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I recently joined countless others around the country and jumped on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (U.S. WNT) bandwagon. In fact, almost everyone I encountered during the team’s amazing FIFA World Cup run seemed to be aware of the its international success. Even before the Semifinals, the U.S. WNT had already gone head-to-head against the highly rated Brazilian team in the Quarterfinals. A game-tying “header” in the 11th hour by none other than Rochester, New York’s own Abby Wambach […]

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September 27, 2011

On September 4th, the video game industry lost a true pioneer. Bill Kunkel, founder of Electronic Games magazine and longtime video game journalist, passed away at the age of 61.
Kunkel began his career writing comic books and covering the wrestling industry, but he made his greatest impact as a journalist chronicling, celebrating, and critiquing video games. Over the years he worked on numerous publications, designed games and taught about them, and in 1981 cofounded, with Arnie Katz and Joyce Wetzel, […]

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September 16, 2011

While cleaning out my parents’ basement before moving into my first-ever apartment, I came across two treasured “artifacts” of my past: a poster of Johnny Depp in his Pirates of the Caribbean get-up and my childhood dollhouse. As it turns out, the two items are not as unrelated as you might think.
 As I prepared (five years ago now—yikes) for my freshman year of college, I faced a quandary: how to decorate my first-ever dorm room, a space I would share […]

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September 13, 2011

In college, I spent much of Critical Reading loathing the professor’s love of American Romanticism and wallowing in my disdain for his assigned texts. Many of my classmates held similar sentiments, but we kept quiet during discussions of titles such as “Bodily Harm: Keats’ Figures in the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’” However, I will never forget the rapid-fire conversation about how individual experience shapes varying degrees of reality. We all had encountered many of the same things—holidays, historical events, […]

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September 8, 2011

This summer three students provided important assistance to ICHEG. Two Rochester Institute of Technology game design majors, Ned Blakely and Matt Fico, upgraded equipment in our research lab, captured game footage for archival purposes, and created multimedia experiences to include in our eGameRevolution exhibit opening this November. Josh Keaton, a student from the State University of New York at Brockport, assisted with background research for the exhibit. Here, in no particular order, are ten books Josh found helpful:
 #1. Replay: The […]

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September 7, 2011