In Beatles Rock Band the Archive is Your Reward
So far we have blogged a fair amount about a few genres of games. For example, we’ve talked a good bit about role playing and simulation games. With that said, one of the most engaging historical experiences I have had with a game came involved a plastic guitar. Beatles RockContinue Reading
Gamify My Historian’s Craft
Gamification is all the rage. Operation Lapis show us what full-blown gamification can look like in the classroom; but if you’re not ready for that, there are other things you can do to introduce playful approaches to your teaching. I find myself teaching ‘The Historian’s Craft’ this term. There areContinue Reading
Epic immersion, part 2: the interactivity of the homerids
I think it’s fairly easy to see that the story of an adventure video game comes to be about the person playing the game—especially when we think of the various sorts of games that fall into the RPG (role-playing game) category in one way or another, in which a playerContinue Reading
Practical Necromancy* Begins with Latin
In my previous ‘Practical Necromancy’ post, I made the argument why we should toy with history, using the Netlogo agent based modeling environment. Let me tell you today what happened when I introduced the idea of simulating the past to my first year students. The phrase ‘digital history’ does indeedContinue Reading
What Do Action Figures Have To Teach Us?
One of the classic books in the field of computer gaming and learning is James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. I often see the title abbreviated as What Video Games Have To Teach Us–an understandable shorthand, but one that allows, I think, forContinue Reading
The Future of Marketing: Anticipating Digital Transformation
The marketing industry has undergone unprecedented changes over the past decade, with digital transformation reshaping how brands interact with consumers. Technology’s influence is only expected to grow, paving the way for innovative approaches that will redefine traditional marketing strategies. As we anticipate the future of marketing, it’s essential to understandContinue Reading
Past-Time: Re-Encountering Everquest
In the MMO gaming community, and perhaps among all gamers, one can often hear a plaintive lament for the good old days. Each new offering in the genre makes things easier, dumbs down gameplay and caters to the casuals, if you believe the forum trolls. “I remember when death wasContinue Reading
Simulation and History: Let’s Get Beyond Good and Evil
All thought is mediated by tools. Right now I am writing this post on a computer, it has a 15 inch monitor, I’m using google docs, I’m writing text, that text is in the English language, I will copy and paste this into our instance of WordPress. The computer, theContinue Reading
Epic immersion, part 1: in medias res, not in mediis rebus
The beginnings of practomimes, whether oral traditional epics or narrative video games, can, I think, tell us a great deal about some fascinating similarities and differences among how performers through the ages–bards, storytellers of all kinds, video gamers–expressed themselves artistically. Such comparisons seem to me to pay huge dividends notContinue Reading
Containing the Past with Virtual Prisons
I have a longstanding interest in the way videogames imagine a part of our cultural heritage that many of us might enjoy experiencing in a game or on a cinema screen, but which we’d presumably rather not know firsthand, and that is the role of prisons, asylums, and hospitals inContinue Reading