Featured Blog Posts (9)

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… Continue

Right to it:



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… Continue

A lot of folks who have a scholarly mind towards games spent last week preparing for and attending the Games For Change…

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Hope everyone had a pleasant weekend. There's a lot to cover, so let's get to it:

Well Played 1.0 was announced this week. It's a collection of games writing drawing from an all-star cast, and it's gotten a lot of attention (perhaps in part because so many of its authors have prominent blogs):

• http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/wellplayed1.0…

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I had been suspicious about the balance of cost and benefit in weekly attempts to sculpt the non-Newtonian mass of links I collect into some sort of coherent story. Now that a crash has made me re-write my post, I'm fairly certain that I like this more streamlined approach better. With that due ado:

Narrative & Story:

• Part 3 in Randy Smith's take on unfun…

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Last week's biggest buzz was a tight competition between the closing of 3D Realms (developer of Duke Nukem Forever) and Daniel Benmergui's latest game, Today I Die, which… Continue

Let's get this out of the way:

The gang at Critical-Distance ran across a long-form blog post lamenting the lack of writing and thinking in the gap between academic critical theory of games and consumer-oriented and hype-filled popular reviews. If you're at this site, or at… Continue

Let's say something came up and you had to miss your classroom discussion last week -- or just couldn't concentrate and want to make sure you caught everything big, but you don't want to be left out and confused at the next session. That's when you hope a friend took notes for you. I am that friend. If you missed last week's games discussions on the internet, you can check my notes:



Six Days in Fallujah and Realism:

Two weeks ago, the internet was afire with news… Continue

The senior fellows of the Video Games and Human Values Initiative are pleased to announce that we are now accepting submissions for publication as Proceedings of the Video Games and Human Values Initiative. We invite anyone working in areas that touch on the relationship between video games and human values to submit papers for non-exclusive publication in the peer-reviewed setting of our Proceedings, which will be published online here.



Submissions and inquiries may be sent… Continue