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Author Archives: Chloe
Harassment in VR Spaces
(Spoiler warning for Ready Player One by Ernest Cline in first two paragraphs. Links contain sensitive content relating to sexual harassment in online/gaming communities.) Ready Player One: 80’s nostalgia trip, celebration of gamer culture, cyberpunk dystopia, hero’s quest, and – teenage love story? I’ll admit, I haven’t finished the book yet, but from the beginning … Continue reading “Harassment in VR Spaces”
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Posted in Gaming, harassment, ready player one, Science Fiction, Virtual reality, vr
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Cathedrals on Cartridges: can gaming give us a spiritual experience?
Are video games the next frontier for spirituality? The indie video game Journey takes players on a, well, journey through a vast desert dotted with ruins, an “underworld” patrolled by menacing stone automatons, and finally an ascent up a mountain. The player may collaborate with other players they meet along the way, the two journeying characters becoming … Continue reading “Cathedrals on Cartridges: can gaming give us a spiritual experience?”
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Posted in Gaming, Journey, that dragon cancer, religion, spirituality
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Ever, Jane: Mansfield Park and MMORPGs
Every MMORPG I’ve ever played has had murder as a basic and essential game mechanic. Need to complete a quest, advance a level, acquire an item? Better go kill a dozen wolves/bandits/pirates/mages so that you can get enough exp/gold to… buy more powerful weapons and kill stronger wolves/bandits/et cetera. Even in Lord of the Rings … Continue reading “Ever, Jane: Mansfield Park and MMORPGs”
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Posted in beta, ever jane, Fiction, Gaming, jane austen, kickstarter, MMORPG, new game, open beta
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Pokémania: 1998-2016… and beyond?
With the release of Pokémon Red and Blue in the United States in 1998, “Pokémania” swept the nation. The video games, the anime, the board games, the Pokémon stuffed toys and action figures, the licensed Pokémon cups and bowls and macaroni and cheese – the craze lasted into the early 2000s as Pokémon movies saw … Continue reading “Pokémania: 1998-2016… and beyond?”
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Playing by the Rules
A player can cheat at any game. In video games, this might take the form of exploitable bugs, devices like GameSharks, and watching walkthroughs to maneuver around a difficult puzzle or anticipate the ramifications of an in-game decision. While the drawbacks of cheating in multiplayer games or competitions are obvious – cheating gives a player … Continue reading “Playing by the Rules”
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Posted in Gaming
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Made Out of Meat?
Space voyagers searching for intelligent life finds a race that has been trying to make contact for one hundred of its years – however, this species is so unlike anything these voyagers have ever contacted that they refuse to believe it’s even intelligent. When one of the voyagers convinces the other that the species is, […]
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Posted in Aliens, astro2110, astrobiology, blog9
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Made Out of Meat?
Space voyagers searching for intelligent life finds a race that has been trying to make contact for one hundred of its years – however, this species is so unlike anything these voyagers have ever contacted that they refuse to believe it’s even intelligent. When one of the voyagers convinces the other that the species is, […] Continue reading → Continue reading
Posted in Aliens, astro2110, astrobiology, blog9
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Sleipnir Fossa, Pluto’s “Giant Spider” Fracture
Pluto may have had its planet status revoked, but astronomers are still studying its surface through images captured by the NASA New Horizon’s spacecraft. In the last week, images and information about one of Pluto’s most recently discovered features was released. Sleipnir Fossa and related fractures in an image captured by New Horizons on 14 July […]
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Posted in astro2110, blog8, Class, Dwarf Planets, new horizons, pluto
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The Dwarf Planet Sedna
According to Inuit mythology, Sedna was the name of a mortal woman who became a goddess of the ocean and the underworld. One version of the myth holds that Sedna was a young woman who consented to marry a hunter, only to find, once she had left home with him, that he was in fact […]
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Posted in astro2110, blog7, Class, dwarf planet, Dwarf Planets, mythology, Sedna
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The Stardust Mission
Missions that deliberately bring back extraterrestrial material to Earth are rare. The NASA Stardust, a probe that launched in 1999, sought to collect dust samples from the comet Wild 2’s tail. Prior to the mission, experts believed that the dust in comets’ tails would be pre-solar particles. Instead, what they found from the particles retrieved […]
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Posted in astro2110, blog6, Comets, Small SS Objects
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