet developed a rich vocabulary for taking apart a garme's impact the way we do a film's. this book aims to give people some useful ideas and terms to work with so they can get a more nuanced understanding of what garmes do - and why jj: i suspect some players will balk at the idea that garmes engender a rich range of emotions other than self hatred and alienation. can you explain briefly how garmes generate emotions and how they compare to emotions in other media - not that there's 'other media'? ki: garmes have a tremendous advantage over other media in that the player is active making many small and large decisions all along the way. psychologists point out that our feelings are powerfully and primitively shaped by our goals and ir outcomes jj: "garmes have a tremendous advantage over other media in that the player is active." wow gee wizz kath that's.. some formalist ludocentrism right there isn't it? i sure hope the rest of the book features such highbrow critical analysis as that corker! jebus ki: if i really want to win a race i run i feel very frustrated and sad if i don't and proud and excited if i do jj: pardon? kl: garmes harness these goal-based emotions very effectively. garmes also open up a rich emotional terrain for players that comes out of doing things together with other people (real or imagined). a garme can lead a player to feel shame or pride about how they've treated someone within teh garme for example - did the player help out or leave the person hanging? this is something tough to pull off with a medium like film or written fiction. so garmes turn out to be great for creating empathy and connection things that people may not typically associate with how a 'garmer' feels. you dig? jj: i personally could not feel any more existentially estranged from the dreadfully reasoned line i just heard if ian bogost smugly shouted it at me through a megaphone while posing naked for a gdc panel on self important vidyagarmz criticism 101 ki: that's nice jespie. many people don't have the time or inclination to sample a broad range of garmes across many genres and formats. in "how garmes move us" - my latest coffee table production from mit - i give many awesome examples illustrating how rich the emotional terrain in garming really is and can be jj: er yeah no doubt. in the introduction you talk about a renaissance in garmes. in what form or channels do you see this happening especially? and do you *slight snigger* think research and academic institutions have a role to play in this respect? ki: as you know there is a tremendous range of independently designed garmes available through online platforms like steam - jj: *waha!! plurts low fat uht milk through ir nose* sorry kath do go on- ki: .ahem.. which has made it possible for very small teams to get a garme to a broad potential audience of players. in 2014 steam reported 3,700 available garmes. in some sense our issue is not diversity of garme experiences but connecting the right audiences to these garmes to help them thrive jj: isn't that what steam is supposed to be doing anyway? and what on earth's the difference? ki: i believe this awesome new book i've written can contribute to that goal by bringing players deeper into the range of possible garme experiences they could have. i think researchers and universities can help by offering garme literacy training to students as well as by cultivating great new voices in garme design and development and getting word out about ir innovations jj: big revelation kath - ie in other words you're attempting to bring the (seemingly) critical set of intellectual self defence skills books and 'other media' are supposed to develop into the insular world of vidyagarmz - something most modern progressive developers have already been trying to do since they first played cod and thought "surely we can be smarter than this?" ki: well specifically i want to politely obscure whatever it is i think i'm doing theoretically in order to make it seem whatever it is i'm doing is far less superficial and non-critical than it actually is - you know talk about and around the subject (whatever it is ie. 'emotions' or some such vagueness) but continually avoid directly addressing the central problem eg. vidyagarmz themselves jj: do you think video garmes (i am thinking especially of 'experimental video garmes') are moving in a more emotional(r) direction or is it rather that we are seeing new emotions represented in video garme form today? ki: "i do believe experimental video garmes are exploring a broader swath of emotional terrain than pure entertainment" jj: i just bet you do kath! ki: there are deeply moving autobiographical garmes garmes that frame the emotional complexities of fraught political situations garmes that provoke and question. there are also garmes that reassure the player and artfully recreate cozy familiar everyday experience. not all garmes focus on this kind of emotional work of course! jj: if what you just said were any more vague generic and poorly defined we'd be talking about 'colours and movement and stuff' and how vidyagarmz have a lot of them whereas.. books about old black and white films don't ki: remember jespie the definition of academic means narrowing what you're studying down to subatomic scale - 'the sexual organs of fleas' - yet keeping it open enough you can draw out several hundred pages of poorly argued academic fluff. what is the most surprising thing you learned writing this book - other than that anyone actually took your premise about 'writing about emotions' seriously? ki: not surprising exactly but i was struck by the excellent garme journalism available now which attempts to put words on these ephemeral feelings that garmes can evoke. and also by moving player accounts in online forums. the book includes quotes from some of the best of this writing jj: where's all this excellent garme journalism? all i see are 'solid reviews' right across the board. this is a garmes industry after all isn't it? i have to ask you: what about virtual reality? you discuss the experience of inhabiting an avatar that you see on screen - yourself. but does virtual reality make this process stronger (because you see the world from the character's eyes) or less (because you don't see the character)? ki: in the awesome 'bodies at play' chapter i - somewhat ironically i'll admit - discuss a sexual vr experience called 'deep' which combines a breathing sensor and a vr headset in a whizz dungeon. the 'player' simply breathes and looks around the environment. yet people have found this experience potent in reducing sensual anxiety about releasing cheesy books for mit press vr brings the body deeper into play by completely taking over peripheral vision and hearing and putting those senses entirely 'in-garme'. so the body is sending powerful 'bottom up' signals to the brain that the experience is real. i would say this increases the visceral sense of immersion for the player profoundly allowing for potentially even stronger emotional impact of in-garme events and decisions jj: there's that word again - 'immersion'. and 'emotional' ki: yeah i know - aren't these new old garmes industry terms great? you can talk cool white academic jive about them until the video moon appears on the digital horizon. did you know i appear on conan next month to talk about my hot new book? jj: i never would of guessed. be sure to mention this cool industry interview i did with you! ki: word - and word to vidyagarmz. vidyagarmz rule! jj: especially those with immersive emotions! ki: ..'lol' if anyone actually buys this - oh is that mike off? // video here // republic of bob