Week 5 Class

This week we picked up our post-McGonigal discussion about videogames and how gamers/gamer culture may or may not have some sort of grand potential for transfer into "the real world." While there are initiatives with noble effects (EyeConnect, donation-score matching), it's fairly difficult to find a positive transfer from games as a whole into non-game territory. Not that there aren't games with good transfer value out there, but the challenge remains for intentionally educational games to successfully combine good play with a good lesson. The gaming community is often seen as people who like to have fun, but we discussed the darker (and dimmer) aspects, too, like the contribution many games make to the desensitizing of younger generations, and the misogyny lurking on console and MMORPG networks. Penny Arcade linked Fat, Ugly or Slutty the other day, which has gathered a sizable amount of evidence for the case that not all gamers are shy hero-wannabes in need of an achievable chance to help the world.

Of our discussion-consolidation of our librarian blogger samplers, most findings were unsurprising. What did stick in my mind was the last question, "is blogging on the way out?" One of my bloggers, Andy Wentworth of Agnostic, Maybe, recently blogged about why he blogs (so meta!), but I didn't realize it might be part of a possible trending decline. How long have blogs been a "thing?" I'm not sure I'd mourn their passing, but would we really be losing blogs? or just the trend; their validity and popularity? And what am I doing blogging, here, anyway? I'd rather contribute to an open class discussion, even on a forum or wiki, than write entries every week, which people read because it is expected of them.