Posts by Val Waldron

Old Dominion University has taken the time to painstakingly recreate their library in the popular indie game Minecraft, and is currently seeking out ideas for connecting with current and potential users who play the game. According to their website, they're planning a zombie invasion on their virtual library to celebrate Halloween, and who knows what might invade them next.

Jon Irwin of the blog Kill Screen has done an interview with our own Dave Carter that accentuates the archive. In the interview, they discuss the importance of studying not only great and popular games, but learning the history of and learning lessons from the worst games out there as well.

Here are our top games for the month of September. Smash continues to dominate the scoreboard, but Melee has fallen slightly below Brawl. Deus Ex rises quickly in popularity, and the 3DS makes an appearance.

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.

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.

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!

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.

The organizers of the annual Classic Gaming Expo - John Hardie, Sean Kelly, and Joe Santulli - have a mission. They want to start a physical museum that collects everything about classic games - every version of every game, design & developer notes, promotional materials, backups of unreleased games, etc.  The exact location is yet to be determined, but San Jose, CA is their stated goal.