Tag Archives: Rhetoric

Joyride: NASA MMO and the Rhetoric of the Military Industrial Complex

By Garrison | Published: February 21, 2009
How much “fun” will NASA’s much-touted Unreal 3-based MMO be when it is released next year? If the cap­tions to still images released on devel­oper Project Whitecard’s web­site are any indi­ca­tion, not much. Here’s how they describe the Regolith Grinder (aka “The Taurus”): “Con­tructed from an advanced smelt­ing process and lunar fac­tory, it is a general-purpose [...]
Posted in MMORPG, Rhetoric | Also tagged , , | 2 Comments

Against the Rhetoric of Cosmopolitanism

By Garrison | Published: February 17, 2009
At the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) in Chicago, a behav­ioral sci­ences pro­fes­sor from North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity has called into ques­tion the ide­al­ism of much of our rhetoric on the poten­tial diver­sity of human net­works in MMORPGs. “Social Dri­vers for Orga­niz­ing Net­works in Com­mu­ni­ties” appeared as part of a panel called “Ana­lyz­ing Vir­tual Worlds: [...]
Posted in MMORPG, Reports | Also tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Be All You Can Be (For A Quarter, To Start)

By Garrison | Published: January 5, 2009
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. Larry [...]
Posted in Politics, Rhetoric | Also tagged , , , | 1 Comment