J-Man

I tend to use the same citation form as for film. Some handbooks don't list it, but you can find examples online.

Whoops, sorry about that. It's what I get for surfing online without my glasses.

If you want to write on education in games, there are some recent articles that come to mind.

-Tangential learning, which has both paper (http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/the-power-tangential-learning) and video format (http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/the-power-tangential-learning).
-Games may help kids to read: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/books/06games.html
-How video games teach the scientific method: http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908

Yeah I've fallen in with the cool kid crowd in the numbers game of game ratings unfortunately. Glad to see you enjoyed the review......thanks for the comment.....

Ehehe... I'll try to curb myself in the future.

2000 words, that's, let's see, 8-9 pages? Definitely a rough transition if you're just jumping back in. I feel for you.

So you're thinking of doing the "Where am I?" paper on gaming? I can recommend a bit of a spread, if you want to get going.

Narratologists:
-Janet Murray, "Hamlet on the Holodeck"
-Henry Jenkins' entire bibliography is great, but you'd probably benefit the most from "Convergence Culture" and "Fans, Bloggers and Gamers".
-Marie-Laure Ryan, "Narrative Across Media" and "Narrative as Virtual Reality" (goes into ludology as well).

Ludologists:
-Espen Aarseth (found in "Narrative Across Media" and, well, just google him, you can find a lot)
-Jesper Juul (http://jesperjuul.net/ludologist)

Games and society:
-Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, "Grand Theft Childhood"
-Henry Jenkins and Justine Cassell, "From Barbie to Mortal Kombat"

Some books not really about games but I read in the course of my research anyway:
-Lynn Spigel, "Make Way for TV"
-Jeffrey Sconce, "Haunted Media" (probably one of the most interesting books I've ever read)
-Erving Goffman, "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life"
-Greg Taylor, "Artists in the Audience"

Do you have any idea what you want to address specifically? Because I can probably be more helpful by pointing to particular articles and resources you might have a use for. Just let me know.

Undergraduate. Well, just-graduated, I suppose. I don't start grad school until next fall. I'm not that cool. 8)

And, well, you know what they say about widgets. Sometimes something obvious stares you right in the face and you never realise. I myself hit a lot of dead-ends before, in the course of explaining some other topic entirely, this suddenly occurred to me. I could understand why academics have overlooked non-playing game audiences, for how they've been bred into the field (if you look at the thread of literature starting from, say, the 70s, it always emphasises interactivity, because That's What Makes It Different), but the fact that this same line of reasoning has been stifled from the fan end is a little distressing.

On the one hand, what Ed Cunningham (producer of King of Kong, as cited in the paper) says, that there's a level of esotericism associated with gaming, is very true. If you don't play games, it's generally difficult to appreciate why they work the way they do and what is challenging/skilful about them. So it's understandable why we've developed a culture of "if you haven't played the game, you can't really identify as a member of this community". But on the other hand, as games have become more televisual, I think that's grown less true. I remember falling in love with Dance Dance Revolution after watching some boys play at the local arcade, but it took me months before I played it myself, and even then I found it more pleasurable to collect the music and watch freestyler videos online.

But even so, I think there's this culture of guilt that we need to play --and play WELL-- to identify as gamers, otherwise we can't even talk about it. The result of that is that there are a lot of non-playing "gamers" out there that do just that-- they don't talk about it, or lie about their level of involvement, or come down hard on themselves when they try to play and can't handle it, laughing about how much they "suck" when, in fact, they might be perfectly capable of engaging the game in other ways, like through fandom.

And yeah, at the end of the idea, I think gaming as a culture and video game theory as a discipline needs to reconsider some of its assumptions, possibly to the benefit of more accurately assessing the different ways people play or don't play. It's an ongoing subject of mine and hopefully I'll be able to pursue in grad school.

Thanks for your interest in further writing. I was planning to take the unfinished material developed before I changed topics and releasing those as independent articles, and like I mentioned in my blog post, I've got a cozy little ambition to develop the "gamer type" categories I listed. I love discussing ideas in depth (as evidenced by this already overlong comment) so it'd be great to talk about some of this with you further, if you have an interest (I'd be happy to recommend some further reading, too, if you're curious; there are a lot of other, deeper thinkers out there that have made far more significant strides than I, and they're definitely worth a look).

Apologies for rambling like this. Again, thanks so much for your feedback. Having this little article of mine finally be read by others is the greatest possible joy, honestly.

Good. I've been trying to quit.
Trolls trolling trolls is fun for like a month.

Just made a new sig with the only other picture ive ever seen like it.
Found it on 4chon sadly.

Thank you for the add! I hope you enjoy the article. Please let me know what you think of it; I'd be happy to discuss it with you.

The paper was my graduating thesis from the UCLA Film School, for the Film/TV major (the department also covered digital media, but that wasn't included as a possible major). This was for my B.A. degree. A little less exciting than shooting a thesis film, perhaps, but more rewarding in the long run, I felt.

Cool I look forward to reading your full review.....

oh well then shit, welcome to the series, it truly is Strat Greatness

Diversity is a good thing right? Otherwise we all would be wearing Stromtrooper helmets and bowing down the the Emperor.....There are a lot of cool people on this site. Some active, some not. But everyone is pretty nice to everyone else.....so what's the next review for the J Man? I'm just finishing up the Force Unleashed for the 360 right now. I had to let your review cool down a bit so I could sneak mine into the fold....

P.S. hopefully your feeling better

yea i meant to write up a review for disgaea 3, i ended up writing up a first impressions which was written after about 8 hours into the game.

http://www.gamervision.com/gamer/voyou_san/reviews/article/early_impressions_disgaea_3

thanks for the accept, how is it going? :)

No problem man thanks for accepting....so how you enjoying your stay on Gamervision.....

also: If you can think of something to rant about I'll flow with it. I just don't know what to start on.

My old man keeps saying Orange juice is where it's at, but I like your idea WAYYY more.

Where you at man?! Give us some writings!

bump when intoxicated.
Clean up your AC town, we're playing some time this week.