After having given an impression of a decidedly ↑etic perspective on professional gaming (↵world’s greatests), here are instances of the ↑emic perspective of pro-gamers onto themselves and their culture. The ↑pure pwnage ↑series of auto-ethnographical/biographical movies allows unique insights into … Continue reading →
↑Henry Jenkins III, one of the directors of ↑MIT‘s ↑comparative media studies, has written an article called ↑Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked. The eight myths [in this context to be understood as ‘false beliefs’] he deals with … Continue reading →
↑Static, the ↑London Consortium‘s online journal, ↑aims at initiating “interdisciplinary intellectual debate about paradoxes of contemporary culture, Static presents contributions from an international team of academics, artists and cultural practitioners.” The ↑first issue‘s core topic was play and violence—the … Continue reading →
a cyberanthropologist’s reflections on e-sports At a tremendous pace computergames and gaming-culture get more and more attention and coverage by ‘traditional’ electronic and print mass media. More and more institutions of said media take computergames to be a serious and … Continue reading →
After last year’s excellent Rules of play (↵Salen & Zimmerman 2004) now everybody recommends: KOSTER, RAPH. 2005. A theory of fun for game design. Scottsdale, Arizona: Paraglyph Press. For background information see the according ↑entry at game matters with extensive … Continue reading →
↑BURKE, TIMOTHY AND KEVIN BURKE. 1999. Saturday morning fever: Growing up with cartoon culture. New York: St. Martin’s. GOLDSTEIN, JEFFREY. 2001. ↑Does playing violent video games cause aggressive behavior?. Chicago: University of Chicago. Electronic Document. Available online: http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/goldstein.html
Continue reading →↑Portal MedienGewalt (in German) is a huge annotated and structured link collection on the ‘media and violence’ issue, including computergames, of course. Lots of academic links. via entry at 2R
Continue reading →Well, back in the 1980s I was in the other camp, because I was a proud owner of a C64—and we somehow looked down on those having an Atari. But that is history, and exactly from that point of view … Continue reading →
Quite a time ago, while drinking beer at a party organised by our students, I told a fellow anthropologist about game-items from Everquest being sold at ebay (see e.g. Castronova ↵2001 and ↵2003). All I harvested was an amused smile … Continue reading →
The (U.S.) entertainment software association (ESA) had Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. conduct a study which’s findings contradict the usual clichés of gamers. This goes well with the findings of studies undertaken by the Forschungsschwerpunkt Wirkung virtueller Welten (research … Continue reading →