Home About EIS →

Category Archives: Academics

When Technology Isn’t Enough

By Chris Lewis | Published: August 12, 2009

Between being laid out with a kickboxing injury on my foot (not as manly as it sounds, I’m afraid) and food poisoning (which really is as non-manly as it sounds), I’ve had plenty of time to play some more games, without having to write it off to any significant others or advisers as “research”. Gamefly […]

Also posted in Deconstructions | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Expressive Processing Arrives

By Noah Wardrip-Fruin | Published: August 11, 2009

I’m happy to announce the publication of my first monograph, Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies. As the subtitle suggests, this book is a software studies take on the past and future of digital fictions and games. As of today it’s available in bookstores as well as online — and a PDF […]

Posted in Academics | Comments closed

Learning from Games

By Teale Fristoe | Published: August 6, 2009

I don’t need to tell this audience about the momentum building behind educational games.  Even when I was an elementary student, going to the computer lab to play Math Blaster, Odell Down Under, or Oregon Trail was a special treat.  These days, kids grow up on video games: game consoles are nearly as common as […]

Also posted in Deconstructions, Games | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Super Mario Bros. AI Competiton

By Chris Lewis | Published: August 6, 2009

The Super Mario Bros. AI Competition is a fantastic competition being run by Sergey Karakovskiy and Julian Togelius in conjunction with the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2009). Were it not for the fact that all members of the EIS lab are terribly busy working on our research (our advisers read this […]

Also posted in Gaming Culture | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Agency Reconsidered, Again

By Noah Wardrip-Fruin | Published: August 4, 2009

How do we understand moments of “agency” with games and other forms of digital media — what Janet Murray characterizes as players’ “satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices”? Last month our DiGRA 2009 abstract on this topic sparked a thoughtful discussion. It pushed the co-authors (Michael […]

Posted in Academics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Geek Cred: Confirmed

By Chris Lewis | Published: July 31, 2009

Slashdot is “News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters”, and one of the most influential news sites in computing circles. Yesterday, appearing in an article titled “Games That Design Themselves” a certain “University of California” professor is named. Who could this shadowy persona be? With so many campuses to choose from, who could possibly be elevated […]

Posted in Academics | Tagged , , | Comments closed