It’s the middle of winter in the northern hemisphere and here, snug in our Video Game Academy, we’ve been hibernating like a bunch of Moomins.
Which is to say, quietly not quite sleeping at all, but rummaging about and getting into things, trying to keep warm. We’ll ring in the new year just having wrapped up a couple of long-running projects–Tove Jansson discussions for the Signum Academy twitch stream and Gamecool ones on The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman–and, as is our way, launching a couple new ones: teaching video game studies courses online for The Socratic Experience and in person at The Community School. Steph’s co-teacher, Erin, has been able to bring in more computer science to their Science of Video Games course, and I recently heard that I’ll be attending a summer code.org training to learn a bit of that, too, at long last.
The site and our discord discussions have been more than a little neglected in all the commotion. Sorry about that! But the Academy goes on. Both in this small hearth of ours and in that larger, woolier, and freer sense of scholarship around video games, the fire’s alive.
Unbound
For reading over the holidays and beyond, why not check out the games writing published by Unbound? While I first found them through their Backlisted podcast, which is excellent, I’m more and more intrigued by their creative approach to publishing, and the impressive roster of books they’ve put together as a result, including books on video games. When the daily grind and the work of running an organization, even a mostly so far imaginary one like this one, runs me down, it’s nice to remember there’s a lot of other people out there imagining a better way of doing whatever it is, and actually doing it!
Video Game Academy 