Video Games and Human Values Initiative

A new kind of conversation about games in culture

Interdisciplinary nexus based at UConn for the study of how video games are building up society. Online courses, symposia, and fellowships.

The Senior Fellows of the VGHVI

Roger Travis (Director), Classics, University of Connecticut

Michael Abbott, Theater, Wabash College

Jeff Howard, Game Design, Dakota State University

Michael Young, Education, University of Connecticut

Kirstie Farrar, Communication Sciences, University of Connecticut

Kevin Roebuck, Sun Microsystems

Gary English, Drama, University of Connecticut

Mark Pearsall, Classics, Glastonbury High School, Glastonbury CT

Manuela Wagner, German, University of Connecticut

Sara Johnson, Classics, University of Connecticut

James Portnow, Divide by Zero Games

Stephen Schafer, English, Digipen University

Members

 

Welcome to VGHVI!

Unfortunately, although we will continue to maintain our Ning presence, we're being held to a small number of members, and can't add anyone. If you'd like to join VGHVI, please subscribe at our blog, VGHVI.org, and join our Facebook group!


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!

Here's a link to the site for the "Living Epic" three-week course, to be offered again at a time TBA; here's one for our multiplayer planning page.

Blog Posts

Adding a new e-place: VGHVI.org

With the changes in Ning, we've decided to open up a new branch office in WordPress, especially for planning our multiplayer nights, which as you know are usually on Thursdays at 9:30 Eastern.


With it comes an easy to remember address: vghvi.org, and an easy way to subscribe either to all VGHVI content or just to event-related content. We hope to see you over there, and especially at an upcoming multiplayer night. This Thursday we're…
Continue

Posted by Roger Travis on August 8, 2010 at 7:30pm

teens and games

I took my son to a friend's house the other night and they had four X-Boxes setup. Gaming is a big deal with teens these days. A Facebook Application Analytics survey revealed that games are growing among teens. I would love to have some insight on how to address the issues at hand with my teens.

How are you all teaching kids to discriminate between decent and repulsive… Continue

Posted by Cammi Madison on April 3, 2010 at 11:45am — 4 Comments

Systems Theory in Virtual Worlds

Hello everyone! I write about virtual worlds at my personal blog Look In The Air. Many of the posts are not directly related to the subject matter of this community, so I don't plan on posting everything I write to VGHVI. For topics that do overlap, I will try and add them. Thankful for the opportunity to contribute!



Richard





As I… Continue

Posted by Richard Huskey on February 10, 2010 at 1:18pm

"Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" as a practomime

In the wake of the exciting "Art History of Games" conference in Atlanta, where some extraordinarily interesting questions about the nature of the several things we call "games" were given room to grow, I want to treat Thursday's group playthrough of the beginning of KOTOR as an opportunity to talk about whether the thing that I'm calling "… Continue

Posted by Roger Travis on February 8, 2010 at 9:47am

Context Clues for January 2010

Hey, did anyone hear that a game called Bayonetta came out? A couple people wrote about it. I don't really want to edge in on Critical Distance's Critical Compilations, though, so I'm going to try and break some of them down into component parts about things like female sexuality and empowerment (which is the bulk of it) and about other issues in the game that showed up in other places this month, such as how games handle religion (yes, that topic is still kicking).



It seems… Continue

Posted by Erik Hanson on February 4, 2010 at 5:19pm — 2 Comments

Forum

What XBox Live (or PC) games should we play on Thursday nights? 7 Replies

Started by Roger Travis. Last reply by GoddTodd Sep 2, 2010.

History and its role in the Utopian and Dystopian settings. 10 Replies

Started by Matthew Teutsch. Last reply by Matthew Teutsch Mar 15, 2010.

Where should teachers interested in structuring a class as a game start? 2 Replies

Started by David Carlton. Last reply by David Carlton Jan 25, 2010.

Latest Activity

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Nov 9, 2010
GoddTodd replied to Roger Travis's discussion What XBox Live (or PC) games should we play on Thursday nights?
"If anyone wants to hook up on the PS3 my PSN id is GoddTodd. Get a Posse together in Red Dead? Burnout: Paradise?"
Sep 2, 2010
GoddTodd updated their profile photo
Sep 2, 2010
Roger Travis posted a blog post

Adding a new e-place: VGHVI.org

With the changes in Ning, we've decided to open up a new branch office in WordPress, especially for planning our multiplayer nights, which as you know are usually on Thursdays at 9:30 Eastern.With it comes an easy to remember address: vghvi.org, and an easy way to subscribe either to all VGHVI content or just to event-related content. We hope to see you over there, and especially at an upcoming multiplayer night. This Thursday we're playing simultaneous Mass…See More
Aug 8, 2010
George Blott updated their profile
Jul 25, 2010
 
 
 

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