Playing at Leadership: Games, Gaming, & Leadership Studies
"Reality, unlike games, is broken." – Jane McGonigal
Linking over to yesterday’s The Learned Fangirl post on “Violence, Virtual Space, and ‘Serious Games.’” It’s a more positive spin on my usual rants about why we shouldn’t blame games to talk a bit more about why games are a … Read More »
I was talking to a game designer I know the other day, and he said something interesting about violence in gaming: “The reason that we shoot people in games is because it’s the ultimate one-ups-man-ship….Ending someone’s life is the ultimate … Read More »
So today my class actually sat down and played Settlers of Catan to explore issues of resource management and game theory. At the end of class, one student actually borrowed the game from me to play with his roommates. They … Read More »
This week, Gamasutra ran a blog post about gaming and academia by Rami Ismail. In it, Ismail talks about an encounter he had with an academic at IndieCade East: Last week, I gave a talk at the first ever New … Read More »
Today’s classroom game brought to you by my Critical Thinking and Methods of Inquiry class, with whom I will be conducting more trials of games in the classroom. Last week we played a disaster-simulation game with two decks of cards … Read More »
I keep waiting for the furor around the supposed link between violence and videogames to dissipate, like most of our society’s other bizarre fantasies and fads, but for some reason, this one seems to be clinging more tenaciously than most. … Read More »
As it turns out, my first post of 2013 is going to follow up on my last one from 2012, on the knee-jerk reaction to the tragedy at Sandy Hook claiming that school shootings are at least partly the consequence … Read More »
So since a friend of mine (Todd Harper) wrote an Open Letter to Riot concerning the ambiguous sexuality of Taric, which was then picked up by Kotaku, I feel like jumping on the “come out of the closet” bandwagon, namely … Read More »
My freshmen class has been playingBioshock for the past several classes, so we’ve been discussing game mechanics, ethics, and the viability of utopian ideals. One of the essential characteristics of a utopia, naturally enough, is exclusivity, and so rather than … Read More »
The last five years or so have seen an increase in crowd-sourcing (from places like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo) and crowd-source gaming (like Improv Anywhere or city-wide scavenger hunts, like those sponsored by SVNGR). Today I received a tweet from KindnessGirl … Read More »
Today, Kotaku linked to a New York Times article by one of its own, or, rather, a debate between Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo and Yahoo‘s Chris Suellentrop on the fiscal future of gaming. A part of this discussion was the assertion … Read More »
So IGN has been holding a presidential election with videogame characters as the candidates. Each candidate represents a platform – not a party platform, but a gaming platform. For Xbox 360, Commander Shepard (Mass Effect) has just narrowly edged out … Read More »
So today’s post is the consequence not of someone’s blog post, but of an email sent out to the Digital Games Research Association list. Apparently, the emailer (Jason Wilson) notes, there has been recent concern in Australia with trolling, which, … Read More »
I‘ve posted about Junta before. But this time, things are a bit different and infinitely more awesome. Most of the time, when the game ends, someone wins. That’s how games work. Sometimes, the GM goes a little crazy, develops a … Read More »
This was sent to me by a colleague’s husband, who I’m sure realizes that it’s going to end up on this blog: “A Call to Arms for Decent Men” by Ernest W. Adams. At the top of the article on … Read More »