Grand Text Auto

It’s also in Polish, and should serve to inspire Anglophones! As my colleagues in Ubu’s homeland explain:

A Trope Tank Technical Report (“Trope Report”) on the “Texual Demoscene” has just been posted. Here’s the abstract:

The demoscene is a mainly European subculture of computer
programmers, whose programs generate computer art in real time. The
aim of this report is to attempt a description of the textual
dimension of the demoscene. The report is the effect of efforts to
perform an ethnographic exploration of the Polish computer scene; it
quotes interviews with participants of demo parties, where text
plays a significant role: in demos, real-time texts, IF, mags or
digital adaptations. Media archeology focusing on the textual aspect
of the demoscene is important to understanding the beginnings of
digital literature and genres of digital-born texts.

MONARCH is a game by Tiltfactor director Mary Flanagan, illustrated by Kate Adams. The game is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Max Seidman worked on the design of MONARCH’s mechanics and Mary calls him “the balance expert.” Max also runs a game design theory blog, Most Dangerous Game Design. Here, Max shares thoughts on our intentional design that balances complexity with an unfolding, or “elastic,” design to suit a range of players’ interests and playstyles.

The Tiltfactor game design and research laboratory at Dartmouth College (http://www.tiltfactor.org) is seeking applications for a full-time postdoctoral research position in social psychology for the 2015-2016 academic year. Tiltfactor Lab at Dartmouth College designs, creates, and studies games for social impact. The lab’s projects include games that address (and change) biases and stereotypes; games for health, which seek to educate players about issues in public health and health care delivery; and crowdsourcing games, which aim to harness the power of crowds to gather new information.  The postdoctoral researcher will design and conduct formal empirical studies on games.  The lab’s previous games include board games, card games, sports, and digital games. A suite of games addressed gender bias in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), such as the lab’s party games Awkward Moment, Awkward Moment at Work, and Buffalo The Name Dropping Game. Currently, we are working on a National Science Foundation-funded project that uses “interactive text adventures” to improve the classroom climate for underrepresented students in STEM classrooms.  Other current projects focus on topics ranging from counteracting climate change to modeling effective bystander interventions in cases of potential sexual assault.

Words I Have Used Only Once on Facebook

I recently downloaded my Facebook data. The following is a list of words that I used only one time in my Facebook postings. Some of the words are misspellings or parts of URLs but most are are intended words. I’m not sure what use I could put this information to, but it is interesting to me, for instance, that I have used the word “asshole” only once on Facebook, just as I have only written “pseudo-philosopher” in the status line one time.

We are pleased to issue an open call for applications to “Engaging the Public: Best Practices for Crowdsourcing Across the Disciplines.” This workshop, to be held at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD, on May 6-8, 2015, is being led by Dartmouth College and the University of Maryland, with the support of the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Sloan Foundation.

For Immediate Release
Contact: info @ maryflanagan.com

April 14, 2015 (Hanover, NH) – From the game lab that brought you Awkward Moment® comes a hilarious new party game, designed this time to let the adults in on the awkwardness! Today, Tiltfactor Laboratory is excited to announce the release of our newest card game, Awkward Moment at Work.

We are pleased to announce the publication of our recent National Endowment for the Humanities supported white paper on archiving and appraising academically produced computer games. “A Unified Approach to Preserving Cultural Software Objects and their Development Histories,” is aimed at providing a first step towards an archival methodology for computer games and their development documentation. The report provides an in-depth look at the development of Prom Week, EIS’s social simulation game, with a focus on its development process, context, and documentation. We highlight key moments in its development timeline, and elaborate on the different types of documents produced, and the challenges encountered in gathering everything together for deposition into the University of California’s Merritt Repository.

World-Renowned Expert in Game Design Creates a Revolutionary Experience For All Players

SHORT Title: Mary Flanagan releases first pro-girl board game

Contact: monarch@maryflanagan.com

BROOKLYN NEW YORK 9th February 2015 – Mary Flanagan, the contemporary artist and Dartmouth professor known also for her game research lab Tiltfactor.org, brings her extraordinary creative insight to create the first “Pro-Girl Board Game.” Known for her thinking on why the ‘Pinkification’ of toys hurts women, Flanagan brings forth a new generation in board gaming for all.

To continue the trend of three-letter publications presenting reviews of #!, ebr (Electronic Book Review) has just published a review by John Cayley – an expert in electronic literature, an accomplished cybertext poet, a teacher of e-lit practices, and someone who has created digital work engaging with the writings of Samuel Beckett, among other things.

It would be difficult to ask for as thoughtful and detailed a review as Cayley provided. Nevertheless, now that ABR and ebr have offered reviews, I do hope that IBR, OBR, and UBR will follow suit.