Gonzalo Frasca (born 1972) is a game designer and academic researcher focusing on serious and political videogames. His blog, Ludology.org, was cited by NBC News as a popular designation for academic researchers studying video games. For many years, Frasca also co-published Watercoolergames with Ian Bogost, a blog about serious games.
Frasca was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he established Powerful Robot Games, a video game studio. He is Chief Design Officer at DragonBox, a Norwegian pedagogy studio which produces math-learning videogames. Frasca is also a professor at Universidad ORT Uruguay.
In video game theory, Frasca belongs to the group of "ludologists" who consider video games to be simulations based on rules. They see video games as the first simulational media for the masses - which means a paradigm shift in media consumption and production.
Frasca's game studies are influenced by the work of Norwegian game academic Espen J. Aarseth. Beginning in December 2004, Frasca studied games at the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen. He received his PhD in Videogames studies in August 2007.
His most famous game is the art game, September 12, a response to the September 11 attacks. It is based on the political argument that a direct military response will only increase the likelihood of further terrorist attacks on the West. In spite of being controversial at its launch, it is now recognized as a notable early example of both political videogame and newsgame (a term Frasca is credited with coining to refer to a videogame based on real, newsworthy events). In 2009 it received a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Knight Foundation.
Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology (2003)
This work expands on concepts of narratology and ludology as modes for framing game analysis. These concepts were established initially by Frasca in his 1999 text Ludology meets Narratology: Similitude and differences between video games and narrative. He defines ludology as the play-oriented aspects of games, such as mechanics and control schemes. Narrative aspects provide a context for the play-oriented features within the gamespace. As noted in the text's introductory paragraphs, Frasca's writing on ludology was spurred by a desire to address the inadequacies of games studies literature. He states that games studies literature of the late 1990s and early 2000s involved the framing of game analysis within dramatic and narrative frameworks. This could include the framing of games within understandings of film and written literature. There was no existing model to consider games on their own terms (namely play and interactivity); a significant limitation in academically engaging with the medium. Interactivity is an intrinsic facet of the medium, however, no formal academic discipline existed which could address it. Through the proposition of a ludic framework, Frasca aims to encourage analysts to consider how play elements interact and convey meaning. This model of game analysis works similarly to Espen Aarseth's theoretical framework of digital textual analysis involving the reading of texts as cybernetic systems.
Simulation versus representation
Frasca distinguishes between simulational and representational media, with videogames being part of the former and 'traditional' media being the latter. The key difference, he argues, is that simulations react to certain stimuli, such as configurative input data (button presses etc.), according to a set of conditions. Generally, representational media (he provides the example of a photograph) produce a fixed description of traits and sequences of events (narrative), and cannot be manipulated. He places emphasis on the importance of serious games, most notably the use of games for political purposes. Unlike traditional modes of storytelling, simulation is not binary by nature. According to Frasca, this has benefits when applied to the political propaganda simulation.
Simulation output is also discussed, with Frasca drawing attention to the argument that the sequence of signs produced by the film and the simulation look exactly the same. Frasca notes that what these commentators have failed to understand is that simulation cannot be understood solely through its output; the player's direct input is a fundamental part of simulation. This is reminiscent of Aarseth's work on user engagement in games and simulations. He argues that it is insufficient to "merely observe the audiovisual output from someone else's playing...", and that in order to fully understand an interactive digital text one must experience it first-hand.