Tag: author
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Creating Between Coasts: Being an Artist-Scholar in Kansas City
When people think of cultural hubs, they often look to the bright lights of New York, the creative sprawl of Los Angeles, or the indie corners of Chicago. But tucked here in the heartland, Kansas City pulses with a creative energy that is both fierce and quietly radical. Being an artist and researcher here means…
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Reality is Dead, Long Live Reality!
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in Adventure, Art, Artist’s Journey, augmented reality, Between the Sun and Us, books, Both, And, Call to Action, choose your own adventure, college, comparative literature, creativewriting, creativity, education, educational game design, educational technology, hero’s journey, Heroine’s Journey, memoir, Middle East, mindfulness, Mizzou, Morocco, Museum, narrative design, Narratology, Notes from the Underground, true story, writingI woke up today with a question rattling in my head like a loose screw in the machinery of modern life: What does it mean to create in an era of collapsing reality? Everywhere I turn, the fractures are widening. The things we once called truth, fact, or even just a shared reality are dissolving…
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Exposition is Not an Info Dump, Don’t Stop the Fun Train
Puppet Show as exposition on Dark Crystal. Genius, genius! Take a cure from game design. Make a thematic trailer or tutorial or the Jurassic park ride with the animation to set the scene. Doing expositional in a fanciful way, this is the key. Drama stops for exposition “Can input this down in a way that’s…
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Story Themes and the 4E’s of the Writer’s Craft
Most ancient tragedy had at its heart the contradiction between two morally justifiable positions. Aristotle begins defining tragedy as “imitation of actions of great import”; the actions themselves are motivated by a conflict of ideas. We may apply this to our own context and craft through the lens of “Story Themes.” A few of examples:…
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Reflecting on this Semester in Game Design
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in Academia, digital communities, digital humanities, digital storytelling, Dissertation, fan studies, fantasy, game based learning, game design, game development, game Ideas, game review, game studies, game writing, game-based learning, games, gaming, Graduate Research, graduate school, GSS, instructional design, interactive fiction, ngss, writingGame Design, instructional Design, and Interaction Design, all collide at the University of Missouri – Columbia. These are the reflections from my course on Game Design. Our 2023 Autumn semester draws to a close. From Portal to Resident Evil 4, analog tabletops such as Settlers of Catan to platformers like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it’s…
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On the Road Less Traveled : A Personal Essay on the Path of Most Resistance and the Adventure That is Life.
Don’t be victimized by the culture of fear. Our planet is waiting to be explored, to reveal it’s secrets to you, to me, to any who dare ask, it will expose you to the raw truths of life. To the quarks of distant cultures and alien tongues. To disgusting foods and delicious cuisines, to dangerous…