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"LÖVE is an unquestionably awesome 2D game engine, which allows rapid game development and prototyping in Lua." And it all looks rather pretty, too. Must investigate further!
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danah's PhD dissertation. I need to bookmark this, and have not read it yet, but am sure, at some point, I am going to plough through it, for work, recreation, or (most likely) a bit of both. Until then: just a bookmark.
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"I still have nothing but respect for my more traditional industry colleagues, but I’ve stopped worrying about impressing the games industry and its pundits. Or at least, I’ve stopped worrying about impressing them first. Instead, I’ve started focusing more on the people who might be interested in different kinds of game experiences. People who fly for business more than three times a month, or people who read all of the Sunday newspaper, or people who have kids with food allergies, for example. I am sure these people read magazines and watch television and listen to the radio. But it would be short-sighted to label them ziners or tubers or airwavers. They are just people, with interests, who sometimes consume different kinds of media." Bogost is right, and I'm concerned I'm always going to be ashamed I chose to use that word.
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"It is a commonplace that if it weren’t for computers we couldn’t fly to the moon, or even keep an accurate record of the national debt. On the question of how it does what it does, however, the computer has always remained essentially mysterious—unfathomable to all but a small handful of initiates. An officer of one major computer concern guessed recently that not more than 2% of his employees really know how it works." 2% seems awfully high these days. Detailed, technical article from Life in 1967.
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"This is not intended to be a fun game. It has all the trappings of a LEGO game. It has the forgiving game mechanics. The ease of control. But it uses these elements to create a cognitive dissonance between the ease of the actions and the terrible nature of their real world counterparts." Corvus hypothesises what A Lego Clockwork Orange might look like. Thoughtful stuff.
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"So why not embrace it? That's why You Have To Burn The Rope is fantastic… for games to become art there must be an awareness and a conversation with its own history. Film, music, and literary critic call this allusion, but for the creators, this isn't just a word, it's a dialogue. Which means it should invite participants. For me, I'm far more intrigued by stop-motion artist Patrick Boivin's attempt at turning a linked sequence of videos into Youtube Street Fighter." I'm not sure I agree with Wang on YHTBTR, specifically, but this paragraph is reasonably sensible.
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65 years since the end of the siege of Leningrad, this LJ post shows photographs from the late 1940s merged with images of the location in the present. All are striking; some are very sad. Great contextualisation, though.
Holly Gramazio | 30 Jan 2009
The main point of the Bogost article is interesting and compelling, but I don’t think it works as (or perhaps is intended to be?) a serious argument against “gamer” as a word.
“I am sure these people read magazines and watch television and listen to the radio. But it would be short-sighted to label them ziners or tubers or airwavers” – well, no, we call them readers and viewers and listeners, and understand that “viewers”, for example, is a useful shorthand for “people who watch television – which is most of us, yes – specifically in their capacity as watchers of television”. We need an equivalent word for “people who play video games, considered specifically within the context of their game-playing”; “player” sounds a bit silly (and more like it’s intended to include non-electronic games), so for the moment “gamer” it is.
One can imagine an early reader discussing the possibilities of reading and its capacity to change the world, and how would it be a problem for that to be framed as “Iff ye Worlde Was Runne bye Readeres”?
Imagine, if ye wille, a Worlde in which those who Rule us know of Reading notte only as a Theorie they have been Tolde Of by a single one or two of their Myriad Advisors – but who have themselves been Readinge since the Cradle. Att ye age of 3, might they not have traced Hieroglyphs withe their owne Tinye Fingeres? Att ye age of 5, mighte they not have stumbled over the storye of Isis and Osiris and discovered it for their owne Selves, hearinge it notte from their Parentes or Nursemaide but insteade summoning its Truths withoute Aide?
Whatte might these Readeres have Learnt?
In tymes of Scarcity, mighte notte the Readere have the Capacitie to Referre to Historie, ande see what Scarcity has gone before and what times of Plentie wille comme Againe?
When faced with Complexities beyonde Imagining, might not the Readere have learnt that hee need not holde the entiretie of the Worlde inside his headde, but instead maye Outsource his Insights to claye and papyrus and there with more efficiencie Marshall them towards a brighte Future?
In tymes of Inefficiencye, when our Capacitie to Relye on Others is limitted, where manye would Panick, mighte not the Readere – throughe her summoning of Truthes without Aide – have learnt the potential for Selfe-Sufficiencye?
Obviously there are many problems with this, not least the conflation of pastiche Ancient Egypt with pastiche Early Modern England, and the fact that it doesn’t really work as an analogy because literacy spread an awful lot more slowly than playing video games. But none of them are to do with the use of the word “reader”.