2005

will design games for food

2005/11/30: As I finish up my PhD, I'm looking for a job as an assistant professor. I'm applying to colleges across the United States, for positions in educational technology, educational psychology, game studies, media studies, telecommunication, and the like. In my new position, I'll continue to play a central role in all things Ink . I'm hoping that the right program will see the package of me and Ink as irresistible.

Essay: Pressing Buttons

2005/11/07: This is a sample column I submitted to The Chronicle of Higher Education, for their First Person feature. They kindly rejected it, but I'm glad I wrote it. It should be interesting to read in ten years.

Intriguing Fantasy Art: furiae

2005/10/24: As my team and I try to imagine Ink, we look for provocative and compelling imagery. Text will have primacy in Ink, but it's exciting to think about what art like this could do to capture players' imaginations.

Upcoming Presentations: Future Play, IWCA-NCPTW

2005/09/18: I'll be presenting papers at Future Play in East Lansing (October 13-15) and IWCA-NCPTW in Minneapolis (October 19-23). Ink will be a major focus of both talks.

Urban Planning for Felicity

2005/08/12: A new poem, loosely related to Ink...

Ink in the News

2005/07/25: This article is pretty on, although we/they didn't properly emphasize Dave Sheridan's role as my collaborator. I had to Google "You Got Served."

Book Recommendation: Invisible Cities

2005/07/04: Our working design for Ink is centered around a player-constructed city. On the advice of a colleague, I read Invisible Cities for inspiration. It's a fascinating series of short, quasi-lyrical descriptions of imaginary cities. Among its myriad themes: what makes city, sense of place, and making the familiar strange.

Calvino, I. (1972). Invisible cities. San Diego, California: Harcourt Brace & Company.

"Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask, 'Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?' the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, 'So that its destruction cannot begin.' And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, 'Not only the city.'" p. 127

More...

Shakespeare the game designer

2005/05/25: "We imagine that if Shakespeare were alive today he would be a game designer, given his fascination with the conventions of theater and the mechanics of staging and plot development."

Squire, K. & Jenkins, H. (2003). Harnessing the power of games in education. InSight, 3, 5-33.

Ink Dev blog launched

2005/05/17: As the lead designer of Ink, I've launched a separate blog, inkdev.blogspot.com.

Ink is a persistent alternate world, similar to a MUD/MOO, currently under development at Michigan State University. Ink is a joint project of the MSU Writing Center and the Writing In Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center. Ink will blend research-based and theoretically-informed approaches to teaching writing with compelling, creative gameplay. Target players will likely include high school and undergraduate students.

Kym at DiGRA Conference

2005/05/11: FYI, I'll be co-presenting at the DiGRA Conference in Vancouver, BC, next month: "Gender Impacts on Game Design Process and Products: An in depth analysis of middle school children's conceptualization of a learning game."

Book Recommendation: My Tiny Life

2005/05/11: Dibbell, J. (1998). My tiny life: Crime and passion in a virtual world. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Dibbell's more newsman than trained ethnographer, but he does an admirable job interweaving his experiences as a player with an exploration of the affordances, constraints, and emergent dynamics of virtual life. More...

Children & Adult-Rated Video Games

2005/05/2: Last Monday I attended a hearing on a Michigan senate bill to criminalize the sale or rental of adult-rated video games (Senate Bill 249). My thoughts....

"It's Just a Game:" Consent & Immersion in Persistent Alternate Worlds

4/25: This essay explores choice, identity, consent, immersion, and meta-contextual awareness in play and learning, especially in persistent alternate worlds. Real cases are used to illustrate principles. Authors of such worlds are encouraged to design for risk-taking, and to remain flexible in their beliefs about play and role-play.

Of Star Trek, iPods, & Flash "Games"

4/20: I recently bought an iPod, and I'm totally enamored with it. As I wander around campus, I notice other people wearing the distinctive white ear buds. I'm reminded of "The Game," an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The crew of the Enterprise is brainwashed by a highly addictive game. The heroes (and the audience) can identify the game-zombies by their distinctive headgear. At the climax, Wesley resists playing the game, but the game makes itself impossible to lose. As a casual experiment, I've been playing Flash banner ads that purport to be games (e.g., hit ___ to win an iPod, PSP, free Blockbuster rentals, etc.; identify the celebrity in a childhood photo to win a shopping spree, etc.). I always win, because I have unlimited tries, because the hit detection is very forgiving, or sometimes if I just click anywhere inside the ad. It's a good thing I already have an iPod, or I'd be tempted to accept their subsequent, questionable Terms and Conditions.

Co-opting: Comic Book Science in the Classroom

4/14: (via NPR & Lisa Galarneau) "A new experiment in Maryland has students and teachers using comic books as learning tools."

7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

4/14: This is a concise and compelling set of arguments.

CSS, RSS, & a combined web site

4/13: I've been teaching myself CSS and RSS, and I'm finally confident enough to bring my home page and blog together under one address: KymBuchanan.org (here).

Presentations on co-opting, games & learning

4/13: For upcoming conferences, I signicantly revised two of my presentations: Co-opting: Your Curriculum + Their Interests = Great Teaching and Games & Learning: Possibilities, Principles, & Practicalities.