Play’s Republic

I’m not entirely sure that this applies to our class, but I find it highly amusing and, thus, it constitutes my first blog.
The Associated Press is reporting that in the city of Boston, “highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in” to deal with “more […]

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Thanks to Microsoft’s coupling of DirectX with DirectPhysics, the world of rational being has reasserted itself, and dislodged the dynamic world of becoming. True to Plato’s intent, the Virtual World ceases to be something dynamic and interesting, and becomes instead an imperfect copy of an already imperfect Real World. Yes, it is easier to program games in this world, but suddenly, all the games start to look the same. Instead of bizarre worlds where buildings float, gravity is inconstant, and barstools serve as fancy headgear, we find ourselves in the world of Newton and the early Enlightenment.

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I’ve been reading a good deal about Second Life online - everything from “How To” guides for residents to media outlets’ coverage of SL. The thought that keeps returning to me with increasing suspicion is: Second Life is slowly moving from being a Ludic world to a Platonic world.
Nowadays, the goal of nearly every […]

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Old news for some, Jenova Chen’s MFA thesis project, a Flash-based game called fl0w, will make its second, moderately expanded debut on the PS3 in February. Hot. The most recent release dates back to April, 2006, and the for-pay-but-inexpensive PS3 version is promised to expand a bit on the gameplay experience.
Fl0w, the game, […]

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Thinking back on the videos we watched last week, I tried to think of other elements in our culture which have the same characteristics of playing with boundaries and expectations. I don’t think we have as many now, because of the fact that our expectations now assume that such things will happen. Now […]

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I’d like first to thank Alyssa and Rob for not hesitating to plunge into the <comments> section of the weblog, and second to thank Hilary for contributing the first full post to the weblog (see below), a reflection on being and becoming in Carroll’s “Hunting of the Snark.” The poem is taken from Alice […]

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Initially I was not exactly sure how Carrol’s The Hunting of the Snark fit into our class discussions about the study of play. So in order to unlock the mystery of the poem’s pertinence, I did what seemed logical: I thought about it. After considering the poem and our discussion last Tues evening, […]

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Here are some works related to Tuesday’s conversation that may be worth your consideration:
Spariosu, Mihai. I’m very keen on Spariosu, whose texts include The Wreath of Wild Olive, God of Many Names, and The Masks of Dionysus. He is reasonably consistent throughout these works, and my argument for “archaic” vs. “mediated” (or PreSocratic […]

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Tom Coates at plasticbag has recent Google Maps images of Sebastopol, California, where videogame scholars were keen to play on a ginormous scale.

Participants included some of the scholars we’ll consider this semester (viz., McGonigal). Their use of the technology, of course, is entirely unintended (and unsanctioned) by the Google Overlords. Still, […]

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