The Video Games and Human Values Initiative is an interdisciplinary nexus for online courses and online scholarly activities like symposia, research fellowships, and our journal, Proceedings of the VGHVI (see tab above). All these activities are designed to advance our understanding of how video games and their culture can shape our values constructively for the enrichment of society.
This social network is the hub, but there's one spoke that's of crucial importance, our wiki. If you're here, you should be there, too. Among other things, it's got a page devoted to the logistics of getting all of us playing together. You need to request membership to take full advantage of what a wiki can do, but I promise it's painless.
And once you've done that, I urge you also to subscribe to the RSS feed for the VGHVI blog (also to be found below). It's the best way to keep up-to-date with what's going on here.
This is an open group, so please join up if you want to take part in our new interdisciplinary, interinstitutional, even ecumenical conversation about video games, and to help shape its future. The initiative is for gamers and non-gamers, academics and non-academics, students and teachers, parents and their high-school and college kids. That is, it's for you--so don't hesitate to join if you're excited--or concerned--about what video games are doing in our society.
Here's a little video UConn did about one of the Living Epic courses, CAMS 3208 (Gaming) Homer. Enjoy!
I've been ruminating out loud and with other on Twitter regarding ideas for how to make the link-aggregation of Context Clues 1) less insular to just the RSS feeds I follow and, 2) less work for me. Collaborative ideas have been proposed, and they appeal to me. As an alpha-stage test, here are some links with fewer and shorter summaries. If you want to give a summary in the comments below, I'll edit it in--all Paleolithic wiki-style. (Warning: These haven't had my usual 3+ passes to make sure al… Continue
Posted by Erik Hanson on November 24, 2009 at 12:00pm
I'll be hosting a VGHVI get-together this Thursday on PSN for some Uncharted 2 co-op gaming goodness. U2's co-op mode is rock solid and a lot of fun - and I say this as a gamer who tends not to enjoy online shooters. The solo game has received plenty of well-deserved praise, but its multiplayer is a terrific extension of that experience, and it leverages many of those excellent assets.
If you've played U2's single-player mode, it's an easy transition to multiplayer, with the weapons, interface,… Continue
Big releases continue to drive the discussion this week, with Modern Warfare 2's virtual terrorism, raising questions of social responsibility in simulation, the narrative efficacy of bombast, and the role of games in society. On the other hand, Dragon Age raises questions of which genre and gameplay conventions have become the forgotten banana at the bottom of the backpack, carried forward on accident, unknowing of the mess you're causing with every… Continue
The internet's really outdone itself this past week. I tallied roughly double the number of interesting articles to read through come Saturday (at least 140, I believe). Although this week's edition of Context Clues highlights a large number of those posts, not all of them made it in. (Sorry!) If you'd like to dig a bit deeper into my rabbit-hole life, you can catch some these links and more, you can find the shorter list at the… Continue
Posted by Erik Hanson on November 10, 2009 at 7:00pm
One of the most important parts of the mission of VGHVI is to get our members playing video games together, to have something to talk about in our signature interdisciplinary way and, well, just to have a lot of fun. Over the past year or so we've done that on a pretty much weekly basis, and it's been really wonderful. We've played every kind of multiplayer game there is, from Castle Crashers to Carcassonne. Frankly, when I think of these Thursday nights, what comes instantly to mi… Continue
Posted by Roger Travis on November 7, 2009 at 4:13pm
I've been ruminating out loud and with other on Twitter regarding ideas for how to make the link-aggregation of Context Clues 1) less insular to just the RSS feeds I follow and, 2) less work for me. Collaborative ideas have been proposed, and they...
I haven't played the single player before; hopefully that won't be too much of a hindrance? Looking through the manual, it looks like I should be able to jump straight into the multiplayer (unlike LBP where you have to complete a few stages first)...
The guest host for this week's VGHVI gaming session is Michael Abbott, of the blog The Brainy Gamer! (He's also one of the cofounders of the VGHVI, incidentally.) He's chosen for us to return to the PS3, this time for a round of Uncharted 2.
As u...