Steven Boyer
As contributor
As commenter
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Valve and Transmedia Hubs
Matt- I'm sure we'll come back around to the questions you've raised in my post on Thursday as they're directly related. In terms of games that have looked to the community for post-release narrative content, it's definitely slim ... -
Re: Go Dark for Halo
Industrial Incentives
Great post, Nina. I wanted to pick up on your mention of spoilers serving industrial interests, here framed as a byproduct of the horrors of piracy and part of the PR hype cycle. While John's post focuses on the long tail of games like Halo and strat ... -
Re: Go Dark for Halo
Legitimacy
Nicholas, you're definitely on to something with game spoiler-frenzy seeming like an almost desperate attempt at gaining credibility or legitimacy. In this case, Microsoft isn't just trying to push "Halo as art," but also trying to est ... -
Commodified Realism
Following up on your final paragraph and linked to the end of John's comment, I have to wonder why EA thinks an appeal to realism would be a successful strategy for Medal of Honor. It's certainly to do with the series' legacy, having emerge ... -
Personal Investment and Transmediality
Thanks for this, Nicholas. I feel like far too often we see arguments about the failures of game to film adaptation framed in terms of content ("games have terrible stories and thus make for bad movies" or "what is so great about a game is ... -
Flagship Pressure
You're spot on in noting that, as Microsoft's flagship title, people look to Halo to gauge how well the Xbox as a whole is doing. Sony and Nintendo, in comparison, both have a large stable of ongoing franchises such that no single game could be ... -
First-Party Privilege?
Thanks for a great start to this week, John. I, too, think Spartan Ops is fascinating in a lot of ways including the TV model influence (more on this later), but I wanted to mention here some of the production and economic obstacles to this type of model ... -
Continuities...Continued
Thanks, Michael. You're right that there do seem to be a remarkable number of major areas of continuity emerging. Just to add to the list: microtransactions are the digital currency evolutions of inserting quarters into arcade machines, there's ... -
Re: When Idle Hands Were the Devil's Workshop: Did Early Game Manufacturers Overcome A Gaming Prejudice?
Adult Education and Cash Grabs
The linked page about The Checkered Game of Life is intriguing in that it describes that game not necessarily in terms of children, but as a response to more adult vices (gambling, drink, idleness). While the focus on education for children seems a likely ... -
Domestic Divisions of Labor
Thanks for a great post. I would bet that you could trace your description of boys as gaming "ambassadors" through to the discursively constructed slightly older, more technologically and economically situated "early adopters" that the ...