January 2011
40 posts
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Jane McGonigal's Mind is Broken →
Really harsh critique of Reality is Broken. I believe that the writer is missing a lot of points - but I have to read the book before I can offer my own opinions. (via Metaviews)
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Opinion: Video Game Ethics And The Coming... →
An interesting discussion in this article and in the comments about ethics and representations of violence. It doesn’t veer too hard into moral panic - instead it addresses cultural values and dominant means of expression in the gaming industry mean. I want to keep chewing on these ideas.
Ohio Mom Kelley Williams-Bolar Jailed for Sending... →
jenniferanne:
lukesimcoe:
Sure, but what happens when everyone wants to do that. I’m not suggesting that the response here is not ridiculous, but the real issue isn’t that a woman was put through the ringer because she wanted to send her kids to a better (funded) school, but rather that the school closest to her was underfunded in the first place.
Stories like this fan the flames of the David...
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Gamification Sucks →
Some stream of consciousness on why I (and others) think gamification is a boring marketing vehicle for increased page views and store visits. Also making an appearance: Johan Huizinga and his theory of play.
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“We live in an industrial society… With very few and very marginal exceptions,...”
– John Fiske’s (1989) Understanding Popular Culture is a thoroughly pre-internet kind of book. Things done changed. (via lukesimcoe)
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“Quite to the contrary, Science and Technology Studies (STS), like political...”
– Vincent Mosco -The Political Economy of Communication 2nd Ed.
fuckyeahtheorists:
“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which...
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“Video game designers have spent the last few decades perfecting the art of...”
– Business Week on gamification. FUUUUUUUUUUU
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COWCLICKIFICATION →
Ian Bogost launches the Cow Clicker brand, lets you know that you too can build your online presence through never-ending cow clicks.
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Death From Above 1979
Are reuniting for Coachella?
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waaayward:
Braids - Glass Deers (Teen Daze...
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One Year, One Canadian →
White guy creates logo based on Tim Hortons, vows to only consume Canadian commodities. (via TDW)
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Digital Labour: The Case of WoW Glider →
My unedited thoughts on labour, virtual worlds and the value we place on both.
Thanks for the kind words on the proposal everybody. I’m really excited about it. I’ll be keeping you posted on it as it comes along.
Neoliberalism and Videogames as Public Good
One section from my recent thesis proposal.
In the popular narrative around videogames the most puzzling for many observers is the rapid growth and entrenchment of videogames in extreme representations of transgressive fantasies of violence and war. Avoiding the pitfalls of the moral panic that exists around these topics, the question of why the growth of such digital representations mirrored the...
I am going to post a section from my thesis proposal tomorrow after I get back from the lab up at York. Who’s excited to have this thing finally begun? This guy. Nevermind that PhD apps are due Friday.
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“[Play]. It adorns life, amplifies it , and is to that extent a necessity both...”
– Johan Huizinga - Homo Ludens
“In the 1990s, when few businesses really knew what they were doing and the...”
– Clay Shirky (via azspot)
I like Shirky and all but DISAGREE. We need spaces of the carnivalesque like /b/ or we lose something important to our society. The mask as cultural prop goes way back for good reason.
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Procedural Rhetoric and America's Army →
So I am currently blogging for Jesse Hirsh’s (of CBC radio, among other things) website Metaviews. It’s a fun little ditty where I get to wax about the stuff I do. Give it a read if you find my Tumblr to be too ‘vague’ and tell me what you think.
Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Palin
gabedelahaye:
“I don’t understand how anybody can be held responsible for somebody who is completely mentally unstable like this,” an adviser to Ms. Palin, Rebecca Mansour, said in an interview with a conservative radio host, Tammy Bruce. Responding to accusatory messages on the Web, Ms. Mansour added: “People actually accuse Governor Palin of this. It’s appalling — appalling. I can’t actually...
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Defiant Publics links
Because some people have been interested I found some links to various chapters of Defiant Publics for you to peruse.
You can download the Introduction here, and Chapter 4, Nixers, Fixers, and the Axes of Conformity here.
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SEGA Brings Gaming To Public Restroom Toilets →
SEGA recently announced that they are testing their Toylets male urinal video game at select locations around Tokyo. Toylets uses a pressure sensor located on the back of the urinal to measure the strength and location of your urine stream. A small LCD screen above the urinal allows you to play several simple video games including a simulator for erasing graffiti and a variation on a sumo...
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“Today, the digital communications revolution is also changing the social...”
– Daniel Drache - Defiant Publics. Re-reading this for a number of reasons (sup thesis), but mainly because I have been tasked with running a research project about Twitter for the next few months by Drache.
the term has not officially started
dinnerpancakes:
…and yet I’m once again working in a coffee shop (a good one for the neighbourhood, with minimal vegan toddlers and Camera Obscura rocking out - in so far as they do - in the background), writing a neverending essay on aesthetics and wondering if this is What I Want To Do. I think I’ve had this moment of crisis conversation with every one of my academically-inclined friends. The...
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“Are we just kissing babies? The cynic might argue that, at best, writing leftist...”
– Ian Bogost - We Think in Public. Read this if you are interested in philosophy, academia, publics, fascism, neoliberalism etc.
“Asked if made in Canada games had any distinctive traits, Canadian developers,...”
– Nick Dyer-Witheford & Zena Sharman in “The Political Economy of Canada’s Video and Computer Game Industry.”
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“But although Canadians like to play games, the games they play are...”
– Nick Dyer-Witheford & Zena Sharman in “The Political Economy of Canada’s Video and Computer Game Industry.”
Against geek austerity: A slight retort to Patton... →
Good critique of Oswalt’s well written and funny (but terribly flawed and anachronistic) Wired article. Appearances by Frederik Jameson, Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno.
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Great Dame: Sabrina Scott
greatdames:
Sabrina Scott is a professional illustrator and amateur herbalist living on the third floor of an old Victorian house in Canada. As a youngster she braved the varied wildernesses of Colorado, Ottawa, California, Montana, and Florida before settling in Toronto as her beloved home. From hanging out in lagoons with herons to having ducks as pets, Sabrina has had many an adventure and...