games – Page 2 – Phill 365

Day 249: The Lecture I have to give

September 29, 2017 phillgames

Part of my establishing a new identity as a scholar is shoring up the explanation of what I do. One of those things, for me, is teaching writing for games. Writing is a complicated thing[…]

Day 243: Gaming for fun vs. games as work

September 23, 2017 phillArmchair phillosophy

I’ve talked about this topic at length before, but I realized the other night that I haven’t written about it here, at least not as a primary post. Today I want to talk a bit[…]

Day 240: The Arcade Money Fallacy

September 20, 2017 phillgames

I have this theory that I bounce around sometimes. My students often take issue with it, but I think it might be generational for them. It might not be, so I’m going to offer up[…]

Day 230: Heavy is the head

September 10, 2017 phillbizarre motivational Phill

This week was our second ever Varsity tryouts. We had a great crowd of players. One team is still being decided (we had so many people tryout for one game– my-oh-my!), but I’ve sent out[…]

Day 227: Got 'im

September 7, 2017 phillgames

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I took two more cracks at Lord Marrowgar, wanting to see how I could fare just a day before night one of our varsity Hearthstone tryouts (which went[…]

Day 226: Inching toward Victory (or Phill vs. Marrogar part II)

September 6, 2017 phillbizarre motivational Phill

Back during my WoW research days, Lord Marrowgar, in Icecrown Citadel, was the first boss I learned to tank entirely by myself. I feel like I just said that to a room full of WoW[…]

Day 225: Thinking about game design and frustration vs. fun

September 4, 2017 phillgames

There’s a chapter in my book about the WoW raid group I followed learning a new encounter. I wrote about one specific instance, but I watched this happen about 70 times while I was researching, always[…]

Day 224: That activity from yesterday, part II

September 4, 2017 phillgames

One of the questions that students ask after the activity I explained yesterday is why I’d ask them to do that, why I’d make them go through such an activity. If you understand how the[…]

Day 223: Monopoly and good/bad game design

September 3, 2017 phillgames

This week my writing for games class will have, as their homework, the task of re-envisioning the narrative of Monopoly so that it is a better game. Monopoly is polarizing. Some (a small select few[…]

Day 222: Madden season

September 1, 2017 phillgames

I sometimes think of it as my gamer-shame, but one of my favorite gaming moments every year is loading up the new version of Madden and taking my up-and-down Colts team through the motions. It’s[…]