.
My last bit of "housekeeping" in this thread (I'm a stickler for details as much good manners) before I turn to focus exclusively (instead of posting that is) on my new site and future home of "WS 2112" (among much other stuff, interests, projects) which I'm making in "Joomla !" & "Gallery" and which is already providing great satisfaction and sense of enduring ROI value.
While I can trace the roots of "WS 2112" all the way back to discussions with WZ Creators in the game's Official retail release BBs (MPlayer) and the subsequent vibrant communities through source liberation in late 2004.... ALSO instrumental to my ability to sustain
War School's initial and ongoing GPM focus and development has been the validation through genuine & provocative conversation with a group of game folks outta MIT & an other coterie outta the CO Game Developers Group (in my current home town) along with the
The Last Resource List below of recent, seminal, ground-breaking works that will be informing game creation for at least the next decade to come (& beyond, I have little doubt).
(This final list is supplemental to those already provided earlier in this thread and in
The Future of RTS thread...
Begining HERE.. )
All the foregoing proving (to me anyway) yet again that authentic community through World Cafe style conversation, Buberesque dialogue if you will, is much more than a mere aggregation of individuals like some crowd of eager shoppers at your local department store trying not to bump into each other while wending & vying to snap-up the latest deals on display, which they will soon forget since anything of lasting value is the least of criteria with received cant, novelty & fashion alone sufficing - at least momentarily, till the unquenchable disaffection creeps in, as it always does when that is the way you subscribe to..
Alas, what can you expect from the top-down example of a headless horseman's pip-squeak collectivist fantasy with only tunnel vision in place of equitable empathy & autocratic edicts in place of wit, courage, reciprocity and prescience. Oh well, so it goes & then it's gone, hoary history, then no more.. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, is the bottom line and the creme de la creme will always rise to the top even under adverse, less than ideal, far from amicable, circumstances. It's always been that way throughout recorded history..
The Last Resource List:
Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games by Nina B. Huntemann & Matthew Thomas Payne Eds. (2009)
Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies by Noah Wardrip-Fruin (MIT Press 2009)
Simulation and Its Discontents (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) by Sherry Turkle (MIT Press 2009)
Critical Play: Radical Game Design by Mary Flanagan (MIT Press 2009)
The Ethics of Computer Games by Miguel Sicart (MIT Press 2009)
A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players by Jesper Juul (MIT Press 2009)
Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives by Pat Harrigan & Noah Wardrip-Fruin Eds. (MIT Press 2009)
Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (MIT Press 2007)
First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (MIT Press 2003)
Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds by Celia Pearce (MIT Press 2009)
The Meaning of Video Games by Steven Jones (2008)
Philosophy Through Video Games by Jon Cogburn & Mark Silcox (2008)
Well Played 1.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning by Drew Davidson (2009)
Against Technology: From the Luddites to Neo-Luddism by Steven E. Jones (2006)
BTW - If you like to read big novels during the winter months I would recommend the engrossing "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Along with the tremendous entertainment value you might find the ethics, aesthetics and epistemology embodied seamlessly in the grand plot, & compelling characterizations, thought provoking.
This post effectively ends my commitment to this thread as well all others I have participated in.... though, of course, this project goes on. No doubt 'bout that.
For those of you with an enduring interest in this project there are enough key phrases, not to mention my original WZ nick (Rman J.) that a Google search will lead you to my new home on the web which will go live after X-Mas.
Later, whip
SIDE BAR: Locking this thread would be very agreeable to me, however, I do understand that in a collective such prerogatives may not fly.
.