Thoughts on Education, Research, and Progress
I recently read Paul Lockhart’s incredible essay “A Mathematician’s Lament” [PDF]. Lockhart, a mathematics teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, wrote the piece in 2002, but it wasn’t published until last year, on Keith Devlin’s monthly column. “A Mathematician’s Lament” begins with the nightmares of a musician and a painter, both horrified to see their art forms turned into… read more
A Visit to the Bestiary
When I was a philosophy undergraduate student, I had a life-changing experience in a class on the philosophy of language. It was a good class, as undergraduate classes tend to be: I learned the basics of a subject had known little about previously. The course was taught by a newly minted PhD whose specialty was that subject. She was young… read more
My Talks at DiGRA 2009
I’m just returned from the 2009 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference, which was held this week at Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK. The conference was enjoyable, with good talks, good company, and good ale. I did two talks at this DiGRA, the text of which I have now posted on my site. I’ll describe them in brief and point… read more
My DiGRA 2009 Keynote, on Videogames and Ontology
What follows is the text of my keynote at the 2009 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference, held in Uxbridge, UK September 1-4, 2009. The text corresponds fairly accurately to the address I gave at the conference. In a few cases, I’ve added some clarifications in square brackets, where additional context or commentary was relevant. Videogames are a mess So… read more
My Position Paper on Game Criticism, DiGRA 2009
At the 2009 Digital Games Research Association conference, I participated in a panel organized by David Thomas, “You Played That? Game Studies Meets Game Criticism.” The other panelists were William Huber, Margaret Robertson, and José Zagal. The panel posed the following question: What is game criticism? How should the academy claim its place alongside game journalism as a productive voice… read more
On The Human-Centered Objection
Over on Larval Subjects, Levi raised some concerns about Nate’s recent post about zombies and speculative realism. Specifically, Bryant expressed a worry that treating humans as zombies might suggest that object-oriented ontology sees humans as lesser forms than other objects, rather than as one of many objects on equal footing. As I mentioned in the subsequent discussion, I didn’t read… read more
On shuttering Water Cooler Games
I’ve just closed Water Cooler Games, the blog about “videogames with an agenda” that Gonzalo Frasca and I started in 2003. I have also archived the site in its entirety here on Bogost.com, and all existing links to pages on watercoolergames.org will forward correctly in perpetuity. When Gonzalo and I first started Water Cooler Games, the very idea of “videogames… read more
And why it's bad for digital media and game studies
Two key conferences in digital media and game studies, Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) and the Digital Games Reserch Association (DiGRA) use an unexpected format for their papers: ACM, the format devised by the Association for Computing Machinery for publications in computer science. I have nothing against computer science, but the use of ACM format is bad and dumb for… read more
On Levi Bryant on John Doyle on Levi Bryant on John Conway
Over at Larval Subjects, Levi Bryant discovered Conway’s Game of Life. Later, responding to John Doyle’s comments, Braynt reflected on the ontological status of the game and its objects. Says Levi: there are not two worldsâ?? one consisting of the really real or “mind-independent objects” and another consisting of mind and the social â??but rather only one world, the real,… read more
Part 2: What Kind of Videogame?
In part 1 of this series, I introduced the idea of a metaphysics videogame and described why such a thing might be a good idea for philosophy. That was the easy part. In this post I’m going to explore what such a game might look like, in the abstract. The idea is not to suggest only the most viable approach,… read more