The Guild Season 6 Began Yesterday!

Just in case you missed it, season 6 of The Guild began yesterday. If you are not familiar with the awesomeness of The Guild it is a web series written by Felicia Day (Buffy & Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) about her love of gaming (video not gambling!). Don’t worry about not being caught up on what’s going on, all previous seasons are available here (and an entire season isn’t more than an hour long - so you have time to watch at least one season).

Now that you’ve warmed up to videogame culture you might be ready for some more serious content. Did you notice that last week’s reading of Writing History in the Digital Age was published by the University of Michigan’s Digital Culture Books? And if you had gone into the Digital Culture Books list of offerings you would have seen the following FREE digital books:

• My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of the World of Warcraft
• Myst and Riven: The World of the D’ni
  • I repeatedly tried to play Myst but I just felt like I was wandering around lost – anyone have an emulator so I can try again?
• Silent Hill: The Terror Engine

I think I need more spare time to get this reading done, how about you?

Addendum: Coursera.org is offering several gaming courses in the next year. They are:

• Currently going on is Gamification. "Gamification is the application of game elements and digital game design techniques to non-game problems, such as business and social impact challenges." Checkout when it will be offered in the future.
• Game Theory will begin in January 2013. "The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more."
• Finally, in July of 2013 you can sign up for Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative. "For both newcomers and hard-core gamers who want to reflect on their passion, this course will explore what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they are turned into online games."

Okay so you (like me) might not imagine having time to actually read these books or take these classes on gaming. In that case feel free to watch this video about gaming by the author of one of tonight's readings.

PS. Rachel, this post is for you