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Gaming Academia Gets More Mainstream Press
jimharris writes "Eventually every area of human activity comes under the scrutiny of scholars. After thirty years, it's time for video games to go to college. The New York Times has an article (free registration required) called 'The Ivy-Covered Console', that talks about several lucky professors who play games for a living. The challenge, they say, is to develop a language of criticism to analyze video games." One particularly unfortunate quote: "Dr. [Barry] Atkins admitted that he didn't finish Half-Life before writing about it in his 2003 book, 'More Than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form,' (Manchester University Press), and only later realized he was two minutes from the shocking plot reversal at the end when he stopped. 'I am very nervous that I got it wrong,' he said."
Prince Hamlet enters, torn by guilt, grief, jealousy, and vengeance, and soliloquizes with stirring poetry about his problems. Then he proceeds to launch heavy artillery at Queen Gertrude and Claudius. "O that this too too solid flesh would melt 'Neath the heat of a Plasma rifle blast." Wow, even better than the original!