Interactive Media

Katie Salen

on "gamer transfer phenomena"

undergrad journal -- one project "asked students to bring together research and argument skills with the affordances of multimedia writing," similar to the Craig Saper folkvine.org reading for this week

This is the article I mentioned in class last Thursday. There are a handful of letters to the editor about it in today's Globe.

Examples of how QR codes can integrate multimedia elements

a Jane McGonigal gamea

thanks to Elaine for sharing this

as a prelude to our boardgame report....

This was mentioned in Nicholas Carr's book THE SHALLOWS: WHAT THE INTERNET IS DOING TO OUR BRAINS

some echoes of electracy--"history and theory of reading/writing"

This one looks really beautiful and interesting with dual gravity systems...

scroll down to the "storytron" video to see discussion of spatial navigation as metaphor

This might be of interest to previous students of VM606

dovetails with our own look at place, "autocartography" and locative art

thanks to Stephen Hewitt for sharing this

This blog post mentions the "method of loci" which is another name for the "Memory Palace" tradition that we are exploring. There's also a link to a TED talk about spatial processing in the brain.

article on board game design in yesterday's paper

Recently there's been chatter that Valve - the company behind the massively popular gaming service Steam - has been considering getting into the hardware business. Specifically, there have been rumors that the company has been toying with the idea of creating a proper set-top console which could potentially pose a threat to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

This is an interesting development. Console games have been the domain of the "Big Three" for years (XBox, Playstation, and Nintendo). Now, another player is threatening to break into the market. Steam is a digital distribution service with over 40 million active users. Users install the Steam software and then purchase and play various computer games through the Steam interface. When I was helping to develop an indie game a few years ago, it was considered a huge accomplishment to be listed on Steam. It boosted the game's exposure and user base significantly. It will be interesting to see if the console is released and how it fairs in the difficult-to-enter market.

why we should all drop everything and learn how to create content for augmented reality...

big gaming conference in Boston early April: on how Boston is a "hub for gaming industry"