Posts tagged with links

Microsoft has just finished announcing the direction that they're going to be taking in the coming year...

An article on KCET.org describes how researchers of the newly-released video game L.A. Noire used library and archive materials to inspire ideas for the game, from using old photography and maps to inspire the visuals, to scouring old newspapers for real-life crime stories that inspired the plots in the game.

Because of a ruling by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, video games are now legally considered to be an art form.

The National Endowment for the Arts is offering a grant to help fund "development, production and distribution of innovative media projects," including video games that can be considered works of art.

Our fearless leader Dave was recently quoted in an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, which explored the growing prevalence of game collections within academic libraries.

Do you have fond memories of working together with your friends on WoW to accomplish a great feat? Read about a notable point in the history of WoW, when people from all over worked together, amassing an enormous list of supplies and defeating terrible enemies in a massive effort to open the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj.

Authored by Ben Nanamaker: A little while back, one of my favorite web sites for thoughtful articles and analysis about video games, The Escapist, posted a video on an interesting topic of debate: "True Female Characters". The video, part of a weekly series they do called Extra Credits, digs deep into the issue of gender and character in video games.

Gerald "Jerry" Lawson, who is often thought of as the inventor of the first modern gaming console, died last weekend at age 70. Jerry designed the mechanics of what eventually became known as the Channel F, a predecessor of the Atari game system, and invented the ability to have interchangeable cartridges in a console, which influenced several cartridge-based game consoles throughout the next couple of decades.

Why do we enjoy playing scary games so much? Nicholaus Noles, a developmental psychologist at the University of Michigan, gives us a psychological perspective into the science behind our attraction to games that inspire a sense of fear, horror or danger. One of the reasons he gives is that they "allow us to experience powerful and complex emotions in a safe way," and that developers use situations in which gamers have limited control over a scary situation to create an effective horror-filled experience.

Librarian Avenger (and one of my former students) Erica Firment has a new post up, where she describes her life in video game terms: "A Parent’s Life as a Video Game"...when I was pregnant with my daughter, I realized that pregnancy is essentially a really immersive resource-conservation RPG. I was always asking myself questions like: “Do I pick up this stuff on the floor, or do I save my Bending Over points for later?”