Book Launch – The Casual Revolution and the Future of Video Games (Jesper Juul)

Date December 17th, 2009

Time 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Location 721 Broadway

Book launch and panel debate for Jesper Juul’s new book A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players, out now on MIT Press.

RSVP: gamecenter@nyu.edu

It seems like only yesterday that video games were considered the province of males between 12 and 35. Yet with the launch of the Nintendo Wii, with the proliferation of casual games in browsers, with music games and cell phone games, video games seem to have broken out of their cultural niche.

In this evening of debate, Jesper Juul (New York University Game Center) will introduce the new book, followed by a panel discussion on the rise of casual games and the future of video games. The panel consisting of Mia Consalvo (MIT, author of Cheating), Nick Fortugno (Playmatics, formerly Gamelab) and Wade Tinney (Large Animal) will discuss topics such as:

-What are casual games, and where did they come from?

-Are casual games saving video games from cultural ghettoization, or are they preventing video games from dealing with serious themes?

-Are traditional gamers right to feel threatened by casual games?

-Do game developers have an obligation to make games for everybody?

-How should game studies deal with new game forms and different types of players?

Refreshments will be served.

The NYU Game Center is housed in the Skirball Center for New Media at the Tisch School of the Arts and is a collaboration between Tisch, NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, and the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. The Center is supported by generous grants from an anonymous donor, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Sharon Chang and the TTSL Charitable Foundation.