From the Outgoing Editor-in-Chief

So Long and Thanks For All The Content

It’s that time of year at First Person Scholar where we give ourselves a little break for the month of August and come back (hopefully) refreshed and renewed for another year of that hot video game content.

I’d also like to take this time to officially announce that I am stepping down as editor-in-chief to make way for a new team. I’d like to take the opportunity in this short post to reflect on my time with the publication and thank a ton of people who have been a part of this journey. Continue Reading

Play By Post Roleplay

Where Player Becomes Designer and Designer Becomes Player

Recently, I have gotten back into the habit of online roleplaying. When I say online roleplaying, I do not mean playing Dungeons and Dragons online or MUDs, MMORPGs, etc. No, I am referring to the natural evolution of playing Pokemon, or Digimon, or various other shows or games on the playground at school. I am talking about the act of taking the role of a character, and implanting them into an imaginary world that may or may not be based on some greater metafiction. I am talking about using the power of prose to bring these worlds to life through lush description and carefully implemented dialogue. I am talking about Play by Post Roleplaying (PBPRP). Continue Reading

Janet Murray on why some players and critics still cannot tolerate narrative in games

When Hamlet on the Holodeck came out in 1997 it became the catalyst for a foundational debate in Game Studies, the tension between stories and games as distinct genres of human expression. I have never changed my own position on this controversy. I believe that games and stories are both forms of representation (neither one is more “real” than the other) and that they have shared many structural elements from ancient times onward as they continue to do in emerging digital forms. I reviewed the controversy again for the new edition of Hamlet on the Holodeck, updated and reissued from MIT Press this year, noting how the self-described “ludologists” had come to accept narrative strategies as legitimate parts of game design, and how many players had responded enthusiastically to new interactive narrative formats. Continue Reading