In Medias Resolution

This is a little late, but Michigan State University's Cody Mejeur and I have been accepted to present at the upcoming Replaying Japan 2015 Conference to be held at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto in May! We will present our findings in a paper entitled, "Playing the Ocarina Across Cultures: Explicating Ludo-Narrative Experience in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time." This year, the Replaying Japan conference will feature Hironobu Sakaguchi (father of the Final Fantasy fran

This year for whatever reason both GDC and PAX East were at opposite ends of the same week. This was particularly problematic for publishers, devs, and (I guess) researchers like myself for whom it is important to attend both. Perhaps because of that, I didn't go at GDC or PAX East with my usual vigor, but despite that, there were still a great deal of memorable occurences at both events. I was able to meet up with some of my State-side family while I was in San Francisco. An

The International Academic Conference on Meaningful Play 2014 took place at Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan, USA, from Oct. 20~22, 2014. Additionally on the evening of Oct. 19th, there was a pre-conference talk from Lisa Nakamura on Racism, Sexism, and Video Games: Social Justice Campaigns and the Struggle for Gamer Identity, though sadly, my flight had arrived late on the night of the 19th so I missed that pre-conference talk. LINK: Meaningful Play Conference

One of the perks from my recent IndieGoGo campaign on Video Game Studies was to be featured in my actual conference presentation on a special slide reserved for the 12 major contributors to my research efforts. Those who are true enablers of this research. And so, with the conference in just a few days, I have finished the major contributors slide. Yes, this is the shadow organization which funds my research efforts. So in true Metal Gear fashion, I hereby dub them "The Patri

I still can't believe it, but I received a Top Paper award from the Meaningful Play 2014 Conference. I'm seriously freaking out. In the good way. To anyone and everyone who has ever challenged and/or enabled me, thank you. #conference #meaningfulplay #trip

CEDEC 2014 (Computer Entertainment Developers Conference) took place in Yokohama, Japan from September 2st~4th, and as always, more than anything, it was a true test of just how my current level of Japanese listening/reading/speaking is going. In summary, I only understood about 50% of everything I saw/heard, which is down from last year's comprehension rate of ~70% In other words, I need to get on it with Japanese. Seriously. However, one of the most refreshing things that h

Paper accepted to Meaningful Play 2014 in Michigan! Just got back from Replaying Japan 2014 in Canada and jet lagging, but very happy to receive this notification in my inbox this morning. This paper was the hardest to write so far, but it was on Papers, Please and Gone Home, and therefore more than worth it. Plus, the reviews that came back were actually pretty good, so I am pretty stoked. This marks my 4th international conference paper to date. No rest for the weary. #acce

The Replaying Japan 2014: 2nd International Conference on Japan Game Studies took place at the University of Alberta, Edmonton from August 21st~23rd, and frankly, it was an insightful blast. In the above photo, I'm with the conference's first keynote speaker, Mr. Tomohiro Nihsikado, the original creator of Space Invaders. Back during the classic age of arcade games, game developers handled mostly everything by themselves--the asset creation, the programming (which was conduct

Made it to my hotel in Edmonton alright. Some things that have happened so far: -the girl sitting next to me on my first flight from Narita to Vancouver kept falling asleep on my shoulder. -noticed that all the Canadian customs agents were wearing body armor. -as soon as I got off the plane, I received an email that said that my hotel reservation had been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. I called the booking agent and it turns out my original hotel'a elevator is bus

I was fortunate enough to have made it to Meaningful Play 2012, now here's me throwing my hat into the ring for Meaningful Play 2014. I feel like this paper has a pretty good shot at getting in. I worked pretty damn hard on it, even went through a pretty rough patch of sorrow and contemplative loathing while trying to conceptualize this paper's enthymeme, but in the end, it came out really well, I think. Feel pretty good about this submission. #conference #meaningfulplay