Then most people stopped using RSS readers, and discussions and comments moved to social media, where we are at the mercy of algorithms, discussion only happens in small groups, and history disappears quickly.

So I will start blogging again.

Question: How to make people aware of new posts? Are there RSS reader holdouts? Would you be interested in getting emails when I post something?

And many articles on “Why consoles gaming is dying“, “Consoles are dying“?

And yet here we are. Ars Technica has an article comparing sales across console generations, with the current generation doing much better than the previous one, on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

I suspect that the story was that many critics, myself included, were personally jaded by console hardware, and much more interested in indie and experimental games than in the latest military shooter. But our sentiments just weren’t widely that shared. People still want new games on new hardware, even if they only look marginally better than those of the previous generation. The PS4 is slick, and the share button is worth paying for. You also buy a new console because that is where the games are going to be.

Also, cloud gaming never took off (and I suspect it won’t due to latency issues).

Yes, you can be wrong.

PS. And Super Mario Maker is also an exhilarating experience.

Jesper Juul on developing video games to develop video game theory

October 27, 6pm, 14N-233
Juul is a video game theorist and author of Half Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (MIT Press, 2006). He is also a video game developer, and will discuss using lessons from developing online and casual games to inform work with video game theory (and vice versa). Juul is currently a lecturer in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies; he works at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.

12:30-1:45 pm on Friday, March 28, 2008
Indiana University Bloomington, Dept. of Telecommunications, Room RTV 226

Talk: Games for Making Friends and Enemies: A Small Theory of Games in Social Contexts.

It is easy to forget that before the single player video game, most video games were for more than one player. In this work in progress talk, I will argue that many of the more successful multiplayer games, from Parcheesi to Rock Band to Animal Crossing acquire their power by piggybacking on existing social relations, thus acquiring many layers of meaning when played, as well as ambiguously threatening to rewrite these relations. By use of digital and non-digital examples, I will outline a theory of how games acquire meaning from the context in which they are played.

Georgia Tech

Monday, March 31st
TSRB 132
1:30-2:30 pm

Talk: Hardcore players of casual games: Locating the “casual” in casual games.

Casual games are usually described as relaxing games to be played for short periods of time, but studies have shown that many players of casual games play more than 10 hours a week. In essence, it seems that casual players play in “hardcore” ways. In this talk I will discuss the problematic distinction between “hardcore” and “casual” players by examining the new field of casual games and answering the question: Should we talk about casual games or casual players?

I am really looking forwards to working here with a great group of new colleagues and students.

Here is my new office sign:

(Code for embedding from Linn via Jill.)

It’s a wild project, actually: Nick has made an interactive fiction where you can change viewpoint, tense, etc… on the fly. Check it out!

Date: Wednesday, 18 April 2007
Time: 12:00 ? 2:00 PM

Where

University of California, San Diego
San Diego Supercomputer Center Auditorium
10100 Hopkins Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093?0505
Visitor Information

Sorry, but You Can’t Do That: How We Make Sense of Video Games

“We have yet to see a Citizen Kane of video games.”

In this talk, I will argue that there have been many Citizen Kanes of video games. By this, I mean video games created with a deep understanding of the medium, while simultaneous pushing the boundaries of what video games can be: Examples such as StarCraft, and the Legend of Zelda and Grand Theft Auto series fit in that category. These are, however, also Citizen Kanes in the sense that they are hard to play, and that they speak primarily to a specialized market of players with prior experience with video games.
Compared to other media, video games are really missing The Da Vinci Code or Night at the Museum: somewhat shallow but easily enjoyable games that require no specialized knowledge to use or understand. The question therefore becomes to understand gaming literacy: to identify the conventions and cues that trained gamers understand, but which are incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
By playing games with the audience, I will illustrate what it means to be literate in video games, what happens when you pick up a game, how a player makes sense of a game, how small changes in a game design can radically change the gameplay of the game, and how the player changes his or her understanding of the game over time.

Thinking Outside The Game Box

Judith Faifman, an educator and codirector of the Digital Cultures Research and Design Group, will follow with a discussion on the impact of video games on modes of thought. Faifman will also discuss how literacy in new media can promote social inclusion for students from low-income and minority families.

Faifman has sought to integrate new, digital cultures into existing educational environments. Her group is collaborating with the National Ministry of Education in Argentina to develop youth-media production. She is seeking to provide solid, theoretical foundations for digital, pedagogical practice for social inclusion.

So I realized that my email program for years has been set up to make me addicted to the wrong thing: There is a bell when a mail comes in, which gives me your old variable interval reinforcement “ah, yes, that’s the stuff”-feeling. So I get addicted to checking my mail, which is completely unproductive.

I want to be addicted to replying to mail, so I removed the sound for when mail comes in and I’ve set up a sound for when I send an email. Now, sending a mail is much juicier than it used to be, and my email experience is much better.

Technically, I would like the mail program to provide extra feedback for when I reply to a mail vs. sending a mail (can’t see how to do that in Eudora). Why not particle effects, halos, sounds, things that glow, bounces, echoes?

I want a really juicy email experience.

[Update: I now realize that Kyle Gabler, Kyle Gray, Matt Kucic, and Shalin Shodhan discussed juiciness a while ago on Gamasutra.]