This course will examine contemporary trends in theorizing digital media with particular attention given to software and the video game as new media texts. The semester will be divided into two units. The first unit will address theories of code and software. We will discuss the concept of “software studies” in relation to traditional media studies, and investigate how code and software can be examined as aesthetic and political texts. Through an examination of code and semiotics, software and ideology, and critiques of particular software programs, we will lay a theoretical foundation for the investigation of our second unit: video games. Following the rise of the “serious game movement” we will investigate the emergence of political games, persuasive games, simulation games, newsgames, art games, etc., in relation to the theoretical Concepts we developed while analyzing Software and code.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Bored? PLAY THIS GAME AND WRITE A PAPER ON IT!!!

So EVENTUALLY I'd like to post some thoughtful discourse and analysis on games/codeart/digital media on this blog, but tonight I'm tired, lazy, and bored so I thought I'd post a few links to games that I have and have not played in hopes that at least someone else's boredom will be staved off for a few hours or minutes.

Darkside Adventures
The Dude's website
A fun game designed in the style of old Genesis/NES games. It gets pretty hard, and I'm definitely stuck on the last level. Still, it's got a fun retro feel to it.

A review of Ether Vapor
Torrent
A fun Japanese Doujin Shmup. Japanese Doujin computer game industry is truly fascinating, and it's almost like an official indie gaming market which is really cool. Anyways, I was going to have links to the game demo proper, but apparently the whole company website is down/missing. Maybe they just moved, or are temporarily down, or gone for good, but it's definitely a fun game, judging by how many times I played it during screening on mute. It gets pretty hard, and there's a cool system where the number of shields and continues your allowed to have increases as you play more times, so you're allowed to mess up more often the more times you die.

That's about all I feel like posting up for now. Later on in the summer, I'll write up a bit about http://0100101110101101.org/ or The Marriage but right now Robot Chicken should be coming on so I'm signing off.

Gnite Folks!
-Jason "The Basin" Lee

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