Search Results for cities

Not Interdisciplinarity, But Love

My keynote presentation at the 2008 Game Developers Conference Education Summit

Note: this is a written version of the keynote address I gave at the Education Summit at the 2008 Game Developers Conference. The original presentation was extemporaneous and included evocative (rather than explanatory) slides. This version has been adapted from the presentation and the slides in a manner that will hopefully preserve the ideas fully while maintaining their original context:… read more

Dwelling Machines

Introduction to a symposium I organized at Georgia Tech

This past Monday the School of Literature Communication and Culture and the Wesley Center for New Media at Georgia Tech hosted a symposium I organized called Dwelling Machines. Here’s the description, too small to read in the event poster above. This symposium asks whether and how technology might alter the way we perceive dwelling. Of particular interest are the aspects… read more

Time for games to grow up

In order to mature properly, videogaming not only needs a Citizen Kane moment; it needs a little humdrum too

Think of any media form – say writing, photography or film. Now think of all of the things you can imagine doing with it. I like to think of this as the “possibility space” – a spectrum running between so-called high art at one end, to tools at the other. High art doesn’t have to be hoity-toity snobbery, and it… read more

Games Phone Home

On playing the roles of the weak in videogames. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra

One of the unique properties of video games is their ability to put us in someone elseâ??s shoes. But most of the time, those shoes are bigger than our own. When we play video games, we are like children clopping around in their parentâ??s loafers or pumps, imagining what it would be like to see over the kitchen counter. As… read more

Experiencing Place in Los Santos and Vice City

In The Culture and Meaning of Grand Theft Auto, edited by Nathan Garrelts. Co-authored with Dan Klainbaum.

Read the entire article in print in The Culture and Meaning of Grand Theft Auto The Grand Theft Auto videogame series puts the player in large, semi-realistic urban environments. Despite their apparent credibility, these environments are not re-creations of real urban locales, but rather remixed, hybridized cities fashioned from popular cultureâ??s notions of real American cities. Locality, the sense of… read more