March 9, 2004
A brief dip into agonology with this comment on game studies, inspired by the discussion of Joust in Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s Rules of Play:
It’s possible to imagine game studies as being similar to Combat: whoever destroys their opponent most frequently is the winner.
I prefer to think of game studies as being more similar to Air-Sea Battle: everyone is shooting at the same targets. Some people may play antagonistically by picking off targets that you were about to shoot, but the firepower is always concentrated on understanding computer games.