Learning about the New Games Movement was one of the highlights for me this semester. I have always had "Hippie Tendencies", and was intrigued to see a gaming philosophy that incorporated "Hippie Values". DeKoven, who made a huge impact on the New Games Movement, presented the ideas of collaborative play and the importance of the players' knowledge of the rules of the game, as well as coming together collectively to decide whether rules should be adjusted. "...By establishing guidelines, we assure each other of a common intention and mutual respect for the willingness to play, for the need for safety... Continue reading

I've recently played Maple Story and, due to another class, have had ample time with Second Life. Maple story being a 2-D MMORPG is significantly different in terms of player goals, player behavior, and representation than Second Life, being a 3-D virtual world. Maple Story and Second Life as Platforms: Before getting into the details of both Second Life and Maple Story, Morningstar states, "The essential lesson that we have abstracted from our experiences with Habitat is that a cyberspace is defined more by the interactions among the actors within it than by the technology with which it is implemented"... Continue reading

I have throughly enjoyed creating the flash game Genevieve from brainstorming to production. I have always wanted to have the opportunity to work on a video game with a team of talented people with various skills and insights. Their skills allowed me to do my job better, and hopefully, I them. I have enjoyed much of the readings for the class, and have really found myself gravitating towards the "Hegemony of Play" and Gender Studies papers and essays. Frankly, these were the most relevant works as they pertained to issues I feel are important, as well as abundant, within the... Continue reading

FOLLOWING THE FIGHTERS: I recently purchased a PlayStation 3 because I closely follow the fighting game scene. Where the fighting games go, I go. I had my eyes set on two brand new, Hi-Definition, 2-D fighting games -- Blazblue (Arc System Works) and The King of Fighters XII (SNK PLAYMORE JAPAN). I have followed the games pre-release, and knew just about everything about them. It was not until I actually purchased and played the games that I realized something-- neither game had a character who was not "White" or described as Japanese (because even these characters appeared "White"). This was... Continue reading

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (SFIII:3S), barely constitutes as a 90's game, having been released in 1999, however it's the oldest fighting game that I am most meticulously familiar with. While reading the essays by Huizinga, Caillois, and Suits I maintained the mindset of "how do these theories relate to fighting games?". I'm a huge fighting game fan, so my gaming, game design, and game theory, inquiries are based in the mechanics and strategies of fighting games. Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike is a traditional fighting game, where two-players are facing one another in two-dimensional space. As Caillois, Huizinga, and... Continue reading

"Chess is so common in Russia, that during our continuance in Moscow, I scarcely entered into any company where parties were not engaged in that diversion... I very frequently observed in my passage through the streets, the tradesmen and common people playing it..." (182 Yalom). This excerpt, from an English visitor in 1772, conveys a very different perception of chess as a cultural practice than that of other European countries noted in Birth of the Chess Queen. Chess in Russia was an activity that all social classes participated and were proficient in. Many personal accounts from foreign visitors credit Russian... Continue reading