xirdalium

Tag: gaming

  • boom: headshot!

    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 the 1337-culture of pro-gaming. In front of the background of the recent ↵progressive developments in…

  • reality bytes gaming myths

    ↑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 are:  1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.…

  • play and violence

      ↑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 ↑editorial sounds very promising:  During the month of July 2005, the London Consortium organised a…

  • world’s greatests—cpl world tour 2005 finals

    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 worthwhile topic. A sure sign for them becoming integrated into mainstream contemporary culture, loosing the…

  • fun

    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 comments, and ↑Conversation with Raph Koster by Celia Pearce. And if we’re talking about ‘definitive’…

  • aggressive morning fever

    ↑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

  • violent links

    ↑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

  • atari archives

    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 ↑atariarchives.org is very worthwhile, as it “makes books, information, and software for Atari and other…

  • cyber sabre

    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 and the somewhat depreciatory comment “That’s completely crazy!” Resisting the temptation to answer “And what…

  • gamer stereotypes fragged

    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 focus “virtual worlds’ virtue”) of the University of Applied Sciences Cologne (articles are in German).…