CMS News Archives

Games for Change (G4C), the international nonprofit dedicated to supporting research & development of digital gaming for positive social change, announces their very first Boston Games Salon, which will serve as the local adjunct to the national umbrella organization of Games for Change.

The first meeting will serve as an organizing event designed to support the Boston-based community of folks interested in digital games for social change, whether you are a researcher, developer, non-profit rep. or just plan interested in our movement. Along with this special focus on how to shape G4C's Boston activities and outreach, the evening will also highlight a game by Kent Quirk, founder CogniToy - focused on environmental issues/global warming.

Demos will also be presented by MIT's Education Arcade! http://educationarcade.org

Date: Monday, February 26, 2007
Time: 6:00 pm
Place: MIT - Room: Building 14E (east), room 304

It will be a great chance to network with others in the field -- drinks and snacks will be provided!!

We have limited space, so please RSVP to Gary Goldberger (Regional Leader – Boston) @ gary@fablevision.com or 617-956-5707

For more information about Games For Change, explore . . .
www.gamesforchange.org

Featured Presenter

Kent Quirk is a software architect, game designer and entrepreneur with 25 years of software development experience who has been working in computer games and educational software since the mid-1990s. He has led the development of several commercial games, including MindRover, 5 Card Dash, and Cosmic Blobs. He is the founder and CTO of CogniToy, and is currently working on a game about global warming.

Demos will be exhibited during the networking hour

Posted by CMS Webmaster at 11:12 PM in Events | Permalink

CMS Director Henry Jenkins is featured in this podcast at ThoughtCast, discussing "the path from 'participatory culture' to 'participatory democracy.'"

Listen to the podcast.

Posted by CMS Webmaster at 8:45 PM in Media Appearances | Permalink

CMS Director Henry Jenkins and Singapore-MIT International Game Lab Executive Director Philip Tan recently talked to Wired's Chris Kohler about the Game Lab and the games industry.

Jenkins on creativity in the games industry:

"Studio-based production, across all media, has had two effects: ensuring a relatively high standard of production and capping opportunities for innovation and individual expression," Jenkins says. "As the costs of games get pushed higher and higher, many wonder where fresh new ideas will come from."

Jenkins and Tan about the industry's reception of outside input from academia:

"The game industry isn't particularly fond of reading research papers from academia," but its leaders do pay attention to games, says Tan.

Jenkins says the university connection will foster greater innovation: "We see the lab as a space where we can move swiftly from pure research into compelling applications, and then partner with the games industry to bring the best ideas to market."

Read the full article.

Posted by CMS Webmaster at 12:57 PM in CMS In The Press | Permalink

In the latest Chronicle of Higher Education, CMS Director Henry Jenkins writes about the need for media studies to evolve from separate disciplines (film, photography, literature, ...) into something resembling our own program's current mode, comparative media studies, and how the networked, digital landscape continues to shape this change.

He writes, "media studies needs to become comparative, ... to reflect the ways that the contemporary media landscape is blurring the lines between media consumption and production, ... [and] to respond to the enormous hunger for public knowledge about our present moment of profound and persistent media change."

Each media-studies program will need to reinvent itself to reflect the specifics of its institutional setting and existing resources, and what works today will need to be rethought tomorrow as we deal with further shifts in the information landscape. ... Until we make these changes, the best thinking (whether evaluated in terms of process or outcome) is likely to take place outside academic institutions -- through the informal social organizations that are emerging on the Web. We may or may not see the emergence of YouNiversities, but YouTube already exists. And its participants are learning plenty about how media power operates in a networked society

Read the full article.

Posted by CMS Webmaster at 12:34 PM in Publications | Permalink

It's our pleasure to announce the start of the MIT Videogame Theorists Colloquium, a series of short, informal (noncredit) classes and discussions about videogames and their relationship to academic study . This is truly an interdisciplinary group intended for people of all ages and experience whose interests span the sciences, social sciences and humanities.

The first meeting is this coming Monday, 2/12, 7pm-8:30pm in room 32-124 on the MIT campus. Please contact Kenny Peng <pengk(at)mit.edu> if you cannot attend and would like to be added to the mailing list to be notified of our upcoming sessions.

Continue reading "Open Invitation to First MIT Videogame Theorists Colloquium session this Monday!" »

Posted by Rik Eberhardt at 11:55 AM in Events | Permalink

Converging Media: Games, Literacy and Culture Research Fair
February 22, 2007
5-7pm
Stata Center, 1st floor lobby (Vassar and Main)

What do Yahoo!, Shakespeare, GPS, Bullet time, Spacewar and MIT have in common?

CMS!

Yahoo! ... along with MTV, GSDM, Turner Broadcasting and Fidelity with the Convergence Culture Consortium respond to the demands of a new media landscape and an empowered client base;

Shakespeare ... early comics, modern dance and the citizens of Berlin are among the many topics explored in the rich multi-media data bases of MetaMedia and Repertory

GPS ... is one of many technologies that we us in handheld gaming applications, all part of our exploration of computer games for education in the Education Arcade

Bullet time... and other special film effects, comic book production, dj-ing, graffiti, and other media expressions come into focus in Project New Media Literacies.

Spacewar ... is where computer gaming all began at MIT, and now it moves into a new generation with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

Join us to explore the many facets of research on cutting-edge digital games, media literacy, innovative humanities databases, and redefined corporate/consumer relations now underway in MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. Faculty, staff and students will be on hand to showcase their work and answer questions about their latest findings. Refreshments will be served.

Posted by CMS Webmaster at 9:55 AM in Events | Permalink