Play’s Republic

I saw this article and it made me angry, so I thought I would post it. It seems some kid made a FPS mod map based on blueprints of his high school. When kids in the class told their parents, parents told the police, and the police arrested the boy on “Suspicion of [...]

[Read more →]

I though this was an interesting addition to the games and learning debate.  Apparently games can help us understand how to keep species from extinction.
Here is the link 

[Read more →]

Hey,
I was hoping you all could help me a little with my final project.  I need quotes.  More precisely, I need quotes about games.  This may seem random, but could you post some of your favorite, or least favorite, quotes from our readings (or from wherever, really) as comments on this post?  I’m looking for [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

I can’t say that I thought much about games and narratives while on break, but now, faced simultaneously with Avatars of Story and fond memories of that time before Avatars of Story, I find myself inadvertently putting the two together.
At one point in the book, Ryan argues for “an intermediary position [...]

[Read more →]

I found a story this morning that has nothing to do with either teaching or learning in video games. But I’m going to do everything I can to try and make it connect.
A group of Second Life players who have labelled themselves as the Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA) [...]

[Read more →]

I was reading an interview with Will Wright, the developer of the Sims and Spore, and he made a lot of interesting comments about how he views game design. In particular, I thought his comments on social interaction in Spore were interesting. Wright refers to spore as a massively single player online game. [...]

[Read more →]

     In both Huizinga and Callois, there is a discussion of the cheat and the spoil sport in regard to games and play.   The cheat, both argue, is less problematic to the play environment because cheaters always affirm the game itself.   Although cheaters deliberately break rules, they do so with the understanding that everyone else [...]

[Read more →]