[Xmca-l] Jesper Juul, Ludologist

[David Kellogg]

Does anyone know anything about the work of Jesper Juul, the ludologist?
( don't mean the Danish Doctor Spock.)

Jesper Juul, ludologist, has apparently written several books on computer
games, including one on the curious paradox that gaming is something we do
for fun even though (despite knowing that) it will soon make us unhappy
(like television and certain forms of drugs).

I've only read one article of his, where he talks about playerless games
(by which he means games that have no role for free will). It's mostly an
intellectual exercise--a kind of gedankenexperiment which is really
designed to show why we do need players and paradoxically why we should
avoid thinking about play without thinking about the intrinsic quality of
the game as well.

(I am actually thinking about this in the context of vocabulary
research--what factors are intrinsic to the word, which are text intrinsic
and which only inhere in the interaction between the learner and the
teacher!)

David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies