I don’t even pirate any more

Jan ´19
12 4:54 pm
  • Posted by: admin
  • Category: general

Back in the day I used to pirate a decent number of games but I don’t any more. It isn’t because I turned over a new leaf or stopped playing games. No, it is because I have so many free games that I can’t play them all. Between freebies that places like Humblebundle, Steam, and GoG give away from time to time and Twitch giving away games every month, I just don’t bother pirating games.

I used to either pirate a game or just wait until it was on sale but now I just play the free games or the same old games like Overwatch or even Civ V.

So maybe the solution to piracy isn’t DRM which only serves to inconvenience people who actually buy the game. Maybe the solution is just to give away so many games that you can’t play them all? I mean that might not work well for their bottom line but it has certainly has minimized my piracy…

About admin

Some things I’ve scanned and uploaded to Archive.org

I’ve been trying to keep somewhat productive during the pandemic (until my gallbladder started acting up but I’m fine now). Rather than writing or researching, I did something easier: scanning in stuff and uploading it to archive.org. I’ve mostly scanned in posters that came with issues of Edge magazine. I don’t know if they still do these but for several years they would do wall calendars that had Nintendo themes on them. I’ve scanned in all the Edge posters so now I’m starting to scan in a few other things (and I may have uploaded some pdfs that I didn’t scan).

So if anyone has any interest in them, here they are: https://archive.org/details/@jccalhoun

E-sports in odd places

The other day I was at work waiting on the microwave to finish and glanced over at the recycling bin and noticed an issue of Ed Tech magazine. Now I had never heard of this magazine but the cover caught my eye:

An article on how a college IT staff can help launch an esports team. I had to grab it out of recycling and make a copy of it.

So, in violation of all sorts of copyright, here is the article:

The article ends with a link to their website where they have a whitepaper on esports.

Educational Games

I have been skeptical about educational games. I’ve also been skeptical about “serious games” (I used to say I was more interested in “frivolous games” but it never seemed to catch on). I’ve also been down on narrative in games.

So it should come as no surprised that last semester I taught a course on videogame narrative where I had students play games with narratives and serious games.

It was an interesting experience not only because I was teaching something I wasn’t super into but also because I had been working on my main teaching gig so much that I barely had time to create the syllabus for this class. So for the first time in many years I was teaching a week ahead of what I was reading.

It ended up being a fun class if a bit chaotic. I’ll post my syllabus below if anyone is interested in it.

I was most proud of how I turned educational games on their head. Instead of having students play educational games I had them make games that illustrate the concepts of the course and I think it worked really well.

I’m not a programmer and I didn’t want to set any expectations of my student’s computer skills so I had them use Twine. There was a learning curve so I had them make a basic game and I also made a little tutorial twine as well as a google doc with a bunch of twine resources.

The games they made weren’t super polished. We kind of ran out of time and if I teach it again I will really try to give them more time to revise it. However, they were really creative and interesting. So here are the games my students made.

Here is the calendar and readings for the class:

ReadingsGamesAssignments
Monday, August 27, 2018cambridge intro to narrativeAdam Cadre’s Interactive Fiction Tutorial http://adamcadre.ac/if/tutorial.html
Wednesday, August 29, 2018zork lebling1979 and Interactive Fiction how is it differentThe Time Machine: A Chad, Matt & Rob Interactive Adventure!
Wednesday, September 5, 2018Narrative interactivity play and games ZimmermanZork
Monday, September 10, 2018Half-Real Juul IntroductionChoices
Wednesday, September 12, 2018Half-Real Juul Chapter 2
Monday, September 17, 2018Half-Real Juul Chapter 4dys4ia https://freegames.org/dys4ia/
Wednesday, September 19, 2018Games Telling stories
Monday, September 24, 2018Ludology meet narratologyWe Become What We Behold https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb
Wednesday, September 26, 2018gamestorytelling and breaking the string costikyan
Monday, October 1, 2018Video Games Are Better Without StoriesMy Horse Prince https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-horse-prince/id1173408461 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.usaya.prince.en
Wednesday, October 3, 2018Character Development chapter 7 
Monday, October 8, 2018Character Development chapter 14The Future of Football 17776 https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
Wednesday, October 10, 2018Writing Interactive Fiction with Twine Excerpts2018-10-05-nohighlights.docx 
Monday, October 15, 2018Doki Doki Literature Club http://ddlc.moe/
Wednesday, October 24, 2018Character Development sections.docx 
Monday, October 29, 2018Character Development chapter 12Her Story http://www.herstorygame.com/
Wednesday, October 31, 2018interactive storytelling for videogames lebowitz klug chapter 2
Monday, November 5, 2018interactive storytelling for videogames lebowitz klug chapter 4A Normal Lost Phone http://anormallostphone.com/
Wednesday, November 7, 2018interactive storytelling for videogames lebowitz klug chapter 5
Monday, November 12, 2018Video Game Storytelling – Evan Skolnick excerpts80 days https://www.inklestudios.com/80days/
Wednesday, November 14, 2018SLAY THE DRAGON chapter 2Class Prep Activityalpha of group game due playtesting game
Monday, November 26, 2018SLAY THE DRAGON chapter 3Gone Home https://gonehome.game/
Wednesday, November 28, 2018SLAY THE DRAGON chapter 6

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