Category Archives: Politics

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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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Obama Administration Asks Ballmer About Gaming the Budget

Via Kotaku (via USATo­day), word that Ersk­ine Bowles has con­tacted Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer to chat about a game built around bal­anc­ing the U.S. bud­get. It’s an inter­est­ing idea that’s actu­ally been done (and done well) already. In 2008, Mar­ket­Place, from Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media, launched Bud­get Hero: Bud­get Hero tries to bring a level of clar­ity [...]
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The Course of Empire

Update (7 Feb): For a sketch of the Hait­ian infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture, check out Michael Deibert’s post from Slate, Hait­ian Radio Returns to the Air. Orig­i­nal Post I won­der how oth­ers feel about this newly-listed MIT Media Lab course (spring 2010). On the one hand, there’s a lot here to be admired: The course is clearly the [...]
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Tetris and Torture

Raph Koster revis­its his book on A The­ory of Fun as he points to Loodo’s Cal­abouço Tétrico, a highly-polished, deeply dis­turb­ing Flash-based Tetris vari­ant that replaces col­ored blocks with human beings in dif­fer­ent states of dis­tress.  Speak­ing of it on his web­site, Ian Bogost points back to his text, Per­sua­sive Games (wherein he rejects as [...]
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On Newsgames’ Newsworthiness

In a recent post over at the Geor­gia Tech Jour­nal­ism & Games Project (Raid Gaza! Edi­to­r­ial Games and Time­li­ness), the inde­fati­ga­ble Ian Bogost holds up a recent edi­to­r­ial game, Raid Gaza!, as exem­plary of the kind of crit­i­cal work games (“news­games”) can do for journalism. Like edi­to­r­ial games should, [Raid Gaza] takes a strong posi­tion. [...]
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Be All You Can Be (For A Quarter, To Start)

Today’s New York Times fea­tures a brief arti­cle on video games and U.S. Army recruit­ing efforts in a Philadel­phia mall. The facil­ity, which opened in August, is the first of its kind. It replaces five smaller recruit­ment sta­tions in the Philadel­phia area, at about the same annual oper­at­ing cost, not count­ing the ini­tial expenses, said Maj. [...]
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