Monthly Archives: June 2009

The Implausibility of Liberal Revolution

I’ve been struck in the past week at some of the similarities between Iran and Zimbabwe. Yes, there are vast differences in geopolitical status, economic health, histories of 20th Century statehood, religious and social ideology and much else besides. But … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, Politics | 2 Comments

Gaming Roundup

So I’m catching up after a week of household projects and hiking with family. First, some miscellaneous thoughts about digital games and virtual worlds after State of Play. 1. The theme for State of Play was “Plateau” and unlike most … Continue reading

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The Tournament of Lunches Begins!

We have some summer family projects: learning to ride a bike and such. One of the projects is to find some good lunches to take to school next year. So I designed a bracket-based Tournament of Lunches for this summer–I’ll … Continue reading

Posted in Domestic Life, Food | 1 Comment

Liveblogging State of Play, Day 2, Lunch Session

Talking about new media reporting and games. Julian Dibbell: the hook of these stories is maybe completely done in the terms that we’ve seen so far (e.g., “this is the future! there are people with stores in Second Life!!!!” but … Continue reading

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Liveblogging at State of Play, Day 2, Session 2

Session on kid and tween worlds. Joost van Dreunen. Stepping away idea of designer as author, moving towards the idea of supplying tools to players or participants. Video games as meaning-making experiences. Interested in how kid worlds/tween worlds actually make … Continue reading

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Liveblogging State of Play, Day 2, Session 1

I’m at the developer roundtable. Dan Norton, Raph Koster, Jesse Houston, Nick Fortugno, Mike Sellers [Me: Thank god for these guys, just as an aside: developers interested in exploratory conversations about the form, who don’t just stare at people and … Continue reading

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 3 Comments

State of Play, Day 2

Trying to think about yesterday’s sessions before we get started. What is sticking with me is this: 1. No application, design or game can live up to the utopian imagination of potential users or players, and that utopian imagination is … Continue reading

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Liveblogging From State of Play, Session 4

On Virtual Economies Julian Dibbell’s introduction: maybe virtual economies were not so important, or not as important as we thought in the way that we thought they were. Maybe RMT doesn’t have to be quite the battleground that it was. … Continue reading

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Liveblogging From State of Play, NYC, Session 3

“Breaking the Magic Circle” We had a prior discussion at my table about whether there’s anything much left of use in “the magic circle” as a concept, and someone mentioned a recent discussion by Jesper Juul on the issue. Jerry … Continue reading

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Liveblogging From State of Play, NYC, Session 2

Government and governance in virtual worlds panel. Tori Horton, description of how virtual worlds can link to public diplomacy, reviews weaknesses and strengths of virtual worlds for servicing public diplomacy. My comment: same issue as with Raph’s framing of Metaplace, … Continue reading

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 1 Comment