Ok, I’ll admit it, I came into this class thinking that it would be another one of those LCC courses where the professor’s opinions and someone else’s theories as to what makes a game fun would be shoved down my throat. And for a good part of the semester I therefore treated any insights or readings as mere old people babble that doesn’t actually apply to anything today. It’s ironic therefore, that the concept I pitched and that my team flesh out exemplified more than any other project, the teachings and lectures of the class. I came into the brainstorming... Continue reading

There is an all too familiar stereotype of the overweight, hairy, sweaty nerd sitting in front of his computer sinking hours into an online game, or living out an alternate life in an online world. In some extreme cases this may be true, but for most, MMOGs and virtual worlds provide an escape from everyday life, if not for a few hours every night. Despite what many believe are the same thing, MMOGs and virtual worlds are very different. While both focus on social interaction in an online space to entertain, the main difference in these two genres would be... Continue reading

Chances are if you are playing a game in a medieval fantasy setting you will find that all the guys are buff, grizzly chest hair wielding badasses while the women have a chest size that even Pamela Anderson would be jealous of. If you are like me and find absolutely nothing wrong or abnormal about this then you are part of the problem demographic explained in Fron et all’s “Hegenomy of Play”. The paper details the gaming clichés and standards that dominate the game industry and dictate how most games are made and appear. That’s not to say that these... Continue reading

So it turns out that all of those years of me running underneath a giant parachute or eating asphalt in a last attempt to capture that one person in a game a blob weren’t entirely pointless or merely just children’s’ games. Apparently what I had been doing in my free time as a child was exactly the aim of reactionaries years ago who sought to break out of the norms and rules of everyday gameplay in order to create a more dynamic and interesting form of gameplay. Alternative game movements were a reinvention of the way we play. While the... Continue reading

With a tip of their hat they mount their horses and ride off into the sunset. They seek the outlaws of the vast wastelands to capture them and trade them for a hefty sum. Their loyalties are to no one; they have no place to call home. They are merely bounty hunters, putting their life on the line everyday to scrape by an average livelihood. They are the Sunset Riders. Sunset Riders was a game released by Konami in 1993 originally for arcade but later ported to both the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. It is a part of... Continue reading

"... the most notable of which concerned the king. He was allowed to move two, three, or four squares on his first move, either in a straight line or diagonally or in a combination of the two. Interestingly, he could take the queen with him on his first and only three- square jump. This was but one of many symbolic attempts to remind the queen that she belonged to the king and was under his jurisdiction. It was up to the king to determine their “conjugal” first move. " (87 Yalom) It is only fitting that in a day and... Continue reading