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Amusing | Cyberculture | Games | Media | Writing

Free Game Friday: Text-Based Games

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2012 Interactive Fiction contest we’ll be featuring text-based games in this week’s Free Game Friday roundup. Not all of this week’s games come from the competition, but they all feature the written word as their main gameplay mechanic. We also didn’t have space to feature all the great games in the competition, so here’s [...]

Academia | Amusing | Books | Games | PopCult

Yes, it’s happening here at Seton Hill. Quidditch.

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Books | Cyberculture | Education | Essays | Games | Humanities | Literature

Literature is the new Latin

“But I’m going to be a video game designer!” protests one of my Grade 10 English students. “I don’t need to be able to read novels or write essays.”

The way the game is rigged right now, in order to gain admission to a reputable video game design program in a traditional post-secondary institution, one [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Games | Media | Modding | Writing

Inform 7 Exploration – New Media Projects (EL405)

Before class,

Watch this 10-minute introduction to Modern Interactive Fiction. Watch this 2-minute trailer for a documentary film on interactive fiction. (Optional: a version of the film is available online: GET LAMP… I’m featured at the 12:30, 17 minutes, and around 41 minutes. You [...]

Culture | Cyberculture | Games | History | Media | Modding

Interactive Fiction In The iOS Age: A Text-Based Love Story

I’m about to introduce interactive fiction in my “New Media Projects” course. I’m glad to find further evidence that the genre continues to be discovered and shared.

If you start playing IF and search for people with the same interests to chat with, good resources, and help of any kind, the intfiction forum is the [...]

Education | Games | Personal | Science

Crazy, Kinetic, Acoustic Visit to the Carnegie Science Center

She knows Vulcans have their hearts where their livers are supposed to be.

A few days ago, I blogged about visiting SportsWorks at the Carnegie Science Center. A couple weeks ago, I brought my son and his friend to see an extended tour of the submarine USS Requin.

This post is mostly about visiting the Exploration Station, part of the fourth floor installation that features more of the [...]

Culture | Games | Personal | Science

SportsWorks Adventure at the Carnegie Science Center

Woah!

I confess that I have never been all that physical. I do try to take the stairs instead of the elevator at work. I let my daughter talk me into auditioning for a community theater musical (and while my dancing was definitely in the bottom third, or maybe the bottom tenth, I didn’t humiliate myself). [...]

Design | Games | Modding | Writing

Official Rules to Nanofictionary

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I was at a youth car wash today, watching my son and the other the kids spray each other (and sometimes the cars). One of the customers happened to be carrying an anthology of dystopian science fiction. We got to chatting, and he told me about this parlor game — which sadly seems to be [...]

Cyberculture | Design | Games | Media | Writing

Writing Computer Games with Inklewriter

If brass lanterns or slathering-fanged grues mean anything to you, you might want to look into Inklewriter.

I teach a text-adventure (“interactive fiction“) unit in my “New Media Projects” course. My mainstay for that unit is Inform 7, a robust tool with loads of examples and a user community that I know well (through my [...]

Aesthetics | Cyberculture | Design | Games | Personal

I suspect my cupcake-fiend 10yo has been using my iPad again

It’s just this feeling I have when I view the last several dozen images saved to my photostream.