Harvard's new afterschool club called Harvard Interactive Media Group, or HIMG for short, is laying the groundwork for all of those Ivy League students to have the ability to communicate to each other the values and virtues of the gaming experience without the added benefit of, I don't know, playing the games with each other. Instead there's a lot of forum discussions on comparisons between games, art, and film, as well as relationships between gaming and real-world scenarios. It's riveting. Any club with a mission like this is bound win a lot of members:

(HIMG) bring(s) together Harvard students and professors with members of academic and professional communities beyond to explore the form and impact of interactive media.

It's a frat party without the beer and we all know how long those last. Kim Phu

PLUGGED IN [The Crimson via Joystiq]

Our source for all things gaming The Harvard Crimson is running a piece on the university's first official video games tourney. US $400 in prizes were up for grabs, along with a Nintendo Wii. A hundred or so crammed into the Lamont Forum Room last week to battle it out in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Halo, Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft: Defense of the Ancients. Says student Matthew R. McFarlane:

I generally like console games because you play them with your friends, and you can punch them in the face when they beat you. It's a great way to get your competition out.

America's best and brightest, folks. Brian Ashcraft

Harvard's First Game Competition [The Crimson, Thanks Joseph!]

Ben S. Decker isn't just playing video games at Harvard, he's studying them. His concentration is "the study of video games from both a technological and humanities perspective," AKA "ludology."

Ludology? 'Mkay.

He'll take a smattering of classes in computer science, economics and psychology at Harvard and cross-enroll at MIT for media studies. Ben adds,

I'm not nearly as hardcore a gamer as some—I'm certainly obsessed with a couple of games, but I have a lot of faith in the medium going forward.

That, and a pretty cool sounding major. Harvard isn't the first to offer ludology as a concentration, but rather, the University of California-Santa Cruz. Go Banana Slugs! Brian Ashcraft

Harvard Teaches Gaming [The Crimson, Thanks Joseph!]

Cambridge, Massachusetts houses two of America's most prestigious universities: Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Our own Florian spent a week at M.I.T., before he was kicked out for being "lippy." Me? I've never been to Cambridge, but if I went, I'd definitely like to check out this Mega Man mosaic that's next to Mass Ave near Harvard. Reader z kelley said the last he/she checked, it was still there. Same goes for Harvard and M.I.T. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Flickr]