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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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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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While academia occasionally manages to maintain the veneer of being 'civilized,' academic battles of words can frequently be just as epic as anything occurring outside the Ivory Tower — even when couched in elegant language and well-reasoned points, you can tell people are out to draw blood. So it (sort of) is with Roger Travis, a classics professor who wrote a passionate plea for gamers to "turn the tables on Aarseth and other doyens of game studies" in the Escapist: More »
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Henry Jenkins runs the Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program at MIT. He also blogs more words per day than Kotaku. Over at his eponymous website, Jenkins has been posting articles about the various serious games projects MIT CMS students have undertaken over the years. More »
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It's time for more game studies goodness. This one comes from Jesper Juul, a Danish scholar who studied and then taught at the IT University, Copenhagen. More »
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As I promised yesterday, during my run as Bizarro Brian I want to share some recent activity in the field of game studies. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=321999&view=rss&microfeed=true Quick recap: a year and half ago, Reuters reported on a congressional briefing in which modders had turned Battlefield 2 into a terrorist training game. The report confused a lot of people, including Kotaku, because most of the details were incorrect. The truth was, the mod wasn't even a game, it was a satirical send-up that used footage from Battlefield and soundtrack dubs from Team America: World Police. More »
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