Month: July 2006

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media is allowing free access until Jan 07. Usually you need a university subscription to access journal papers but they’re offering complete access to anyone. These are great papers, by the usual wonderful ludologists and some emerging Ozzie (currently Ozzie) ones too. Go Anders!

Here are the papers delivered in the 3 issues so far:

• Anders Tychsen, Michael Hitchens, Thea Brolund, and Manolya Kavakli: Live Action Role-Playing Games: Control, Communication, Storytelling, and MMORPG Similarities
• Adriana de Souza e Silva and Girlie C. Delacruz: Hybrid Reality Games Reframed: Potential Uses in Educational Contexts
• Robert Alan Brookey and Paul Booth: Restricted Play: Synergy and the Limits of Interactivity in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Video Game
• Constance Steinkuehler: The Mangle of Play
• Barry Atkins: What Are We Really Looking at?: The Future-Orientation of Video Game Play
• Thomas Malaby: Parlaying Value: Capital in and Beyond Virtual Worlds
• Edward Castronova: On the Research Value of Large Games: Natural Experiments in Norrath and Camelot
• Frans Mäyrä: A Moment in the Life of a Generation (Why Game Studies Now?)
• Fred Turner: Why Study New Games?
• Cory Ondrejka: Finding Common Ground in New Worlds
• Mark J. P. Wolf: Game Studies and Beyond
• Tanya Krzywinska: The Pleasures and Dangers of the Game: Up Close and Personal
• Dmitri Williams: Why Game Studies Now? Gamers Don’t Bowl Alone
• Celia Pearce: Productive Play: Game Culture From the Bottom Up
• Greg Lastowka: Law and Games Studies
• Tom Boellstorff: A Ludicrous Discipline? Ethnography and Game Studies
• Yasmin B. Kafai: Playing and Making Games for Learning: Instructionist and Constructionist Perspectives for Game Studies
• Ian Bogost: Comparative Video Game Criticism
• David Myers: Signs, Symbols, Games, and Play
• Toby Miller: Gaming for Beginners
• Joost Raessens: Playful Identities, or the Ludification of Culture
• James Paul Gee: Why Game Studies Now? Video Games: A New Art Form
• Bart Simon: Beyond Cyberspatial Flaneurie: On the Analytic Potential of Living With Digital Games
• Nick Yee: The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play
• Patrick Crogan: The Question of Computer Games
• Henry Lowood: Game Studies Now, History of Science Then
• David J. Leonard: Not a Hater, Just Keepin’ It Real: The Importance of Race- and Gender-Based Game Studies
• Cynthia Haynes: Armageddon Army: Playing God, God Mode Mods, and the Rhetorical Task of Ludology
• Constance A. Steinkuehler: Why Game (Culture) Studies Now?

You can register for free access here

Just a quick note first, apologies for the continual loss of transmission over these past couple of months. I have a shocking VPS and am in the process of moving all my sites to a new, very fantastic one. But anyway, back to this post. The latest issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac has a special issue on locative arts. It is guest edited by Drew Hemment.

• Anne Galloway and Matt Ward Locative Media as socialising and spatializing practice
• Alison Sant Mapping The Emerging Urban Landscape
• Leslie Sharpe Swimming In The Grey Zones
• Lily Shirvanee Locative Viscosity: Traces Of Social Histories In Public Space
• Julian Bleecker and Jeff Knowlton A Brief Bibliography And Taxonomy Of Gps-Enabled Locative Media
• Malcolm Mccullough On Urban Markup: Frames Of Reference In Location Models For Participatory Urbanism
• Michele Chang and Elizabeth Goodman Asphalt Games: Enacting Place Through Locative Media
• Steve Benford, Martin Flintham, Adam Drodz, Nick Tandavanitj, Matt Adams and Ju Row Farr The Design And Experience Of The Location-Based Performance Uncle Roy All Around You
• Lalya Gaye and and Lars Erik Holmquist Performing Sonic City: Situated Creativity In Mobile Music Making
• Sally-Jane Norman Locative Media & Instantiations Of Theatrical Boundaries
• Misha Myers Homing Devices For Unhomely Times

Read it now!

A while ago I given a brief to talk about ‘Findability’ to film & TV practitioners for the Center for Screen Business Digital Distribution Seminar Series. I spoke about the creative ways some practitioners have made themselves ‘findable’ on the Net. A pdf of my ppt is online, along with a mp3 of part of my talk. You can get this info here, along with info by other speakers as well. My talk is after Peter Giles on the mp3.