Grand Text Auto

It looks like we have a bound book date for Critical Play, Mary Flanagan’s new book! The time is now! watch for it.

Eric Zimmerman says, “In Critical Play, Flanagan uncovers a secret history of games buried deep inside folk culture, experimental media, and the world of art. Critical Play should be required reading for anyone who cares about the cultural importance and future potential of games.”

Tiltfactor says, “HURRAY!” and is exited to launch the book.

There’s an interview about interactive fiction with Jimmy Maher that is well worth checking out. It’s on on Adventure Gaming Classic. And, Jimmy also has a new game out: The King of Shreds and Patches. This one’s strange story features connections to Shakespeare and Cthulhu.

This is the second in a series of posts about my interactive fiction system, Curveship. In writing about Curveship in any detail, I’ll have to use terms such as action, event, and order, which sound ordinary but are used in a special way in the system. Furthermore, I’ll have to use terms such as focalization and narratee, which do not sound ordinary, but have a meaning within narratology (a.k.a. narrative theory) and are important to the way Curveship works. I’m going to define a few of these terms – some I’ll save for later. Rather than sort them alphabetically, I’ll group them by how they figure in the system.

How do we understand moments of “agency” with games and other forms of digital media — what Janet Murray characterizes as players’ “satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices”? Last month our DiGRA 2009 abstract on this topic sparked a thoughtful discussion. It pushed the co-authors (Michael Mateas, Steven Dow, Serdar Sali, and yours truly) to take a closer look at what our definition of agency might be — not just what might encourage or diminish it — and how our thinking breaks from the past. As we worked to complete the full version of the paper we decided that our paper would focus on agency as a “phenomenon involving both player and game, one that occurs when the actions players desire are among those they can take (and vice versa) as supported by an underlying computational model.” Anyone interested in reading the version we submitted to DiGRA can do so after the break.

I can’t get enough of games that parody game convention.

Play You Only Live Once at Kongregate.

Look what we’ve done to Hanover!  <the mobile unit PLAYCUBE in action>

The PLAYCUBE, our unique mobile exhibition space, has been home to two events since its arrival on campus last week– and these have been entirely unusual + much fun! We’ve attracted an interesting cross section of students, faculty, staff, and community members; the most compelling aspect of the project thus far for me is the way in which the mobile unit attracts curious passersby to engage with creative ideas– and especially those who might not frequent arts events or a museum.