Play’s Republic

The New York Times has an interesting article today about the growing popularity of videogames with senior citizens. I’m not going to summarize the article, just pique your interest with two quotes:
“It turns out that older users not only play video games more often than their younger counterparts but also spend more time playing […]

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…it’s almost here.
That day when play crosses the usual boundaries and enters our daily interactions for a few short hours. It’s a time to be on your guard, but it’s also a time to indulge in the glory of handing out candies that turn your victims’ tongues blue.
It is, of course, April Fool’s Day.
How […]

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I’m sure we’ll discuss this more in class, but after reading Bogost I’ve been trying to figure out my own conception of “fun” in games and play.
I understand (I think) Bogost’s problem with fun as the sole aim of game development — something about critical thinking and social understanding — but I feel he misses […]

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I recently read an article on some game studies professors who are trying to get a set of video games considered for preservation by the Library of Congress as important cultural artifacts.
Here’s a NYtimes article on this topic.
Here’s their list of their choices:
“Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario […]

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To begin, above are two 16th century paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The first painting is entitled Netherlandish Proverbs and the second The Triumph of Death.
Essentially, I think that Grand Theft Auto is similar to these works. To begin, I disagree with some of the conclusions that Bogost draws concerning GTA. […]

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I’ve several posts forthcoming, as well as responses to some of your posts. For the moment, I wanted to direct you to a (very accessible, non-theoretical) article from Forbes about Von Neumann’s ‘game theory,’ to which I had alluded on Tuesday.
If we’ve not yet discussed your research paper/project, please contact me ASAP or come […]

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Our discussion in class last night made me remember the games of my own childhood. Garrison talked about creating his own games with friends - I think many of us did this. If we didn’t make up entirely new games, we certainly made new rules for existing games. Many of these rules […]

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I stumbled across an old Flash-based short, ‘Animator vs. Animation’, and discovered that the creator had recently released a sequel (the aptly-named ‘Animator vs. Animation II’). Upon watching both movies, the first thing that came to mind was what we had covered a long while back: how games represent and reflect reality, what defines Agon, […]

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While watching TV this weekend, I realized that commercials have finally lost all meaning to me.  The images and the ideas and the sounds have devolved into 15 second barrages of signals and signifiers that coalesce into an incoherent “blah”.   At its heart, commercial advertising hopes to model my entire value-system with short and sweet […]

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