Month: November 2003

‘Tis the season to go pilfering

By Adriana Hunstad

The semester is quickly coming to an end. Holidays are just around the corner, which means car prowlings could increase. Already in October, there were eight reported cases, where the stolen goods amounted to $3,000. “It’s a good time to remind the campus community with the Christmas season approaching, not to leave any valuables open… Continue reading ‘Tis the season to go pilfering

Tetris timeline

By Вen Li

June 1985 – Alexy Pajitov programs the first Tetris at the Moscow Academey of Science on an mainframe. Vadim Gerasimov makes a PC version. July 1986 – Robert Stein, President of British software company Andromeda, spots Apple II and Commodore-64 versions of Tetris in Budapest. Without securing rights to the game, he sells all rights… Continue reading Tetris timeline

Required reading

By Nils Olson

Berber, Arthur Asa. Video Games: a popular culture phenomenon. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002. Darley, Andrew. Visual digital culture: surface play and spectacle in new media genres. New York: Routledge, 2000. From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: gender and computer games. Eds. Justing Cassell and Henry Jenkins, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. Gee, James Paul. What Video… Continue reading Required reading

A brief history of gaming

By Nils Olson

Digital games have existed since the development of modern computers. As computers have changed so have the games. They have moved hand-in-hand with computers. From the days of fridge-sized mainframes on university campuses, to the hobbyist computer movement of the 1970s, into our homes, our pubs, our phones, our PDAs–video games have saturated all aspects… Continue reading A brief history of gaming

Digital Games and Violence: are games really that bad?

By Nils Kolson

In the 1980s the U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop made the following comments to the Western Psychiatric Institution and Clinic about digital games and the nature of young players. “Children… are into the games body and soul–everything is zapping the enemy. Children get to a point where they see another child being molested by… Continue reading Digital Games and Violence: are games really that bad?

Playing with yourself

By Chris Tait

Some games are just more fun playing with others. Every gamer on the planet can agree that all videogames can be separated into two categories: single player and multiplayer. Multiplayer is a trend covering every corner of the gaming universe, from two players alternating on Super Mario Bros. to blowing another player away from halfway… Continue reading Playing with yourself

Game genres

By Ben Hoffman

Genres have become an essential part of games, helping people decide which ones are worth $70. There are eight main genres of video games: action, adventure, racing (or driving), puzzle, role-playing, simulation, sports and strategy. Beyond this, there are many sub-genres that have been created and exploited by game developers over the years. Action The… Continue reading Game genres

Sports games

By Garth Paulson

Sports games are to video games what senseless summer sequels are to Hollywood–cash cows. It’s true video games are also supported by seemingly endless sequels (Megaman) but sports games have a special status; they are sequels before they hit the shelf. Anyone who is the least bit interested in buying a sports game will already… Continue reading Sports games

Where the games went

By Вen Li

New video games are lucky to keep gamers’ attention for six months. Mass-produced cliches and unoriginal gameplay don’t last long the shelves. Very few extraordinary titles–Diablo, Counter-Strike, Quake, StarCraft–can hang on for a year or longer before being binned, but classics are frozen in time in the minds of gamers and at the arcades. Trends… Continue reading Where the games went