[-empyre-] game creation is game deconstruction

[Jason Nelson]

A few things....
   
  First....my original question was really about how others make games
  and resources for making those games...the concerns? the pitfalls? the joys?
  everything and anything really to do with creation.
   
  as for your comment about academia....yes this has always been a problem
  but at least in Australia.....I've been making the argument in terms of impact...
   
  really.....I've always felt that academic places of publication (certainly for artworks)
  while they show professional respect of your work...they dont bring in much of an
  audience...and I find the general public is far more responsive.......so I argue
  my work has an impact.....in terms of people writing about it...but then that is
  a topic for another month....or past month
   
  cheers, Jason
   
  

Melanie Swalwell <melanie.swalwell at googlemail.com> wrote:
  Hi Jason,

I'm not sure I am understanding your question properly. But regarding this bit:

> (or scholar, meaning why cant game
> interfaces
> be used for scholarly work?)

I think there is some work done like this, though off the top of my
head I don't have a lot of examples to tell you about. I can say that
I've had a go. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to
collaborate with the artist/designer/programmer, Erik Loyer, to make a
piece for the interactive journal, Vectors www.vectorsjournal.net, a
couple of years ago. The subject matter is actually my research into
the history of games in NZ. Ok, if you want to get picky it's not a
game as such, but it uses a game-ish interface.

As for why more people don't do it... well, tenure committees in the
U.S. can be pretty conservative about these things, I hear. I gather
they don't tend to appreciate scholarship in a different form, let
alone the work involved in presenting it in another form, and people
I've discussed this with don't think their work will be as well
recognised as if they publish it in a peer reviewed journal.

To that I would add that it's pretty hard to make work if you don't
have the technical skills yourself, unless you do it in collaboration,
and those opportunities don't come up every day. Actually I would say
that this is more of an impediment than the tenure thing. The Vectors
model resolves this issue in that they aim to team humanities scholars
up with people with technical (and other) expertise. My sense would
be that while there's still a concern locally (in Australia and NZ)
about where you publish, we've more latitude than in some other parts
of the world -- but we tend to lack the digital humanities research
centres that have the resources to support this sort of thing. More
opportunities would be great, and I reckon there'd be interest,
especially amongst younger scholars.

Melanie
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