In an attempt to log more of my intellectual process, I'm starting a new little mini-series, where I mind-dump the literature I've been engaging with over the month, some of my thoughts (if I have time), and the pieces I haven't read yet but really want to, once a month. Here's a rough collection of things I've been engaging with (in no particular order.)
[Publication Note: It's a little late but here it is! Better to post something than Nothing At All]
Stuff I Read
Critical Distance: Keywords in Play Ep. 14 - Adrienne Shaw
After reading (and struggling to parse) some of the denser terminologies in Hall's Encoding/Decoding last month, this piece was a nice refresher and elaboration on some of the content within it, explored well, and explained in a way even a poor undergrad like me could understand. The introduction of Hall as a contrasting view and almost alchemical fusion is wicked good, and exactly the kind of mixed-concept research I hope to do more of on my own time. Strongly recommend checking it out for those interested.
Literally Anything in Analog Games Studies
Having just discovered this journal on a professor's suggestion, I've spent the month slowly working through basically everything in this journal (it's so so good y'all) and it fully deserves a post all of its own. For now, I'll just list the big three pieces I really enjoyed as of the time of writing:
- Roleplaying as a Solution to the Quarterbacking Problem of Cooperative Games
- Virtual Design as Metaphor: The Evolution of a Character Sheet
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A Time for Telling - Schwartz and Brandsford
This comes right in off of a discussion I had with the Quarterbacking author - Until now, I hadn't considered looking at the implementation of ludic design from an instructional design methodology, but after all, most games are or involve some kind of instructions, so in hindsight, it makes perfect sense. This was recommended to me as a foundational text of instructional design (and wow can I see that - this paper came out the year I was born and I can see every piece of it in most of the learning I did in school) and led me to some interesting research questions about improving rules-onboarding in games. I'll definitely be chewing on this more in the future.
Stuff I Wanna Read
Managing Visibility on Youtube through Algorithmic Gossip - Sophie Bishop
I literally just heard about this at the time of writing. I expect it to be as miserably depressing as most research about my generations' online communication research tends to be, but goodness if it doesn't sound interesting.
Performativity in Art, Literature, and Videogames -Dashana Jayemanne
This is a textbook (and as such, kinda outside my price range at the moment) but I'm desperately interested to know what's in this and if there's any discussion of live-play and possibly an improv/live performance angle. That kind of live-play group practice is something I'm interested in bringing into my own methodology, so knowing what other literature says is always a good idea, I figure.
