I’m writing this post to clear up a few things that were confusing in my last post. What I worry about is not those who work to integrate games into their pedagogy, or even ‘gamify’ their classrooms by embedding things like competition, progress bars/reports, HUDs, quests etc. That has been […]
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Episode 7 is here! Gamification; It’s More than Just Playing Games (“Save As” to download or head over to iTunes to subscribe) The episode where we talk about gamification and education and clear up some of the mis-conceptions. dr. b. rants a bit and drops an f-bomb, Alex drinks like […]
The reserve army of the bored zombie the earth, fiddling with their cell phones, checking their watches. Boredom is the meter of history. –McKenzie Wark I love games. My friends love games. My students love games. We are a society in love with games: game-shows, reality games, board games, online […]
With the recent news that L.A. Noire will be the first video game featured at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival, it seems like a good time to stop and consider what makes a video game unique from other mediums. More and more the lines between films and video games are […]
Ok, so with new tech flying in the family today I decided to buy Peanut a new game for her Leapster Explorer. It was the Mr. Pencil game that let’s her do 2 of her favorite things in all of the world, write and draw. I figured that this had […]
I’ve been thinking about why so many technical fields are dominated by men. Here is a great chart about the percentage of men and women in various jobs in the gaming industry in 2010 (for more from this study click here):
The idea that fields of technology such as open source programming is a meritocracy is very, very dangerous. It leads to all sorts of discrimination, sexism, and racism. It also leads pretty smart people to say some pretty dumb things. For example, Michael Arrington wrote a piece called “Too Few […]
Ok, so I am doing the unthinkable and rehashing a post from the past (albeit from my personal blog) because it’s a topic that I have been thinking a lot about and one that I have been thinking a lot about recently, especially with the release of the Dead Island […]
Well, yes. I’ve argued again and again that gender, race, class, and all sorts of social constructions can be influenced by the way those things are depicted in entertainment media like video games. But, I’m a hypocrite. I would also argue against anyone who claims that violence in video games […]
Guilt has finally gotten the better of me. It has been too long since I posted a real post. I have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes lately and was really feeling like a slacker. Then I asked myself the big question…how is that any different from […]
In a recent article on CNN.com, Omar Gallaga, who is a technology contributor to NPR’s All Tech Considered, feels “haunted and sad” by what he considers a disturbing trend in video games—“putting children in peril and, often, allowing them to be gruesomely killed.” The trailer for a new survival horror […]
I’m writing this as a response to a thoughtful article called “If tech discussion was really about tech, it wouldn’t be sexist” by Restructure. The author writes, “There is sexism in tech culture. However, I continue to love tech, because I think of the sexism as a separate, unnecessary appendage […]
So this week Alex did 2 things to suck my time dry. First she talked me into going back into WoW and then she agreed to my hair-brained idea to make a video about Skinner Box Logic in video games. To make it even funnier, we spaced it and made […]
“It was a simpler time, when games were primarily marketed to children, and they were easy enough that your sister could jump in for a few hours and not be intimidated” Why do I love Bejeweled 3? More interestingly, why is my first reaction to keep my love of Bejeweled […]
When I was little, I ran around with a black leather belt around my waist and a red ball cap on my head. On one side of my belt, I stuffed a plastic ax; on the other side was a toy handgun that thudded when the trigger was pulled. Some […]
What’s exciting about the potential of this theorycraft is that, sort of like writing, knowing the (rhetorical) situation can make you better prepared to respond to the variable you may face, whether it be a wily audience or a rogue barrel.