Meet the Press
Thanks to Gawker Media for this delightful picture.
In a sudden turn of events, I've been the subject of three different interviews for journalists regarding my work in videogame studies. I hope my dear readers will forgive the hubris of talking about people who want to talk to me for a moment! This is a blog, afterall...
A few weeks ago, Flickering Colours was featured on ITJourno.com.au's column 'BlogWatch' that profiles smaller Australian technology websites or blogs to bring them to a wider audience. I was interviewed by Allie Coyne, and I've reprinted her story here as ITJourno is not an open-access site.
Following from that discussion, Allie and I talked about another project I'm involved in. Playculture: Journal of Videogame Studies is a new journal currently in the planning stages, and will launch with an accompanying blog section where we hope to create a faster, more topical discussion of gaming culture, theory and issues. Allie's piece also mentions the new videogame studies programs that Macquarie University will be offering from 2012, more information on that to come!
In other press-related news, I sat down with Jason Di Rosso from the ABC who is producing a radio documentary as part of the anniversary weekend celebrating the work of Marshall McLuhan. We talked for quite a while about how hot or cool videogames are, and what their message is about our culture. That documentary is still being recorded, so will be a few weeks before broadcast. I'll be sure to get my hands on a copy though, and make it available here if I can.
The Limits of Fiction
The holodeck does not yet exist. I will argue here that it may never exist, and that despite its allure, we may not want it to. The holodeck is an invention of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, and features prominently in several series, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine. Similar technologies have appeared in science fiction before, from Huxley’s feelies or the wall-to-wall televisions in Fahrenheit 451. Janet Murray is most responsible for directly linking videogame studies to the holodeck, along with Brenda Laurel’s similar notions before her. Essentially, the holodeck is a three-dimensional hologram projector with the computational power necessary to react believably to any actions taken by the human participant. This includes rendering fully-human (or alien) characters with which to converse and projecting environments which the participant may interact with physically. For the moment, we will ignore the as-yet unrealized technology for generating tangible holographic objects, and instead concentrate on the internal logic of a perfect simulator.