Got some more links to burn through today, and even more after this. And I still owe Z. a reply on why the “games as art” question is worth asking at all. And I’ve got half-finished posts lying around about video game genres and Nintendo’s “urban” clothing. I’ll address these in more, all in good time. For now, lots of links in no particular order.
Continue reading “October Link Madness Continues: Comics, TV, Academia, and More” →
I’ve been spending this month on a paper-revising frenzy, applying to jobs, and (this weekend) dogsitting for some friends, so the blogging has kind of taken a back seat. In the meantime, of course, the useful links just keep piling up. I’ve got so many to share, in fact, that I’ll just start with the gaming-related ones today.
Continue reading “Another October Link Drop: Games Edition” →
It sounds like some sort of mutant dining utensil, but no. Genevieve sends word of an exchange between her roommate and the ten-year-old daughter of some friends. When the adult in the conversation asked where a certain band was from (who apparently appears on the Disney Channel sometimes) and whether they were new, the young’un explained that they had a couple movies out, like, a million years ago, and that you’ve got to keep up with the times if you don’t want to be a nork. A nork? Duh, it’s a cross between a nerd and a dork.
This is, I am told, a social underclass among children even lower than the nerd, which may suggest that nerd coolness is sort of starting to permeate kids’ school culture, at least at this kid’s school. Not that it’s any better for kids labeled as norks (or just dorks) to be the ones that get picked on, of course, but a potentially interesting development nonetheless.
I’m not really in the business of doing “reviews” here per se, but I have been thinking I need to say something about Bioshock, the long-awaited first-person shooter from 2K Games (once known as Irrational). Jerry “Tycho” Holkins offered Bioshock alongside two of my own personal favorite games, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus by Team Ico, as evidence that games can be Art. Meanwhile, forums and blog comments have been hosting debates over whether the game actually lives up to the promise of “choice” that many credit it with.
I played through twice, once for each ending. And now I’m going to write about it, but there will probably be some spoilers. Mostly I plan to explain how certain mechanics conflicted with the plot or overall game experience, but I do need to discuss the implications of a major plot twist in slightly more detail (though I’ll try to talk around the details of that plot twist with as much vagueness as I can muster). Ultimately, I think that playing and discussing Bioshock gets at some interesting questions about narrative gaming more generally.
What can I say? The links just pile up sometimes, and they must go somewhere.
I’ve been letting some links I wanted to post fall by the wayside as I work on revising a paper for resubmission, applying for jobs for next year, and putting together a presentation describing research done through Annenberg’s SummerCulture 2007: Lisbon program. (For those who wished us luck: Thanks, and the presentations went well!) Anyway, read on for some things that may be of interest.
The new issue of Wired has a couple articles I found interesting, covering the Rock Band video game and Robot Chicken on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. To me, both of these cases represent new ways of making old media more accessible, so to speak. In the case of Rock Band, Alex Rigopulos, the CEO of Harmonix, compares the product to early MTV:
“Sitting down and watching music was a new thing — it changed the mass market’s notion of what music entertainment was,” he says. As we sit in his office, he describes how Rock Band could be the next stage of evolution for the music industry, as well as the game industry. […] “In five years, this is how people are going to consume the music they love.”
And in the case of Robot Chicken, we go from playing with toys to watching other people play with their toys:
“The show looks like what nearly every kid did: You got out your cars and G.I. Joes and smashed them together,” says Chicken fan Mike Johnson, codirector of the 2005 stop-mo blockbuster Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. “The show works because it captures the joy of playing with your toys.”
In both cases, these products are about enabling us to do things we weren’t otherwise able to do as adults. “Playing music is one of the most blissful feelings life has to offer,” Rigopulos says, “But it’s too fucking hard to learn how. Almost everyone quits after six months.”
The barrier to playing with our toys, however, is one of social acceptability rather than difficulty level. We’re able to play with our toys, but perhaps we don’t feel we’re allowed to—unless it can be done through appropriately adult media. This means television in the case of Robot Chicken, or even video games in the case of Lego Star Wars, thanks to gaming’s new status as an adult pursuit. (Something tells me you’ll be hearing me describe a paper about this in a couple months.)
Just came out of a very busy weekend leading into a very busy week, but I wanted to drop a couple quick links before they fall off my radar:
I wrote a post a few weeks ago about Lori Kendall’s most recent article on nerds and race. If you’re interested in learning about what other people have to say about her earlier nerd-oriented research, check out some reviews of her book Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub, online through the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. (Thanks to Bill Herman for passing along the link, and reminding me I need to sign up for the cyberculture listserv!) Ben Kruger and Molly Swiger contribute reviews, followed by a response by the author.
One of the interesting things about Lori’s book is that it challenges the popular joke that “On the internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog”—or, for that matter, a man, a woman, a teenager, etc. Check out this thread at the XKCD forums, too, for some personal responses to a recent comic about how men often treat women as sex objects (or boys pretending to be girls) on the internet.
Publishers weekly declares that “nerds rule at the bookstore” with two upcoming releases: David Anderegg’s Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them, and Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People. (Links via Hipster Please, via Church.) Anderegg’s book, released in late December this year, focuses on how “nerd” is still associated with anti-intellectual harassment among kids, ignoring the positive connotations of the term in the adult world. Nugent’s, released in March 2008, is part memoir, part journalistic account of nerd subcultures and the function of pursuits like Dungeons & Dragons.
Between these and Mary Bucholtz’s upcoming book, I’ve got a lot of reading ahead of me. After I finish the dissertation next summer, I hope to find their good company on the bookstore’s increasingly full “Nerd” shelf.
Nothing seems quite as amusing to non-geeks as seeing a bookish misfit paired with a beautiful woman. And, outside of sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory and movies like 40-Year-Old Virgin, some seem to think best way to arrange that scenario is to put some money on the table. Let’s check out today’s two examples.
Continue reading “Girls ❤ Geeks (for Payment or Services Rendered)” →
Geek Studies