A few thoughts on Game Changers by Dan Golding, Leena van Deventer

Game Changers by Dan Golding
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read the subtitle of this book, as it provides a summary of the contents. This is a powerful and disturbing about the recent history of conflicts relating to video games. While this book contains the very disturbing experiences of key figures, it is also an encouragement to make and play games. Both Leena and Dan provide their own experiences of harassment, and these areas of similarity and difference are important. The key section to remember is that ‘video games are for everyone’.

Even if you are in the minority of people who do not play games this book will resonate because other elements. This would be a helpful book for library staff to read because of the way it may help with thinking about games.

View all my reviews

International games day 2015 #igd15 on storify

I saw this lovely Storify by Matt Finch

It inspired me to do this not so lovely Storify bringing together the photographs and tweets from around the world. It was lovely to see the range of libraries involved, the range of games and the range of people.

My review of Games in libraries

Games in Libraries: Essays on Using Play to Connect and Instruct by Breanne A Kirsch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book as it explored games mainly in the context of university libraries. There was a quote from Scott Nicholson, Associate Professor at Syracuse University saying that we need to look as games as "a distinct form of storytelling" and then he highlighted elements of good story telling and draws connections to games. "Storytelling creates a comforting and inviting environment for people to spend time in the library".

The book has chapters which provide overviews and chapters which provide case studies, including what the library learned from the experience of running games programs. It was particularly interesting to see how some of the libraries evaluated the effectiveness of the games. For one it was a measure of who had not previously been in the library.

There is also an extensive resources section which highlights key publications to help libraries explore games. I was thrilled to find that one of my papers was included in this section. It was very kind of the chapter author to include this reference.

While this publication focuses on games in an academic and school library context, there will be much to appeal to public library staff as well. Go and read this book. It also provides suggestions for other key games and library books to explore (so go and read these as well).



View all my reviews

Scout

Pierce County Library has been doing some very interesting things with their summer reading over the last few years, with summer reading games.  This year they have the theme of the Hunger games. 

They have also started Scout, targeting people aged 18 and over.  They say Build a network of creative individuals who like exploring the library just as much as you do.  There are challenges, and you make and discover things.  It sounds a really interesting idea, and I will be looking forward to hearing more about it.  The tag line is "explore, create, share" which sounds a very good basis for any library service (as well as being a great description of research...and so many other things which happen in libraries).

And of course the Ann Arbor District Library has its summer game running as well.

Teen games rule

This is a new book which I co-edited with Julie Scordato.

We have set up a tumblr for people to add their stories of games and teenagers.

It has been very interesting working on this as Julie and I have not met in person, but have used a range of online tools to work together.

The authors are from Australia, Finland and the USA, and are all very skilled at what they do, offering impressive programs, services and collections around games.

We could not fit every great story in the book, which is why we have set up the tumblr, so that you can all share your great stories of games with teenagers with others.  We are using #teengamesrule to bring these ideas together.

Just in case you are wondering, this is a project which Julie and I did outside work time.

The Play’s the Thing : episode four of storyboard with Patrick Rothfuss

Enjoy watching this - I will catch up with it when I am in a location with faster internet.

Games and politics

Since reading about Heikki Holmas, the new Minister for International Development in Norway, being a Dungeons and Dragons player I have been wondering why I have not heard about more politicians in other countries being different kind of game players too.   The skills are a match, and statisitcially quite a few politicians should be playing various kinds of games (and not just political games).  It seems to be a big gap area, and not just in politics.  There are many other areas of work where people don't seem totally comfortable mentioning that they play particular kind of games.  I know how I get looked at when I talk about the value of games, and that I play games, in certain environments, but we still need to speak up about the fact that we play games.