Play’s Republic

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, while we think of satellite photography as “stealthy” and “clandestine,” governments learned right away to disguise their armaments from one anothers’ satellites, and built models and mock-ups to confuse enemy analysts. States always “perform power.”