Agenda Item Week 5

Ian Bogust, the author a book on the games and assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, claims that (young) people are more likely to learn about big theories of society by playing games and teaching themselves than to read it in the paper ("Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time" by Clive Thompson). Although I do agree that putting societal issues in a game is a creative approach in spreading knowledge across populations, I also feel that people are selective about the games they play. In this way, how effective are games in reaching the people?

Just as Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative, claims that designing fun and politically nuanced games is really tough--I agree. Games are, in fact, seen as an artistic expression and "by understanding how games express rhetoric in their rules, we not only gain a critical vantage point on videogame artifacts, but also we can begin to consider how to design games whose primary purpose is to editorialize, teach, and make political statements" ("Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy by Ian Bogust).

In questioning whether games are or are not effective in imposing societal issues, just being able to discuss it in this way is already a change.

Wikipedia Entry

Search: Two little tigers

Wiki Entry Deleted!

I wanted to confirm that I have done a Wikipedia entry and that it got deleted and as of 4:13am there is no entry to show for it. I am now going to try and recreate my entry. JL