There’s no overarching theme to today’s links; I’m just trying to clear up my bookmarks and tabs, and this stuff seemed worth sharing (albeit hurriedly).
Category: Games
Gary Gygax
Today I received an email from my friend Chris that Gary Gygax has passed away. The obituary Chris sent refers to Gary’s most famous creations, Dungeons & Dragons, as “the quintessential geek pastime” (with affection, I believe).
When I got home, I had four more IMs waiting for me from friends (thanks Dan, Tony, Jordan, and Jacob) notifying me of the same, and found that Z. and Lev had already written some nice words on his passing on their respective geek culture blogs.
I wish I had more to say about Gary Gygax himself, but I honestly don’t even know much about him as a figure in the gaming world. I will say, though, that while I get a lot of tips for geeky content here, it’s rare that I see so many people reacting so quickly to the same news. I suppose not everyone’s taking this news entirely seriously (what with all the “saving throw” jokes flying around), but it’s still something of a testament to the influence his work has had, both directly and indirectly, on our lives and our subcultures.
Update, especially for Boston-area readers: Pandemonium Books and Games is having a gathering in Gary Gygax’s honor, potentially this Saturday. Read more.
Will [insert geeky medium] ever grow up?
Kotaku recently compiled a bunch of articles and quotes from critics in a debate about whether games would ever “grow up.” To summarize, some arguments include:
- Comics and games are “infantilized” because artsy content is the exception, with most of these media targeted to teenage boys;
- But games “have more to achieve” as a medium, and some creators are pushing for that;
- Moreover, dominance of the low-brow “isn’t inherent” to these media, but actually is common across all entertainment media;
- And in the meantime, part of the problem is that consumers “expect too little” of games (as evidenced by Bioshock, which is not nearly as sophisticated as its reception might have suggested).
My response to this is sort of a follow-up to recent posts addressing the perceived immaturity or unmasculinity of geeky pursuits like games and comics. In short, I agree with just about all of these to some extent, but I’d contend that these stereotypes can be escaped through creative and marketing efforts. Just look at the “graphic novel.”
Child-men, Man-teens, and the Masculine Ideal
I’ve accumulated so many links that I feel the need to do some “themed” link posts. Today’s theme: Writers who think grown men playing games are juvenile!
Continue reading “Child-men, Man-teens, and the Masculine Ideal”
D&D “Nerdrage”
Slashdot recently posted a Q&A between its readers and the designers of the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Several of the questions are irritable in tone, especially as many feel this comes hot on the heels of the last major D&D overhaul. (The post is tagged with: “rpg, nerds, complaining, nerdrage, greed.”)
The only question which didn’t get an answer, though, was the one that I found most interesting, especially given the talk I’m delivering next week on the relative acceptability/respectability of geeky interests:
Short intro, I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. Play a lot of computer games. Enjoy reading up on lore and the like. But I never got into D&D. I had friends that played it but I was never into it. I tried playing it a few times and had some fun experiences. But there’s always been a sort of negative stigma associated with it among … well, the general populace. What are you doing to break free of this? Or do you embrace it? What are your thoughts & opinions on this strange negative publicity that popular movies push onto D&D players? Do you ever try to break free of that?
WotC:
(Note from Gamer_Zer0: Sorry Zonk, I tried my best to get this question answered for you, but apparently the Sci-Fi channel was having an original Battlestar Galactica marathon and the entire D&D team was no where to be found!)
… Is that a joke? Some sort of glib suggestion that geeky pursuits are cool enough to be mainstream now (though the original question certainly singled out D&D as especially stigmatized)? From a business standpoint, I guess I can understand why Wizards of the Coast might want its employees to dodge such a question, but I’d surely be interested in how the stigma of role-playing games figures into marketing (and perhaps even design) decisions.
A Couple Brief Notes
Posting has been sparse here as I take care of a series of important tasks and imminent deadlines. I hope to report some good news soon, at least, about some ongoing research efforts. (Plus, I have about a thousand links to share with you over here.) In the meantime, I wanted to just jot a couple brief notes on things I was afraid I might forget otherwise.
What I Learned from Kane & Lynch: I played Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for the Xbox 360 a few weeks back, and I realized I learned some things about my own tastes in gaming from it.
- I don’t mind repetitive gameplay if there is really interesting dialog over it; the shooting makes the dialog feel more intense.
- While I enjoy Halo 3, Half Life 2, and certain other games where you save the world/galaxy/universe, in general, I am tired of playing the messiah, and glad to play another sort of character.
- I find myself disappointed by games—like Kane & Lynch—that set up a grand plot and then only deliver on half of it. Movies are generally no more than two hours, and games are generally between twice and forty times as long as that. Why can games not tell a complete story in that time span?
Jedis in the Park: While wandering around Rittenhouse Square last night, pondering over how to phrase something I am writing, I came upon a group of people swinging around light sabers. I asked if they were part of some organized light saber group or if they were just, you know, random light saber enthusiasts. They immediately held out the handle of a light saber, inviting me to join, and gave me a colorful flyer, directing me to PAjedi.com. I was too busy to join, but they were so friendly (and strong with the Force) that I wanted to give them a link.
Links: Geek Shame, the Lulz, and Two Meanings for “Hardcore”
This weekend’s link drop is brought to you by Church, Jordan, Cabral, various Gawker blogs, and the letter Q.
Confessions of a Sci-Fi Addict:
Let’s start with this link-ful post from the Website at the End of the Universe, brought to us courtesy Church. The main link is to a newspaper column titled “Admitting addiction to fantasy, sci-fi books” (“after years secreted in the book closet”). I was just as interested in the links that accompanied this on the referring site, though (such as these great old Worldcon photos), and the claim that “While not exactly in leauge with the civil rights or suffragette movements, geek acceptance has come a long way from the early days of fandom.”
Continue reading “Links: Geek Shame, the Lulz, and Two Meanings for “Hardcore””
Geek Weekend
The problem with being a lone ethnographer working on a multi-site project is that you can only be in one place at a time. This weekend is an exciting and devastating example of that problem, as a number of geeky events are going down around the various places I frequent (and beyond).
Make:Philly: Philadelphia, PA. This Sunday, Make:Philly will be doing an intro to NES video graphics. The Maker Challenge will involve hacking a NES ROM to alter its graphics. It hurts my soul to know that I will miss this. Tune in to Geekadelphia to find out how it goes if you can’t make it, either.
Geek Week: Utica, NY. Church emails me to let me know that this is “Geek Week” at SUNYIT. Lots of gaming, science-fiction, and rocket-building will ensue.
“The idea is to bring people together to enjoy the things they’re passionate about,†Brenda Dow, alumni and advancement services officer, said in a news release.
“Everyone has a hobby or a pastime they engage in to the point of ‘geekiness,’ whether it’s technology, sci-fi movies, gaming or something else.â€
Arisia 2008: Boston, MA. In Boston, this weekend hosts Arisia, which happens to be the first science-fiction convention I ever attended. The panel I most regret having to miss this year is titled, “What am I? A fan? A geek? A nerd?” Check it out Sunday at 7:00:
What is a geek? A nerd? A fan? A hardcore fan? Which one are you? What does it mean, and should you even care? Discuss how labels affect fandom and what can be done to benefit from or break down the structures that distinguish us.
MIT Mystery Hunt: Cambridge, MA. My time, however, will be spent at the MIT Mystery Hunt, which I have been meaning to (and unable to) attend in person for several years in a row. Depending on where I get a job after I graduate this year, I figure it may be my last chance to attend it for awhile (or at all), and my last chance to get in some time at MIT before I finish the dissertation.
I am also remiss in my blogging duties as of late, thanks to all my recent travels and other work duties. In the coming days/weeks, anyway, expect some updates and photos from the last Make:Philly, Nerd Nite Boston, the Consumer Electronics Show, and the Mystery Hunt.
A Gaming Survey
I got a message yesterday from Nick Bowman, a doctoral student at Michigan State University I met this past year at the International Communication Association conference. He says:
Myself and a colleague, Daniel Schultheiss, are working on gathering gamer data on on-line video game players. At this point, Daniel has a wealth of information on German game players, but he is/we are hoping to expand this subject pool to include gamers from other parts of the world. If you could help perhaps spread the word about our survey, it would be a great help to both of us.
If you could consider forwarding the survey link to your students and colleagues – or anyone else interested in on-line gaming – this would be very helpful to us. The survey link is http://www.unipark.de/uc/entertainment_online/, and currently there are German and English language versions. The survey should take less than 10 minutes. Subjects who choose to complete the survey are entered into a raffle to win free audio-book downloads (he has something in the neighborhood of 55,000 free downloads he can give away), and all identities will be kept private.
If you have any further questions, please contact me at bowmann5 at msu dot edu.
I bolded the parts I thought might be particularly relevant. Please feel free to take the survey yourself or to pass it along to others. Thanks!
Time, Top Tens, and Tastes
On Joystiq‘s post covering Time’s top 10 games of 2007, the writer and commenters repeatedly lambaste the magazine for putting Halo 3 at the top of that list. They are working under the assumption that a “mainstream” magazine simply reverts to default selections—i.e., what made the most money—when reviewing games. I find this an interesting response because it suggests that what I’ve often thought of as a somewhat unified “geeky blogosphere” may actually be more fragmented. That is, nobody commenting on Time‘s list seems aware that the list was written (and, I assume, the results chosen by) Time‘s resident nerd, Lev Grossman, co-writer for an entire geek culture blog for the magazine. Lev comments on his top 10 lists for comics and games on that same blog.
Granted, the top 10 lists for comics and games were a little more mainstream-oriented than in some previous years. The games list only includes first-tier titles, not downloads (Pac-man CE, Space Giraffe, and flOw might have been contenders, for example). The graphic novel list features four titles by Marvel/DC (five if you count Wildstorm, distributed by DC). Andrew Arnold, who handled Time‘s graphic novels list in some previous years, focused more on indie titles, perhaps as part of his mission to introduce new audiences to comics they would be less likely to find out about otherwise. Perhaps such a mission seems less pressing now, in a time when the magazine has abandoned its artsy comics blog in favor of an overtly nerdy blog—or perhaps this is simply a reflection of one man’s tastes versus another’s.
Geek Studies 