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 (under construction--see tab above for the announcement). 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!
That summer lull in writing due to school schedules doesn't seem to have materialized. I'm compensating with coffee and overplaying of Judas Priest's "Electric Eye."
Certainly no small amount of activity in the news, beaches and streets this past week, but games thinkers aren't slacking off, either.
Meaning in Games:
I don't often link to interviews, in large part because the signal-to-noise ratio tends to be fairly low, both within the format of interviews generally and within the interviews themselves. That is to say, most internet-published interviews focus on less scholarly issues, and they tend to be lengthy affairs of 5 or more pages even if… Continue
Kimberly Unger (Gamasutra blogs) thinks toys and games are inherently more interesting in the context of a crowd.
My take: I'm not sure if this is specifically related to Clint Hocking's demographic ideas involving "Gen X" games giving way to "Gen Y" games, but Ms. Unger's implicit endorsement of social play certainly seems an artifact of the greater social games movement from Wii part… Continue
Now with fewer complete sentences! (Sorry about that.) If anyone asks, I was distracted by Sims 3; please ignore the paintball welts covering my torso.
James Hoffman (Gamasutra Expert blogs) on the design potential of wealth and abundance/scarcity in games (in terms of currency and other values)
@David @ Michael
As for PS3 games, I only own PS3 exclusives for that system... if they're cross-platform I always go 360, because XBLive doesn't intermittently kick me out of online matches every 45 minutes or so.
When Trine comes to the PS3, i...
Another Thursday, another VGHVI gaming night! Unfortunately, both Roger and I are going to be out this week, so if somebody else can form the party, that would be highly appreciated. Just so that there's a game name here, I'll randomly suggest Bur...
I'll carry the banner for VGHVI. I would like to do some Burnout Paradise challenges. Alternatively, I think it might be fun to do some old-school XBLA titles. Would anyone be down with something like Worms, TMNT, or Street Fighter? Or, y'know, wh...
I would certainly be up for playing something PS3-exclusive - Little Big Planet in particular sounds good to me. My sense is that there are enough of us around who have PS3s that we should be able to get a few people together to play PS3-specific ...
I love the VGHVI Xbox Live gaming action on Thursdays, but any chance of playing a multiplatform game like Burnout Paradise on PS3? Little Big Planet would also be a co-op blast, as would Trine when it appears. Any other PS3 folks around here? I d...
Another Thursday, another VGHVI gaming night! Unfortunately, both Roger and I are going to be out this week, so if somebody else can form the party, that would be highly appreciated. Just so that there's a game name here, I'll randomly suggest Bur...