ITJourno.com.au Media News
On July 4, 2011 Allie Coyne of ITJourno.com.au followed up her article about Flickering Colours with another piece about my work. This time the focus was the upcoming Playculture journal and blog, which I am in the middle of planning with the editorial staff. We are literally 'in the middle' of planning, so some stuff is well underway, but many things could change between now and our first issue. Hopefully most of this information is relevant. This piece also mentions the upcoming new programs for videogame studies at Macquarie University. More on that as it becomes more publicly available.
Australian universities are upping their focus on gaming, with The University of Melbourne sponsoring a soon to be laun?ched journal and accompanying blog, alongside the introduction of several new gaming courses at Macquarie University.
Lecturer and blogger Adam Ruch (pictured) is one of many academics involved in the development of Playculture: Journal of Videogame Studies. Sponsored by Melbourne University’s School of Culture and Communication, the bi-annual journal's website is currently online though still in design, with the first issue to be published early next year.
Accompanying the online journal will be a games-focused blog, run by Ruch and fellow blogger and Critical Distance founder Ben Abraham, with the entire project to be overseen by fellow academic and games writer Dan Golding. Ruch said the idea to create a blog was borne out of the "indecently slow" process that is academia publishing,
E3, Wii U Rapid Response
So this year I've actually followed the bulk of the E3 conferences. Its been an interesting experience, and maybe unsurprisingly I've had a few ideas regarding some announcements made, and reactions to those announcements. These are pretty rapid-fire thoughts, not refined or researched, but rather 'gut feelings' with about an hours' reflection time. The two things I'll talk about here are a general comment on the historical precession of the industry. There's been (as there always seems to be now) an overtone of disappointment, of questioning whether any of the big 3 are 'innovative enough' and why we just aren't surprised by their announcements at this year's E3. The second topic is more specific ideas on the Wii U.
ITJourno.com.au BlogWatch
On the 21st of June at itjourno.com.au, Allie Coyne posted the following story after an interview with me about this very blog. What follows is reprinted with her kind permission.
ITJ’s ‘BlogWatch' takes a look at some of the lesser known Australian tech sites and media outlets, and this week we have a chat to the founder of the Flickering Colours games review website, Adam Ruch.
How much thought do we put into how the worlds in videos games are developed? How far do we really delve into how fictional worlds work? It’s not hard to get on the net and find out how the latest game has rated, who likes it and who doesn’t, but for those who want a critical, academic review of LA Noire, there’s not a whole lot out there.
PhD student Adam Ruch saw the hole in the market and took advantage of his thesis work, understanding videogames in a critical context, to launch a blog at the start of 2009, focusing on critical reviews of video games.