Twitchdoctor
twinhits
waltersthegreat
Broadpaw
aegisfang
What would cause a large group of gamers to call a perfectly ordinary and inoffensive videogame story writer a cunt, a whore, a Jew, and a cancer, among many other things? Apart from the fact that they are users of the Internet? The impending end of their world, that’s what.
Archive for the ‘Games and Life’ Category
A Change is Gonna Come
Posted: February 24, 2012 by Twitchdoctor in Game Players, Games and Life, New MediaTags: Bioware, casual games, hardcore games, Jennifer Hepler, Reddit, Twitter
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Encounters of a Nerd Kind
Posted: October 19, 2011 by twinhits in Games and LifeTags: college, csl, education, emergence, online relationships, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Starcraft II
There’s not really anything like it, every Saturday I get to go to one of our computer lab classrooms, jump around and yell excitedly about Blizzard Entertainment’s Starcraft II. This is CSL, the Colligate Starleague, founded by Mona “Hazelynut” Zhang over at Princeton University. It started in 2008 and has since has grown into over [...]
On Not Feeling the Love
Posted: September 9, 2011 by Twitchdoctor in Game Research, Games and LifeTags: cloud computing, Crowdsourcing, cultural studies, Cyberculture, Gamer, Newsweek, Video game, Wikipedia
There are many occasions in an ongoing discussion or debate where you know that the better thing would be to take the high road. Unfortunately, this often involves having to switch off your brain and wear a blindfold. Therefore, low road it is.
Slaying the Lone Gunman
Posted: June 21, 2011 by Twitchdoctor in Games and Life, Games and the Media, UncategorizedTags: Avatar, Galaxy Quest, games, Last Starfighter, science fiction, The Fellows Hip: Rise of the Gamers, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, The Matrix, Tron, Video game, wargames
Can a film that celebrates the geekiness of gaming succeed in a culture that pathologizes it?
Here Comes Democracy
Posted: April 28, 2011 by twinhits in Game Research, Games and Life, New Media, UncategorizedTags: Clans, Democracy, Gaming Communities, Guilds, Jedi Academy, Syndicate
I’ll probably start off with this story in every blog post that I write in my life, but when I was thirteen years old I had the honor to found and lead a clan called The Order in the game Star Wars: Jedi Academy. What proceeded was a five year journey that would change my [...]
The Future is Always Living in the Past
Posted: April 14, 2011 by Twitchdoctor in Games and Life, New MediaTags: augmented reality, Christopher Dede, Futurology, games, Geoffrey Nunberg, HP, Information Age, mediascapes, Microsoft, Mscape, Technology, The Future
Last time I flew it was nothing like the Starship Enterprise cabin that Microsoft offers in its vision of the future. Instead it resembled an overcrowded and singularly malodorous Turkish bath, except that I probably would have had more leg room in a Turkish bath and wouldn’t have had to put up with some snotty ankle-biter kicking the back of my seat while their parental unit lay passed out after too many $15 rum and cokes. Microsoft and their ad agencies really need to get off their corporate jets and try flying commercial once in a while.
The Critic versus the Consumer
Posted: March 25, 2011 by Twitchdoctor in Games and Life, Games and WritingWhen everything seems to be going pretty well in my research, writing, and teaching worlds it is usually a sure sign that the bottom is about to fall out of something. Or maybe everything. Sometimes, however, it produces a productive overlap where my teaching helps shape my writing and research agenda which in turn helps [...]
