Photography, Flickr, and Me
As regular readers may have noticed, I have an interest in photography. I’ve started a photography section on this website, where you can view some of the photographs I have taken. Right now I’ve added galleries for Objects, Places, and People, as well as a photo project I’m slowly working on called Street Portraits. Over the last year I’ve gone… read more
Why Facebook Ads are Stupid
From a business perspective, it was my impression that one of the great promises of Facebook and other social networking sites is that they can offer extremely selective ad targeting. Facebook users willingly provide large amounts of enormously specific information about themselves, from their age and location to their artistic interests and sexual preferences. Why, then, are Facebook ads targeted… read more
A reprise of the central chapter of Ulysses, performed on Twitter
Last year, Ian McCarthy and I puppeted over 50 characters from the Wandering Rocks chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses on the microblogging platform Twitter. We’re planning a reprise for this year, including much more notice than we gave in 2007 (Bloomsday is June 16). You might want to consult the original announcement and abstract of the project. It includes links… read more
115 years of sports game adaptation
I have an interest in game adaptation, something that we normally think of only as it relates to film-to-game licensing. In our forthcoming book on the Atari VCS, Nick Montfort and I also discuss another kind of videogame adaptation that was once its primary form: from arcade coin-ops to home consoles.
who misconstrues my work and that of my colleagues
(1) I’m not going to bother to write a thorough prose response to your recent Escapist article Quibus Lusoribus Bono? Who is Game Studies Good For?, but only numbered objections and comments. Readers, you’ll have to go read Travis’s article before any of these will make sense. (2) Your article is based on the premise that Douglas Wilson looks down… read more
Opinion piece published in The Guardian
There are a few common reasons why advertisers want to use videogames to reach consumers. One is the belief that videogames are a place to recover the waning audiences of television advertising. The highly desirable, seemingly elusive 18-34 male demographic is often, unfairly, assumed to correspond directly to videogame players. What better way to retrieve these “lost” consumers than to… read more
Ten principles for better academic career advisement
Jason Mittell, a media studies scholar at Middlebury College, recently wrote about his experience being a researcher at a liberal arts college. Mittell’s offering points to and comments upon a related article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Kristen Ghodsee, who explained her path from UC Berkeley graduate student to Bowdoin professor. Both Ghodsee and Mittell question the assumption… read more
The vices and virtues of selective color shift at high ISO in the Sigma DP1
One of the problems with digital SLRs is their large footprint. Not only the size and weight of the camera, but also that of the lens attached to it, especially for serious photographers interested in large apertures and high-quality glass. This is an issue that affects professionals and amateurs alike, since both groups might want to have a smaller, more… read more
Opinion piece published in Gamasutra
Note: the “Spore Store” description has been updated here to account for misinformation I received researching this material. Full clarification is available at the end of the Gamasutra article. In the games industry, Will Wright’s Spore is surely the most highly anticipated title in recent memory. Everyone knows about it — we’ve been seeing previews and demos and hearing news… read more
Straight Outa Canada
This week I was in Canada, which is the country immediately north of America (“the States” for the rest of you). I like to read the newspapers delivered to my hotel room when traveling, so I inhaled today’s issue of the Globe and Mail, which is a national coverage paper in that country. Among the many things I learned about… read more