Val Waldron
Library Blogs
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for Date: September 2011
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A new game called Planet Hunters, set up by a list of organizations including the University of Oxford and Yale University, enlists the help of gamers to seek out new civilizations. Or at least discover potentially new planets, by searching through NASA Kepler public release data. According to Gamasutra's article, "Every user who helps to discover a planet is then named in the acknowledgements as part of The Royal Astronomical Society monthly notices." The official report explains more of the details.
Online gamers have used a game called FoldIt to help decipher "the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus," helping scientists to develop "new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs. "While the enzyme had "thwarted scientists for a decade," the entire process took the online gamers only about 3 weeks to crack.
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The CVGA now has an events calendar to help everyone keep track of when the archive will be reserved for special events, as well as where we will be represented around campus. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/cvga-events
The Shapiro Library on Central Campus hosted a welcome event for incoming freshmen called Party for Your Mind over the weekend, complete with an introduction to the library system's resources, video games from the CVGA, and rubber ducks (library rubber ducks) for souvenirs. Here are some pictures of the fun times that were had on Sunday afternoon.
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Here are the top games played in the archive for the month of August. Brawl is ahead of Melee, but I'm sure that will change now that students are returning. And people have been playing a couple of older favorites while the archive has been relatively quiet. Should be interesting to see what the Fall brings!
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The CVGA will be featured on next week's special episode of Double Jump about Gaming & Libraries. Double Jump is "Michigan's only local game show," and "explores gaming as a legitimate and mainstream form of art and entertainment." They've posted a Sneak Peak to next week's episode on YouTube, which contains our segment.
Julia Lange, a doctoral student who has been making occasional use of the CVGA for her research, was at E3 earlier this summer, and shared with us a few photos she snapped with her cellphone: Thanks Julia!