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Category Archives: Gaming Culture

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 […]

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Warning: Value of Games May Go Down as Well as Up

By Chris Lewis | Published: July 30, 2009

Battlefield 1943 is one of a number of games hitting Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network this summer, countering the traditional summer lull. For just $15 (or £10 for my UK brethren, or 1200 Microsoft Space Bucks for everyone else), one of the most perfect knockabout multiplayer experiences can be had. Want to fly […]

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Edutainment and Lessons “Learned” from Commercial Video Games: Jazz Band Revolution

By Sherol Chen | Published: July 29, 2009

“Jazz Band Revolution” …. Trust me, this is a great idea. A fellow EIS labmate recently gave a class presentation about the “Edutainment Fail.”  To its credit, edutainment is responsible for my first interactions with desktop computers.  Games such as Oregon Train, Logo Writer, some lemonade stand game, and that typing game were widely used […]

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Distant Worlds: San Francisco Symphony Plays Celebrates Music from Final Fantasy

By Sherol Chen | Published: July 20, 2009

There are 3 takeaways I hope to convey in this post.  First, I’d like to share what it was like to be there Saturday night in the symphony hall.  Secondly, I want to describe what I thought about my second time at an FF concert (my first is described here).  Most importantly, I want to […]

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Al Alcorn at 2009 California Extreme show

By Jim Whitehead | Published: July 9, 2009

Pong designer and videogame pioneer Al Alcorn will be speaking at the 2009 California Extreme show this Saturday. He will be participating on a panel where he’ll join Mike Hally (Gravitar, Star Wars), Steve Ritchie (Flash, High Speed, Terminator 2: Judgment Day), and Owen Rubin (Major Havoc, Space Duel, Battlezone) and take Q&A from the […]

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Johanna Drucker is Pulling My Leg

By Noah Wardrip-Fruin | Published: July 9, 2009

Johanna Drucker has a thoughtful review of Matt Kirschenbaum’s Mechanisms in the Spring 2009 issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly. I think most of what she says is spot-on. But she has to be kidding with this, right? Have any works appeared in digital media whose interest goes beyond novelty value? Not yet. My first reaction […]

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