THIS! It explains a huge problem with serious games: they and the studios making them often feel like they’re embarrassed for being games. Part of that is the clients, but whether studio leads buy into it also has a lot to do with it. I worked at one place where we were allowed to say “video game”
Absolutely. This gets into the “for little work” aspect of how the field played out in the 2010’s in some sectors. There were and are devs who make great things, but there were also systems that rewarded people for being snake oil salesmen, bringing the whole enterprise down
Absolutely - one of the big issues with the serious games of 10-15 years ago is that they weren’t interested in being good games. You went to those conferences and were presented the logos of the well-known funders and some tables of data, but only got a vague idea that anything game-like happened
This made a space where bad actors could farm funding and impact in a young field for no work. I recall a person who couldn’t so much as ID Pikachu, but if there was a cable news spot to critique Pokemon Go on, he was there. Another guy who had never downloaded an engine taught health games classes
I also feel like this has affected game studies as a whole. Keogh writes in his new book that the field already swung too hard focusing on interactivity as the main “special” thing about games, but serious games locked that in and crowded out other analytical approaches tied to game making craft
EXACTLY - serious games were also imagined as a one-stop shop took rather than as “bell ringers” that precede deeper reading and discussion
A lot of serious games also lack long term studies to back up claims regarding outcomes/behaviour change etc. Also, a great deal are difficult to find in the years after publication (guessing funding runs out so they are no longer hosted on publicly facing sites etc) - Easy to repeat past mistakes.
I feel like the backlash against educational tech and gamification calls into question how academia approaches games broadly. Whole programs popped up 10-15 years ago on “serious games” money with approaches that were broad, but not deep: games were talismans that can magically cure what ails ya
Pls smile
Yes! But the whole thing makes me feel like I haven’t totally screwed up as a teacher 😛
This week, try to speak to yourself better. Treat yourself with kindness, give yourself grace.
Be softer with yourself. 💛
Do you want scans with that?
I'm excited to share that I've 3D scanned all 5 toys in the original Super Mario Bros. 3 Happy Meal set that McDonald's released back in August of 1990! These were the very first Mario Happy Meal toys.
Grab the 3D models here: archive.org/details/kesh...
Isn’t new The Naked Gun movie with Liam Neeson supposed to be really good?
It is with a heavy yet hopeful heart that I announce that my beloved Super Mario Bros. prototype cartridge has left and arrived at its new owner's home. We spent one last day together doing all of its favorite things. The proceeds from this private sale will benefit VGHF doing even more cool shit.
Meaningful Play does a good job. More or less serious games-focused but they’ve historically taken an expansive approach to it that can include games with entertainment value and craft. IndieCade is also awesome. Agreed on the rest - I’ve found a niche in those too
At a prominent serious games conference 2 years ago, one of the keynotes was: “here’s a slide with a bunch of corporations you’ve heard of that gave us money. We threw a party with one of them where kids had ideas and we discussed play. A celebrity came too!” The bar has gone so low it’s underground
In some of the serious games studios I experienced bad craft that hid behind “the mission” so directors could skip the dev process. This isn’t gatekeeping of “real” or not games: I’m talking about seeing someone take shortcuts they knew would make jank games, but do it to make quick $ or farm clout
And I say this having made serious games for years. A lot of my commercial games still even have a “serious games” theoretical backing to them. I do think we need to understand and peer review games as craft in academia too though.
In so doing, it’s also telling me that there need to be 1) more academic game design studies venues (journals and conferences) that aren’t serious games-focused or pure industry events. Academic game making needs venues. 2) there needs to be more avenues for arts-based game studies. It’s a huge gap
Reading @brkeogh.bsky.social’s new book on Game Studies, and it does A LOT of important work just untangling the various strands of the field. As an “academic practitioner”, it’s greatly clarified the divide between game studies (playing games) and game design studies (making games)
Basically - a good way to have incels search college websites and thought police course materials they don’t like. Thankfully location and contact info don’t have to be on those versions of syllabi
It also just broadly turns Ohio into a place where the mission of higher ed is “generate workers and capital” and not “create an educated society”. Other hits include syllabi needing to be posted publicly, tenured faculty being subject to frequent “productivity reviews”, and banning employee strikes
The maths and sciences cut were the BAs for that reason, but the BSs are still active. Those are the main ones in those fields. Regardless, programs are scrambling to incorporate needed elements, that were programs for ease of use, into concentrations, which makes current degrees more labyrinthine.
SB1 has a few parts, one is the anti-DEI stuff, another is that if the major has something like fewer than 5 grads across 3 years, your program is shut down. It’s a shortsighted disaster making it harder for certain needed types of licensure programs to exist that people in specific jobs need
Newspapers published dart boards with Art Modell’s face on them. We had one on our fridge
An evergreen Cleveland chant
A VCR never sold my private info to a nazi
Anne Hathaway bought the rights to a novel about a tradwife influencer who wakes up in 1855 and has to actually live the life she's been selling online. The book is called Yesteryear. It came out 3 days ago. The film rights were already sold to Hathaway, who will produce and star.
Holy shit, I have NEVER been more excited for a movie.
