This week at VGHVI

[Roger Travis]

We're still discussing symbol and allegory, and Jeff Howard has added his response; I'm a week later than I thought, with mine, but I hope to get it up tomorrow.

The Living Epic three-week course kicked off yesterday: discussion should be moving to the forum here very soon, so feel free to read along and see what the class is up to--I'm hoping once the sheer awesomeness of the course is fully visible, everyone will want to sign up all their friends and relations.

Also tomorrow, I'll post the second part of my conversation with Peter Molyneux.

Thursday, I'll be gaming on XBox Live at a new earlier time, 9:30 Eastern (0230GMT). Depending on who's on, we'll be playing Fable 2 and/or Left4Dead and/or anything else we can (I did just get Rock Band 2, by the way).

Finally, conversations among the senior fellows are going on back-channel to put together an organized discussion towards a VGHVI perspective (to be enshrined on the wiki, and also in print) on the Serious/Persuasive Games movement. If the terms are new to you, have a look at http://www.seriousgames.org when you get a chance, and also look at a bit of our own James Portnow's lecture from Meaningful Play 2008. If we can get this going, it would be a perfect lead-in to organizing the proto-symposium "Defining Play," which I'm still hoping will happen in May. I'm envisioning kicking "VGHVI and Serious/Persuasive Games" off on 1/15. Formal, footnoted contributions wouldn't be required--at this point, engaged conversation is what I'm hoping for; the footnotes will come later (yes, this means publication, people! :D). If you're interested in being a part of the organization, or want to commit to the discussion, please let me know!

[David Carlton]

I'm up for Rock Band 2 at 9:30, and Left 4 Dead (assuming you warn me in advance) or Call of Duty 4 starting at around 11:00 or so.

I assume you've downloaded the original Rock Band songs to your hard drive?

[Roger Travis]

I need to do that today!

[Matthew Teutsch]

I tried to download the original Rock Band songs, but my disc was so scratched, from a unfortunate experience with a toddler (not naming names because I am related to her in a paternal role), that I could only transfer about half of the songs.