Library Blogs

An article hit the New York Times earlier this month discussing the prevalence of sexual harassment in virtual game play. In the article, they highlight several examples online, from a Kickstarter devoted to documenting how women are portrayed in video games to a blog devoted to the unpleasant comments that women often encounter while playing online games. Quoted in the article are also several people who recognize the need to do something about it.

Here is the top 10 of our most popular games in the archive for the month of July. A combination of a lot of kids in the archive, as well as a number of individual users dedicated to playing a specific game everyday has given us a list that looks a little different from normal. Personally, it's been refreshing to see more unconventional games being played.

We've been working on sorting through some of the game ephemera that we've collected over the years and finding a good way to display it. Some of this stuff is just too good not to have out there for people to see.

People have donated so many game manuals over the years that we (sadly) end up keeping in storage because we just don't have the games themselves to go with them. It's a pity because there are quite a few in our hidden collection that have amazing game art, full of color and bringing back a sense of game nostalgia that few other sources can inspire.

Here is the list of our top games played in the archive for the month of June. It was quite a month for the Nintendo DS, as well as other systems that rarely make the list since we've seen so much interest from kids thus far over the Summer.

Today we had an impressive assortment of incoming freshmen check out the archive in a big tour, about 60 people in total. It's wonderful to see so many new students taking an interest, but we just had to take pictures since we haven't had that big of a crowd in quite some time.

A piece appeared in UM's Michigan Today about Sid Meier's Game Design Boot Camp, which took place earlier this Summer. In it, we discover what gave him the idea for the boot camp, which companies were involved, and a bit about how it was structured. We also learn that not only was Sid Meier's son Ryan involved (a UM graduate), but also his mother, who attended the event as well.

Here is our list of the top 10 games played in the archive for the month of May. A couple of RPG classics made the list, with a Disney game even making an appearance towards the bottom of the list.

To go along with our recent redesign of the archive bulletin board, we've updated our featured game section to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Street Fighter series. So far, all of the series that we've featured are celebrating 25th anniversaries, so we'll see how long we can keep it up.

We have redesigned our bulletin board to include a couple of new feature sections, including "Staff Picks" and "Featured Board Game." Our staff picks for this round are Final Fantasy X (PS2), Star Wars Tie Fighter (DOS), and Chronocross (PS), all of which are available to play in the archive. The board game we chose to feature first is Forbidden Island, a fun cooperative game that is easy and quick to set up, teach new players, and play through in a limited amount of time.