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:
Travis and Young hope the Initiative will bring together scholars and students in the humanities, the social sciences, education, computer science, and business to consider “the place and extraordinary potential of video games in our culture,” provide a (virtual) place for scholarly research into the relation of video games to values, and offer online courses taught by fellows from various different disciplines. “We believe that video games’ greatest innovations in education, business, the social sciences, the humanities, and most of all in games themselves will arise from a deeper understanding of games’ connections among all these disciplines,” says Travis. “When scholars and students alike understand these connections better, they will be better prepared to advance the state of gaming as it relates to their own fields.”
Will the idea take off or fizzle? Only time will tell; it's certainly a nice idea. I'll be keeping a watchful eye on the developments. Courses examine videogaming as artistic medium, cultural pursuit [UConn Advance]