Register Now!
 DISPATCHES

gaming

Preparing this issue has been a lesson in humility for Hooksexup's editors. Our knowledge about video-game development has been routinely scorned in editorial meetings by the relatively plugged-in members of our staff. So in the spirit of competition on which Space Invaders was invented, we found six experts — among them, author Steven Johnson and designer Brenda Braithwaite — who know even more about the subject than our techies.

Our esteemed panel will engage in five lively e-mail conversations about questions such as, when and why did people in their twenties and thirties become gaming junkies? Is Hillary Clinton's campaign against Grand Theft Auto as laughable, and as doomed, as Nancy Reagan's against drugs? And how far off is satisfying video-game sex?

Take that, everyone who mocked us for not knowing the Xbox was wireless! The rest of you, enjoy. — Ada Calhoun


The Participants:

Steven Johnson is the author of the bestsellers Everything Bad Is Good for You, Mind Wide Open and Emergence. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Johnson was co-founder of the award-winning websites FEED and Plastic.com. He teaches at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and hosts a weblog at www.stevenberlinjohnson.com.
Brenda Brathwaite is a twenty-three-year veteran of the video-game industry. She has worked on twenty-one published titles, most recently Cyberlore's Playboy: the Mansion. She is the founder and chair of the International Game Developers Association's Sex Special Interest Group, which aims to promote discussion about the adult-content-development community and its unique issues and challenges. Visit her weblog at www.igda.org.
Ian Bogost teaches classes about video-game ethics and philosophy at Georgia Tech, and is the author of a forthcoming book titled Unit Operations: An Approach to Video Game Criticism. He is also the founder of Persuasive Games, a game studio that designs and distributes electronic games for persuasion, instruction and activism. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA.
Eric Zimmerman is a game designer living in New York City. He runs gameLab, a game development company focused on independent and experimental games that he founded in 2000 with Peter Lee. He also teaches, writes and agitates about games. His latest book is The Game Design Reader, co-edited with Katie Salen for MIT Press.
Henry Jenkins III is the DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies. He has spent his career studying media and the way people incorporate it into their lives. He is the principal investigator for The Education Arcade, which is examining the educational potential of computer and video games.
Rob Levine is a New York-based freelance writer who contributes to the New York Times, Playboy and Spin, among other publications. He has been an editor at Wired and New York magazines, and he contributed to 20 Years of Alternative Music: Original Writing on Rock, Hip-Hop, Techno, and Beyond. He has an M.S.J. from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a B.A. in politice from Brandeis.
Katie Salen is a game designer, writer, and the Director of Graduate Studies, Design and Technology program, Parsons School of Design. She is co-author (with Eric Zimmerman) of Rules of Play and The Game Design Reader, and is a contributing writer to RES Magazine.


Question 1: Is the sex-and-violence content of video games a legitimate social concern? Or are Hillary Clinton et. al. criticizing games for easy political points? And why is there so much more violence than sex?   Read the discussion

Question 2: If the average age of a gamer is 30, when did video games become more for grownups than kids? (Was there a Gladwellesque tipping point?) Did the Nintendo generation grow up without growing out of games, or was there a latency period in between? Is it attributable to regression or midlife crisis?    Read the discussion

Question 3: How will video games affect the future of online social interaction? Will they develop into an extension of online dating and IMing?  Read the discussion

Question 4: As video games' interactive worlds become more complex, what ethical issues might arise that need regulation? What about commerce in gaming - do you foresee it?  Read the discussion

Question 5: What is the future of sex in video games, and where does the 20th-century idea of virtual reality fit in?  Read the discussion









©2005 hooksexup.com
promotion
buzzbox
partner links


advertise on Hooksexup | affiliate program | home | photography | personal essays | fiction | dispatches | video | opinions | regulars | search | personals | horoscopes | HooksexupShop | about us |

account status
| login | join | TOS | help

©2009 hooksexup.com, Inc.