But Not Yet

This is not The Promised Post. That I've been legitimately busy (maybe for the first time in my life) makes writing about the past few months evermore the daunting task for one so traditionally lackadaisical. Or lazy, lazy probably works better. I'm indulging the lazydazical side today, sipping hot chocolate in the Seattle drizzle.



Yes, this coffee mug moonlights as a cereal bowl.

Language is Beautiful moves along, that's the main point for this post. It's a game on poetry that's been submitted for the IGF, and, though maybe not where it should be (existentially), some great feedback came from folks at Meaningful Play and my lovely friends, both on and off Facebook. The best analogy is that a bunch of crazy people have poured rare and fragrant coffee grounds into my brain, the water is still hot, and the redesign, it percolates.

It's taking time, and that's fine. I'm not making instant coffee. I'm making multiple designs to reflect how we read poetry, in a non-game-ethnocentric sort of way. That is, the value and weight of the words should, ultimately, balance with the value and weight of the interaction.

And for now I'm home, safe, and chocolated.

Fine, Fine

I'll update my CV. Happy now?

A lot's happened since my road trip down to Sunny Southern California. I'll make a post about it. Later. Promise.

That Just Happened

I think I'd rather post announcing that I'm not updating my CV, than actually take the time to update my CV.

That is all. Thank you.

GES and A Minute Outside Winters

Salutations and such. In this installment of neilsclark.com I'll give a modestly sensible accounting of the adventures in Los Angeles, a city which we might otherwise call the 'massively single player game.'

I set out in the evening, about 9PM, and drove from Burien, WA, to Morro Bay, CA. With a brief stop of about two hours in between, I arrived at my Co-Author Shavaun's house in the late afternoon. The trip was safe, the largest threat probably being heart failure caused by ingestion of something like 7 Red Bulls.

I brought Shavaun, her husband, and myself cigars. The next morning I left for Los Angeles, and checked into an amazing hostel. If you're staying in LA on the cheap, I'd highly recommend the perfect mix of economy, safety, and charm at Gramercy Place. The more fun stories are all a bit juicy to paste here. I wouldn't, for instance, want to trouble the two ladies who wracked the hostel's on-Demand for softcore pornography (though I'm pretty sure we found the harder stuff). I was, of course, innocently and diligently working on the transcript for a presentation to be given the following afternoon.

Odd that I never finished the thing.

In a colorfully spontaneous adventure to meet up with USC games profs, I got a chance to meet Henry Jenkins, who is just as kindly and wonderfully nerdy as he seemed in all the videos I'd seen, and texts I'd read. He joined a gathering of other games educators as I detailed this ethics course I've been teaching. In attendance were PhDs Jose Zagal and Susan Scheibler, who also teach ethics courses to games students, and a cast of other characters I'd met through the two-day summit.

I never went to E3 or any of its parties. I gave my tickets away, and instead drove to Santa Monica, and up around the Mulholland Fwy with a games academic from Hong Kong.

In the days that followed I visited family that I hadn't seen in fifteen years - the trip was long overdue. My last leg was from Santa Ynez, back up to Tacoma to peek in on a good friend's birthday. I started this one at 9pm as well. Unlike the previous attempt, done after staying up till 2 helping a friend tile his bathroom, this final leg was being tried after sleepless nights of Norwegian hanky-panky in the hostel bunk below me, and of the generally reduced sleep one experiences while seeing good people and places.

LOGIN 2010 Addiction Talk

Amid the heaviest crunch of finals week, only slightly before losing electricity and internet, which occurred only slightly before being prepared to submit the grades online, which was of course far, far before the deadline for submitting the grades online, I learned I'd be speaking on addiction at the 2010 LOGIN conference. There were, functionally, three days to prepare. Maybe four. I gave the talk yesterday, at nine in the morning, after an hour or two of sleep.

This morning I slept in.

The transcript of the talk is here: Game Addiction: For Fun and Profit. For some odd reason, my submission to change the session name from its (widely riffed on) earlier iteration did not catch. Students who took this most recent Ethics course, or those who've otherwise seen the Neil Gaiman MIT Julius Schwartz Lecture (which is wonderful) may note that I blithely steal one of Gaiman's neat speaking techniques.

Some parts of the transcript are in outline form, and I did break from script in numerous places. As noted, the 30-second session description was delivered in the style of the late Mitch Hedberg, to a ballroom packed with games business execs.

Video recordings were made of the session yesterday. I'll link those here as soon as I see them.

David and Nina

With all the usual end-of-semester hustle-and-bustle, an unconventional question, wrapped in song, can't be anything but on my mind:

David?



Or Nina?



'With your kiss my life begins.'

Updates in Non-Poetry Form

It's been awhile since I gave a non-nonsensical interpretation of goings-on.

-In early February, Gamasutra published a piece on the physicality of immersion. Initially it was meant to be the first of three, the second exploring psychology of play and the third exploring a values-free discussion of media effects. I'm still looking at doing some very cool interviews for those articles - but they're on hold.

-I got swamped with teaching. It's been a lot of fun, and extremely gratifying, but was initially given over a hundred students where I'd planned for about half that.

-Today the Games Education Summit accepted a talk I proposed for what I've done with DigiPen's ethics class. In short, I've been using extant media studies work, as well as effects research, to create something I'm really proud of.

-Dating can die in a fiery plane crash, screaming as it tries scooping its metal-punctured intestines back inside. Which I find to be an entirely healthy and productive attitude thank you very much.

-I wrote a novel. I'm still letting that stew before I go to a second draft. Now I'm reading and writing a lot of poetry. Neither of these has helped my writing as much as intently grading about 300 papers over the last 3 months. If your professor friends ever offer to let you grade their papers, I'd recommend you take them up on it. Oh God, please take them up on it.

-I'm working on an ultra-secret project that involves designing something interactive and unlike anything you've ever seen before. But I also have a backup project that involves nonfiction.

That's it. Carry on.