All posts by markdangerchen

Mark Chen is an independent researcher of gaming culture and spare-time game designer. He is the author of Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. Currently, he is looking into experimental and artistic games to promote exploration of moral dilemmas and human nature, researching DIY subcultures of Board Game Geek users, and generally investigating esoteric gaming practices. Mark also holds appointments at Pepperdine University, University of Washington, and University of Ontario Institute of Technology, teaching a variety of online and offline courses on game studies, game design, and games for learning. He earned a PhD in Learning Sciences/Educational Technology from the University of Washington and a BA in Studio Art from Reed College.

Ian Bogost on The Colbert Report!

(via The Ludologist)

From a conversation with Isaac 3rd week in July

  1. are we blinded by our proximity to digital culture? this whole participation thing… are we just seeing a small pocket of resistance and social mobility of a larger society?
  2. Isaac mentioned that a Marxist take would be that the larger social structure is a certain way and there’ve always been sites of democratic mini-systems but the overall structure is the same. Neo-liberal capitalist society is like that; it’s a contradiction. In order to have structure it has to allow a certain degree of freedom.
  3. progressive education needs to include both process and content; it can’t treat them as divorced from each other. In terms of new literacy, people not only need to read and write new texts but they have to understand the texts and the political ideologies at work.

From a conversation with Dennis

  1. difference between empathy and sympathy… on a scale with apathy and antipathy?
  2. do these match up with Nel Noddings’ ethics of care as opposed to rational individually based motivations?
  3. people are motivated either out of fear or love… same thing?
  4. religious identities or any identities are assumed and latched onto by certain people who do not question their beliefs
  5. America should be more like The Simpsons in terms of forgiveness rather than persecution of those at fault
  6. “The first step is admitting we have a problem.” – Dennis

Chore Wars :: Earning Experience Points for Housework

Chore Wars :: Earning Experience Points for Housework

The previous post reminded me of this… 🙂

Chore Wars image

When Gamers Have Babies: Level 1 Human

TechEBlog » When Gamers Have Babies: Level 1 Human

Nice.

baby as level 1 human

Via my friend Jacob.

bob loblaw Digital Media

bob loblaw Digital Media

Unfortunately, the real Bob Loblaw isn’t a lawyer like he is in Arrested Development… boo… I wonder if bobloblawlawblog.com is taken…

Busterfuck (via Slog)

 busterfuck

I ride these buses most days… and man is it a pain!

Read the story about this photo at Slog, the Stranger’s blog.

Not sure if they coined the term, but “busterfuck” is awesome.

Bike USA lives again!

Moving to my own web host let me resurrect the travel blog that my brother and I ran when we biked across the country way back in 2000!

Read all about Max and Mark’s cross-country bicycle trip!

blog migration

So, I finally moved my blog over to my hosted domain.  I mostly did this so I could install some cool widgets and other code into the page.  I got side-tracked by all the cool themes I could install and check out.  I think I like this one.

Also, I figured out how to use my del.icio.us bookmarks as my blogroll/links list, but in order to make it categorized, I had to arbitrarily tag some of them as “misc” which of course doesn’t help the collective social network at all.  Ah well…

Now that del.icio.us works, though, I’m going to have to start using it more.  😛

I think I will bookmark more permanent links there and share newsy stuff using the Google Reader widget.  Neat!

Up next, I need to install itty Bitty RPG.  🙂

Oh and with this blog move, I was able to resurrect the old Chang’s Mongolian Grill Posse posts though I was unable to retain who authored each one.  Now I have to fix my links so they all work…  bleh.

And, finally, know what’s crazy?  Within 3 hours of installing this WordPress blog, I had 75 spam comments awaiting moderation.  Wow.

The Ultimate D&D Gaming Cycle Flowchart

The Ultimate D&D Gaming Cycle Flowchart

From the Great Geek Manual (via guildie Ignacio Solis).

Awesomely funny.