Skip to main content

Home/ Gaming and the liberal arts/ Group items tagged fear

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

Watching violent TV or video games desensitizes teenagers and may promote more aggressi... - 4 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...101018211820.htm

gaming games violence K12 adolescents

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 19 Oct 10
     
    Hmmm. I'd like some expert opinion on this...
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Brett Boessen on 19 Oct 10
     
    Well I wouldn't call myself an expert, although I _have_ looked at this issue several times before with students. The usual elements are here: very small sample size, heavily controlled experiment, undefined categories ("low," "mild"), and murky description of the results (although that could definitely be the fault of the journalist reporting the findings, too). However, these are all possible issues with any social science experiment. There are some other things that often come with media effects specifically. If you haven't seen David Gauntlett's "Ten Things Wrong with Media Effects Research," it's worth a look: concise but packed with criticism (and easy to use in class). http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm Otherwise, to me this sounds like the same research that occasionally comes out about games and violence, and has been so for at least a decade. The new wrinkle here could be the MRI readings, and I'll admit I'm no expert there either. But given the limited degree to which science really understands the relationships between thought, behavior, and brain activity, I'm not sure the correlations they're showing in the evidence are all that helpful either.
  • Bryan Alexander on 19 Oct 10
     
    I don't have much to add to Brett's fine comment. Yeah, this is part of a kind of study which shows that well-produced media tends to elicit emotions. Er, yes. There are some hilarious stories about porn like this. But yes, the big deal is MRI, over time. I don't know if the rest of the boys' experience has been successfully gapped out.
  • Ed Webb on 19 Oct 10
     
    MRI will maybe change things. Not for the better, I fear. I'm watching the emerging field here: http://www.diigo.com/user/edwebb/neurocinematics
Ed Webb

The Life-Changing $20 Rightward-Facing Cow - 4 views

kotaku.com/...anging-20-rightward+facing-cow

bogost casual games gaming social facebook

shared by Ed Webb on 04 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • The A Slow Year limited sets include the poetry book and the game on Atari cartridge, all set in black velvet and red leather, gold foil stamping, all hand-numbered, hand-made. While a manic counter was screaming the end of Bogost's journey to challenge social gaming norms, the creator was quietly, manually, assembling a physical art object. Only 25 will ever be made; they will sell for $500 apiece. Most have already been sold. To Bogost, like the poetry book that accompanies the Atari game, the handcraft and limited nature of A Slow Year's special edition help establish the project uncompromisingly as an art object, a creation bigger than "video game."
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 04 Oct 11
       
      Sounds like something in a Wm Gibson or Bruce Sterling story
  • "I never expected that would happen," reflects Bogost. "A lot of the serious players… just like clicking a cow sometimes. It's very innocent; they just like clicking a cow."
  • Cow Clicker was never supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be silly, insultingly simple, a vacuous waste of time, and a manipulative joke at the expense of its players-–in other words, everything Bogost thought that Facebook games like the Zynga-made hit FarmVille are. In Cow Clicker, players get a cow, they click it, and then they must either pay to click it again or wait six hours; an embarrassing, joyless labor that to him represented the quintessential aspects of the games that were flourishing all over the social network.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the story of a person whose joke project became more successful than the one on which he lavished love and intellect, the climate that caused that to happen and how ultimately he decided to learn from it instead of becoming upset
  • Then came the Gamification movement, the shiny new idea that if people were assigned goals and extrinsic "rewards," they'd be more motivated to engage with tasks-–and brands-–than they would have otherwise been
  • Cow Clicker developed an active player base–-people who missed the humor and attached to it as if it were a "real" game. These players unquestioningly spent real-money Facebook credits to enjoy their cows and sent Bogost innocent player feedback in the hopes of improving their experience. It subverted every expectation that he had, even as it reaffirmed his worst fears about the exploitive sadism of Facebook game design. Its success also became something to dread.
Rebecca Davis

THATCamp Games - The Humanities and Technology GAMES Camp / Date: TBA / Location: Maryland - 2 views

thatcampgames.org

games gaming digital_humanities

shared by Rebecca Davis on 26 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Rebecca Davis on 26 Aug 11
     
    THATCamp Games, a themed humanities and technology unconference embracing games of all kinds, will take place January 20th to 22nd at the University of Maryland in College Park. If you're interested in learning more about games and game design in the humanities, as part of research, or in relation to pedagogy and learning, this unconference is for you. No matter how much knowledge of games in the humanities you have coming in, you'll leave with new skills and new ideas.
  • Ed Webb on 27 Aug 11
     
    I fear I will be in North Africa then, otherwise I'd go. If my plans change, I'll do my best to be there. Sounds great.
1 - 4 of 4
Showing 20▼ items per page