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Author Archives: Garrison
University of Florida Honors Courses — Fall 2010
From the University of Terra Florida University of Florida Honors Courses — Fall 2010 catalog. “21st Century Skills in Starcraft is an 8 week entirely online course that uses the popular real time strategy (RTS) game Starcraft to teach valuable 21st Century Skills through a hands-on approach. With society becoming increasingly technology-based and fast-paced, it [...]
Pink on Incentive and Algorithmic Cognition
This semester, especially as we’re looking at material by James Paul Gee, we’ll talk about incentives to mastery, reward, and cognition. This (fun! animated!) excerpt from a recent RSA presentation by Daniel Pink is an excellent introduction to an interesting behavioral problem that the best games address in surprising ways. The dilemma is this: Economists [...]
Posted in Video, games Tagged economics, Garcia, Gee, incentives, Pink, rationalism, rewards, RSA, serious games Leave a comment
Arcade Theory Almost Full
The University opened registration this AM, and CCTP628, Arcade Theory, is almost full. If you are interested in taking the class but are unable to register (due to a hold on your record, et cetera), please email me to let me know, and I’ll save you a seat.
Are Bugs Really All That Bad?
My normally reliable Macbook Pro has been acting up this weekend, sputtering, whirring and churning, so I’ve been thinking a lot about OS crashes and kernal panics. This semester, in my new graduate course, Arcade Theory (CCTP-628), we’ll spend some time on glitches, gaffes, bugs, and breakpoints. The digital glitch is, to my mind, the [...]
Posted in CCTP-628, Courses Tagged aesthetics, Arcade Theory, art, articles, Bugs, Glitches Leave a comment
GMU “Overwhelmed” by Interest in Game Design BFA
Via GamePolitics, news that the new-ish Game Design BFA offered at GMU has met with“overwhelming” student response. A story in the Fairfax Times reports that the school has already enrolled around 200 students into the program, besting an internal goal of having 110 students in the program by 2012. As Scott M. Martin, Assistant Dean [...]
Posted in Courses, Humanities, Literacy, Politics, Reports, Scholarship, games Tagged BFA, degrees, game design, George Mason, programs, university Leave a comment
What Would Tocqueville Make of the American (Digital) Farmer?
In January of this year, on the day following the death of historian Howard Zinn, A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz delivered a thoughtful little talk at SUNY Buffalo. In so doing, I think he managed neatly to extend Zinn’s 20th Century civitas a little further into our own time. “I’m worried that students will take their obedient [...]
Posted in CCTP-628, Courses, Interactivity, Literacy, Politics, Technology, ethics Tagged civics, Farmville, Liszkiewicz, SUNY, Zinn Leave a comment
Mona Lisa / Duck Hunt Mashup
Close on the heels of the Italian government’s recent public statements on the civic and aesthetic merits of video games (and the taxable appeal of game studio revenues, no doubt), Associazione Italiana Opere Multimediali Interattive (AIOMI) has released the first of what will be several video shorts promoting interactive media in Italy. And like a Bruno [...]
Posted in Aesthetics, Humanities, Interactivity, Politics, Video Tagged art, Italy, museum Leave a comment
Getting Shot: A 103-Second Retrospective