Pokemon Go is a terrible game, which has added basically no value to the idea of a Pokemon mobile game, which is a brilliant idea and deserves better. This bothers me a lot, because the failures of Pokemon Go seem very obvious and easy to avoid, and in some cases easy to fix. It betrays the fundamental premise of Pokemon, and does this in a way ( Read more... )

I was thinking about safe spaces and how they work in games, and this is just going to be a brief meditation ( Read more... )

I learned a while back by watching Extra Credits about the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics framework from Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubeck ( Read more... )

One of the points of QGCon that stuck with me was the idea of game-playing as an expression of privilege. The act of being good at a game can communicate "It is not necessary for me to spend my time working to feed and house myself" through the medium of defeating others ( Read more... )

“Art’s whatever you choose to frame.”

- Fleur Adcock, poet, editor, England, New Zealand

I was thinking about this a bit after going to qgcon the last couple of days, in particular at a talk about glitches in gaming. The idea that glitches are an inherently queer part of games is certainly neat, but I wanted to dissect the idea of glitches as art ( Read more... )

Over the last couple of days I had the luck to read "How Learning Works," a brief, college lecture course focused book on research-supported techniques to aid teaching efficacy ( Read more... )

Last night I had my version of a flying dream ( Read more... )

Anah and I got back to Santa Cruz tonight. During the car ride, we started listening to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality the podcast; we're on chapter 16 now so Harry has just begun defense class. It's pretty exciting since it's her first time. I love this fic so much ( Read more... )

Yesterday was an extremely busy day ( Read more... )

As it turns out, getting back from a long period of travel in a different time zone has taken its toll on me fairly heavily.  I'm rather tired.

mirrinight did not end up coming over yesterday (FOR SHAME :P) but there was a going away party for a friend that I went to BUT I was too tired to appreciate it.  I was not too tired to appreciate a large amount of ( Read more... )