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Some believe that having a big-time college football team is the key to boosting enrollment. George Mason University has found that offering a degree in video game design does the trick, too. More »
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Composers working on video game soundtracks seem to either be veterans of game-making or TV/movie folks crashing the medium. Take note, then, of schools like Berklee Music College in Boston that just might train people to compose music for games. More »
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"The Art History of Games," a three day public symposium devoted to investigating games as an art form, will be held in Atlanta in early February, followed by the monthlong display of three commissioned art games. More »
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More than 50 game development programs have been added to U.S. colleges' curricula in the past year, bringing to 254 the number of universities offering degrees in video game design, programming and art, according to the Entertainment Software Association. More »
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The University of California-Irvine, already home to a game culture lab, has established the Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds. Twenty faculty members from the university's computer science, humanities, education and other departments will collaborate on its work. More »
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The National Science Foundation has given two universities a million dollars to study whether video games can improve thinking skills in the elderly. They're using Boom Blox in the research. More »
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Some deep reading over on Gamasutra on game design and narrative (courtesy of Company of Heroes narrative designer Stephen Dinehart) could be my next graduate school adventure. More »
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A book by two professors of media studies examines the challenges of designing games on the Atari 2600, and posits that the infamous port of Pac-Man wasn't a half-assed effort after all. More »
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Another weekend, another call for papers! This time around it's the Games+Learning+Society 5.0 conference, June 10-12 in Madison, WI. More »
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I spoke to Professor Jim Whitehead of UC Santa Cruz yesterday, and at the end of our conversation he brought up the 2009 Foundations of Digital Games conference. FDG will run from 26 - 30 April, 2009, and takes place on a cruise ship. In addition to the typical call for papers (due 19 December), the organizing committee is offering between 10 and 15 scholarships for undergraduates (due 20 December), and five spots for doctoral students. The whole thing sounds like such a ridiculous combination that I can't imagine it won't be a good time, so if you're an interested party and have research that may fit the goals, check out the application. The FAQ for the undergraduate scholarship offering is below, and more information can be found at the FDG 2009 website. I don't have any appropriate research for this year's conference, but I'm certainly planning on attending. More »
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Jim Reilly forwarded news of the UConn interdisciplinary and interinstitutional initiative called The Video Games and Human Values Initiative, and I noted it on the Brainy Gamer blog as well. Spearheaded by the occasionally baffling Roger Travis, professor of classics at the University of Connecticut, it's a pretty interesting idea — centering around discussion, courses, and bringing together a variety of us boring Ivory Tower types as well as any other interested parties to create a new forum for discussion: More »
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Recently, some controversy has popped up regarding who owns the IP of student-created work; recent events with the award-winning creation of some graduates of DigiPen Institute of Technology have highlighted the problematic nature of what is somewhat par for the course in design programs. On the one hand, while I can see some of the arguments for schools retaining the IP (and certainly, the policies are clear to students from day one), I find some of the arguments downright laughable. With the recent kerfluffle, are policy changes on the horizon?: More »
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Totally out of my academic purview, but it's a really neat sounding conference: The research group Ludiciné (University of Montreal), the Research Group on the Creation and Formation of Cinematographic and Theatrical Institutions (GRAFICS) (also from the University of Montreal) and the NT2 Laboratory on Hypermedia Art and Literature (University of Quebec) are hosting a conference next year (in — surprise! — Montréal) on horror games. Proposals are due by January 15, 2009, and the conference will be held from April 23 to 25, 2009. So if you're incubating a great paper topic on horror games, or are sitting on a paper that you haven't had an academic outlet for, here's your chance. Sounds pretty fun! More information can be found at the website, and the full call for papers can be found beneath the jump. [via GameSetWatch] More »
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Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has a nice reminder of why we play RPGs (well, those of us who play RPGs), based on some of his undergraduates' writings on their experiences in Fallout 1 and 2. Michael notes that the exercise — writing autobiographies of their characters — is often used in theatre, but it never occurred to him that it would be useful for his students in his RPG seminar, until "we began discussing the characters they had created .... The sense of ownership they clearly felt, and their remarkably vivid descriptions of their experiences in the games, made the assignment a no-brainer." Which goes to one of the reasons why people make the investment in RPGs: More »
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I was recently discussing the mainstream media's love affair with Second Life, and how the bloom appears to be off the rose. The Denver Westword News recently followed around a Denver University 'media specialist' who is working on SciLands, where NASA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other scientific groups have a virtual outpost; while Jeff Corbin, the 'media specialist,' and other academics are practically beside themselves with the potentials for nuclear research in Second Life, the other side is presented: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5052689&view=rss&microfeed=true I sort of hope the Zero Punctuation knock-off dies a quick death, but reader Nathan M. sent us this video, which is based off an article by designer James Portnow. There's nothing ground breaking here — the idea that educational games simply try too hard, while regular 'fun' titles can inspire learning without having to try and teach themselves is nothing new, but the video is certainly a lot more fun than the average essay. Nathan said, "I'm a 5th grade social studies teacher. I still like to play games as much as I can but I've always been disappointed with state of educational games. This gives the best explanation of this phenomena and the best approach to correcting it I've seen." More »
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The National Science Foundation has awarded $100,000 to do a cross-cultural study of World of Warcraft — Bonnie Nardi, an infomatics professor at Irvine, will be looking at player gaming habits and culture in the United States and China. Nardi has already spent time in the field, observing WoW players in Beijing internet cafés; she's already noted some basic differences in play styles and similarities in culture, so I'm curious to see where she'll go from here: More »
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Via Terra Nova comes word that a new series of academic articles centered around Everquest II has just kicked off, starting with an article on 'who plays, how much, and why' (with a couple of 'oddball' gems scattered throughout the data). The results weren't always what researchers — or the general public — would expect. While there have been other studies done in MMOs, this group was the first that took place in the game engine had the full cooperation of a company like SOE. What are they going to be looking at over the course of the study?: More »
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In the last Japanese history seminar of my first year of graduate school, we shifted gears from the economic and political legacy of the immediate post-war period to slightly more current topics – the ‘afterlives of area studies,’ the fate of post-colonialism in a world weary of po-co, and … Pokémon and Neon Genesis Evangelion. I was at once delighted and disappointed to see respected academics tackling questions of “popular culture” that we often shy away from, at least in the context of “history” books. After we broke for coffee and reconvened, we launched into our discussion of some of the essays included in Japan After Japan: Social and Culture Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. “Any thoughts on ‘Pokémon Capitalism at the Millennium’?” my professor queried. Most eyes were on me, the ‘gamer/game writer.’ “Well, I thought it was an interesting essay,” I started. “And it’s nice to see gaming center stage like this, but …” More »
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There are plenty of fields where the academic-'real world' divide is pretty sharp — and it's probably no surprise that game-related research falls into that category. Richard Bartle, MUD co-creator, criticizes universities who are resistant to change — while 'modern' universities (ones who developed from polytechnics or institutes, at least in the UK) are more willing to lead the way with creative courses, older institutions are less likely to follow suit: More »
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Malcolm Ryan is putting together a most interesting list of game design-related books — except these are the ones that are flying under the radar as it were. Ryan describes these 'secret books' as "books that are not explicitly written about games, but which any game designer who reads them just knows that they are really about games." As part of this, Ryan will be reviewing a book a week on a variety of narrative and game-related topics (even if the connection isn't immediately apparent). In the 'secret book' category, he's got two examples: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander. More »
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Preservation of 'new media' has gotten some attention in recent months — a lot of venerable collections are moving to figure out the best ways to preserve games and gaming media in an archival setting, while building useful collections for the future. The University of Texas at Austin was recently awarded over $250,000 to study the collection and preservation of MMOs. In addition to the obvious bits of preservation problems — software and the like — the project is also pretty broad in scope, including an oral history component, as the project head Megan Winget explained: More »
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I've really been enjoying GameSetWatch's series called 'The Game Anthropologist,' which (among other things) looks at various gaming communities — this week is a look at one of my favorite blogs, Michael Abbott's The Brainy Gamer. We've looked at Abbott's efforts to create (pretty collectively!) a syllabus for his history of RPGs course, which has inspired a lot of discussion both on his blog and here at Kotaku. The interview goes quite a bit beyond the borders of his blog, and I was particularly interested in his thoughts on games and academia, especially for those of us who cannot really be classed as 'game studies' people: More »
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Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has a nice little roundup of some of the current thinking on narrative designs in games — it's nice to have a couple of reasonably prominent writers/designers/etc. put together in one place, with easily digestible clips. And, as usual, the comments section is just as worthy of attention as the article itself. But is this emerging collective 'manifesto' really deserving of the title 'manifesto'?: More »
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Via Terra Nova comes a fascinating paper by Richard Heeks that covers the historical, social, and economic aspects playing into real money transactions. I've just had time to take a quick gander at the paper, but unlike a lot of information out there, this appears quite comprehensive and with a more unbiased position than we usually see: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5035120&view=rss&microfeed=true While at E3, I wandered down to check out the Indiecade offerings (I meant to post my impressions earlier, but they'll be up tomorrow — better late than never). I'd posted earlier about the postmortem of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and was happy to get some hands-on time with the game, plus the chance to chat with Matt Korba (lead designer) and Paul Bellezza (producer) about the game and life inside USC's Interactive Media program. More »
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Oh, be still my historian heart: a new journal has been announced (first issue forthcoming this winter), entitled Historical Studies of Digital Entertainment Media. Since I've gotten surprisingly enthusiastic responses from all of my professors, even the technophobes, on my plans for an article on the history of virtual worlds in China, I'm thrilled that a dedicated space for this sort of discourse is opening up soon. No details yet on what sort of things are going to be included in the first issue, but it is setting up to be an accessible slice of academia: More »
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We mentioned Arden, the university-design MMO, a few times; a working paper has just been released that looks at economic behavior in MMOs using the game. The interesting thing here isn't so much the fact that people replicate real-world behaviors online (in this case, they purchased less of an item when it was more expensive), but that it's yet another piece of a growing literature explaining the utility of virtual worlds in actual research: More »
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I mentioned the Games, Learning & Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin back when a call for papers was put out. Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has some interesting notes on the conference, which was held this past Thursday and Friday. The wrap up of the keynote speech, delivered by James Gee of Arizona State University, is an interesting meditation on the role of games (and not just 'edutainment') in education: More »
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Doubtless you've by now heard of the book entitled Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Video Games, yes? It surely sounds like the kind of novel you all would want to get up in arms about, but relax, the authors, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, found that violent games don't make kids psychopaths, but merely allow them to experiment with dangerous behavior in a context that can be healthful (a position I myself tend to take in my editorials). More »
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It's been a while since the Space Giraffe kerfluffle where Yak Minter threw a hissy fit in his blog regarding poor scores given to the XBLA psychedelic shooter (and the point where it was compared to Joyce's Ulysses, but I came across an interesting piece recently that talked about Space Giraffe in reference to (wait for it) a piece of literary theory known as 'authorial intent.' The post-structuralist conception is (at least in part) that the critic's will and opinion always supercedes that of the author. What does this have to do with Space Giraffe? Well, it's one way to look at why there was such heated discussion over Space Giraffe: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5020585&view=rss&microfeed=true Missed UCSD's SoftWhere 2008 conference and curious what went on? Well, video of the public portion of the conference is now popping up on the SoftWhere 2008 page in QuickTime and YouTube. A lot of big names (like Ian Bogost, above) had some very interesting presentations on a variety of topics — even my Japanese historiography professor showed up and had a lot to say about history, time, and software. It was a pretty diverse group, and owing to the zippy format, you can get a good feel for a lot of the research and ideas without spending half an hour or more listening to one presentation. Confining academics to such a short period of time? Sheer brilliance. More »
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We mentioned the new Sony Playstation-edu initiative when it was announced; now, Senior Manager of Developer Support at SCEA Mark Danks explains a bit more about the program and it's goals (and the cost). If colleges and universities enter into this sort of relationship with Sony, they will have lovely legal language to follow, but can get access to PS2 and PSP dev kits for $2,000 and $1,500 a pop, respectively: More »
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I'm still on a semi-enforced vacation from academia, but I couldn't resist reading some of the essays found on electronic book review. The essays are a selection from two MIT Press books, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game and Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. There are a bunch of interesting essays (and some not-so-interesting ones, I'm sure), on topics ranging from IF to WoW to more general ruminations on narrative, stories, gaming in general: More »
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I poked my head in to the public 'pecha kucha' session for UCSD's SoftWhere 2008, but couldn't stay for the whole thing since I had a paper to write and was feeling really under the weather; I did get a chance later to talk with one of my professors, who participated in the event, and have been checking out the roundups floating around the internet at this point. I've got my own opinions on the '___ Studies' ghetto, being part of it myself — though an attempt to create a field of 'software studies' is, at the very least, not burdened with Cold War politics. Anyways, there are some concise (and not so concise) appraisals of the event floating around. Anne Helmond, who presented on the relationship between search engines and the blogosphere, had this to say: More »
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After a rather grueling year, I am taking a self-enforced vacation from academia for a few days to recharge. But if you're not, there's a pretty interesting PDF of an MA thesis floating around — the subject is fan-producer interaction in relation to games, specifically Fallout. I've browsed through a bit of it, and I've liked what I've seen so far: More »
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Nick Montfort and Andrew Stern have published the text of their very interesting speech given at the Electronic Literature Organization "Visionary Landscapes" conference; the subject is ELIZA, the 1966 parody of a Rogerian therapist — more correctly, it's where the next ELIZA-like program (in terms of influence) is going to come from and what it may look like. It's an interesting piece, coming from the perspective of "bigger and flashier is not always better": More »
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In an effort to make learning Chinese less painful (and ostensibly to capitalize on the 'MMO as language learning tool' trend that's been talked about a bit in the past few months), Michigan State University's Zhao Yong (professor of education technology and educational psychology) has designed Zon!, where players can graduate from tourist to resident to citizen of this little virtual slice of China: More »
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The Life Love Game Design Challenge named its winners today. The Flash game design challenge sponsored by Jennifer Ann's Group asked developers to come up with games about teen dating violence prevention without using violent content or a violent theme. More »
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More than $2 million in grants is being handed out to teams researching how video games can improve players' health. More »
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