read the web

Place and Space in New Media Writing

Friday, July 21st, 2006 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

I guest-edited a just-released issue of the Iowa Review Web focused on the ways that different forms of new media writing reconfigure concepts of place and space. Another way of looking at the issue, however, is as a Grand Text ...

Ode to the Joystick

Sunday, June 5th, 2005 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Today's New York Times offers an article that investigates the origins of the joystick and credits it as one of the most overlooked acheivements of the last century.

MiT4: the work of stories

Thursday, May 12th, 2005 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Drew Davidson passes along word of the recent fourth Media in Transition conference at MIT. From the list of abstracts and papers, it looks like the conference was indeed an interesting gathering, including quite a bit of work on nonlinearity ...

“Interactive Drama” in Matrix Online

Saturday, March 5th, 2005 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Gamespy reports that Warner Brothers has employed a full-time troupe of 20 actors who will interact live with players of Matrix Online. "These people will assume the roles of popular characters, interact with players, and generally move the stories in ...

Still More Scrabble

Monday, December 20th, 2004 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Alright, I guess I'm discovering that people do, in fact, use the internet for other things than reading interactive literature. I think I'm getting addicted to Games.com which has not only Scrabble but a fastpaced cross between Scrabble and Boggle, ...

Newsgaming

Friday, September 10th, 2004 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Kind of cool -- earlier in the week, I heard a comment from Stan Corkin, who used to be chair of graduate studies when I was at U of Cincinnati, on NPR's Morning Edition. Tonight, listening to The World, I heard ...

Playboy’s Girls of Gaming

Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

CNN is running a story on the upcoming October issue of Playboy, which will feature a photospread on the Women of Gaming -- that is the virtual characters. Perhaps it won't be too long before all of Playboy's photospreads are ...

Language (Video) Games for the Military

Tuesday, July 6th, 2004 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

In "Virtual Camp Trains Soldiers in Arabic," the Times reports on a video game being developed at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering as a tool for teaching soldiers to speak Arabic. The game also uses AI, giving ...

One Word

Monday, March 29th, 2004 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Jill stumbled upon one word, a nifty little writing game. Each day the site features one word. Each participant gets 60 seconds to freewrite from that word, and after posting his or her response, gets to read the other responses.

The Ivy-Covered Console

Wednesday, February 25th, 2004 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Nick Montfort slipped the URL of Grand Text Auto into a New York Times Circuits article, The Ivy-Covered Console. The article is about the growth of games studies and an upcoming conference at Princeton. I know Nick's going to be ...

ToySight

Sunday, December 21st, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

I recently downloaded the demo of ToySight, software that uses the mac's iSight camera to integrate object and motion control into a variety of videogames and "toys." The demo includes "Freefall," a game in which you stand in front of ...

Online Scrabble

Thursday, December 18th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Finally, a version of Online Scrabble that works on macs.

Play four games at once

Sunday, December 14th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Arcadia definitely falls under the "wasting time while trying your multitasking" category.

Virtual Worlds

Thursday, December 4th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Over at GTA, Andrew found this link to Virtual Worlds Review, a review of the crop of virtual environments/avatar games that are becoming increasingly popular. I'm still noodling on how I might craft a virtual worlds writing assignment for the ...

Utopian Gaming?

Thursday, December 4th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

A link off of Grimmelman's article led me to the curious AgoraXchange project, which will launch in January. A team including net artist Natalie Bookchin and political theorist Jacqueline Stevens is behind the project, the goal of which is to ...

A Trip Through the Thickets of Law and Computer Games

Thursday, December 4th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

At Law Meme, James Grimmelman has written an excellent article in the wake of the State of Play conference: "Free as in Gaming?." Grimmelman's article follows up (extensively) on a question posed by Yale Law Professor Yochai Benkler at the ...

Everquest 101

Monday, November 17th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Another essay from the State of Play conference, MMORPGS in the College Classroom by Aaron Delwiche, has me thinking through some of the problems I might encounter trying to use MMOPRGS in the classroom. Delwiche's class spent a whole quarter ...

The Market in Unrealestate

Sunday, November 16th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

On his weblog, Julian Dibbell chronicles his life as a seller of virtual goods and properties from Ultima Online. He claims that "On April 15, 2004, I will truthfully report to the IRS that my primary source of income is ...

Second Life Gives Users IP Rights to their Characters

Friday, November 14th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Lawmeme reports that Second Life, an avatar game discussed in recent posts, has made a decision to let player-characters keep the intellectual property rights they create. Players, for instance, have the right to sell movie rights for their character. See ...

Being There

Tuesday, November 11th, 2003 Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Although I still haven't yet played it, the more I explore There and the other avatar/gameworlds, the more I become intruiged by the idea of integrating an avatar world experience into one of my NMS courses -- perhaps as a ...