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!
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
This past week was certainly an exciting one. You may be aware that there are folks out there who still dismiss games as being the same mainly lighthearted distractions that once populated the first video arcades. Seems to me that the mere fact that games cause controversy beyond "Pac-Man Fever" is a solid indication that games have moved forward from the days of Centipede and Joust. Growing up isn't just about growing pains, though. At some point, trying to wear the same shoes… Continue
Posted by Erik Hanson on November 3, 2009 at 9:00am
I've also started trying to collaborate with Ben Abraham (Critical Distance and SLRC) on pulling clips and feeds together. If you'd like to be part of that work (because you like helping, want to see how the sausage is made, of would like to see more clips and links--perhaps for your own link-outs), don't hesitate to let me… Continue
Welcome back! Here's what you may have missed, recently, on The Internet:
Heads up: I've taken out the "pop" in these links, so they won't automatically open in a new tab or page anymore. If you have a strong opinion on the matter, please let me know. Meanwhile, let's cross our fingers and hope that these 40-something links all work properly.
The Game Of Love
We'd best be careful with all this love talk, lest Hallmark catch wind and stick us with another holiday.
I'm a big fan of this video, as you might imagine! Above all, I think it makes it really clear just how big a threat games pose to traditional educational models. I think he's a bit too narrowly focused on assessment here, but the basic idea is th...
(I put this up as a blog post originally, but it makes more sense as a form post, so I'm moving it here; sorry for the confusion...)
I just ran across the following video by James Paul Gee (via HackerChick and Dan Pink), and thought that some peo...
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...
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...
Join your fellow VGHVI members this week in a session of class-based shooting fun playing Team Fortress 2. (And be on the lookout for a special announcement for next week's VGHVI gaming session!)
As always, we're playing at 9:30 Eastern / 6:30 Pac...
on Friday
DocBadwrench is now a member of Video Games and Human Values Initiative