The Professional Gamer - April 18, 2015

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Hi readers! This week has been another busy one at the office.  With the boss gone, I'm responsible for keeping things moving along on a lot of projects.  In spite of that, I had managed to have some geeky fun this week.  I'm thinking more about the role of media in the world and how comics work.  I also played some video games.  And I, along with Crystal and Chris, will be ComicFest tomorrow.  Come over to the artist alley and say hello, and maybe buy something?  Regardless, read on to see how I spent my geeky week.

Watching: I have again spent most of my week watching episodes of the PBS Idea Channel.  At this point, I've watched 100 of the (currently) 145 episodes.  The most interesting episodes this week have been the discussion about what fiction is and whether it exists.  Crystal and I had some fun discussing the issues brought up in these episodes.  My opinion is that fictional realities are as real as any other cultural constructs that we deal with everyday like the nation-state or money.

Reading: I'm still making my way through Understanding Comics.  I'm now in the last section and should be finished early next week.  I'm really enjoying the book still, and every page provides a new revelation on the craft of comics.

Playing: My gaming has again been limited to Fantasy Life and Hyrule Warriors.  Crystal and I are now concentrating our efforts on the Termina Map in Adventure Mode, which frequently requires you to compete against an AI team to collect more keeps, KO's, or rupees.  This competition adds an interesting twist to keep the game interesting.

That's all I have for this week.  We'll be at the ComicFest portion of Denver StarFest tomorrow, so please come by and say hello.  Have a great week and game on!

Denver Comic Con 2014 - Reading Rainbow Panel with LeVar Burton

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Oh, hey, so I found this old article in my unpublished folder.  Apparently, I am terrible at finishing things.  Anyway, you can still read this if you are interested.  At this point, we here at the Gameslave are gearing up for a new convention season, so look for a news post related to that in the near future.

On Friday, I attended a panel with LeVar Burton discussing the plans for the future Reading Rainbow project. The panel included a number of touching stories about how Reading Rainbow helped people learn to read.  I, personally, did not watch RR that much as a kid.  To a degree I didn't need it, since I was fortunate to have parents that valued reading, and encouraged me to find books that I enjoyed at the library.  But it was really touching to hear all of these stories about lives changed by a television program.  At several points, Burton appeared to be rather misty-eyed hearing these stories.

This panel happened to take place during the final hours of the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign.  Those of you who followed it may recall that it was hugely successful, raising $5.4M to develop an new application and online delivery mechanism for the series (really an entire literacy program).  They have now launched the first new episode of the series on YouTube.

End of story, in person, LeVar Burton is such a genuine and caring individual, and the Reading Rainbow project is looking like an awesome program to promote literacy in a new generation of children.

The Gameslave Podcast - Dr. Ian Condry on the Soul of Anime

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Another recording from NDK 2014. This one featuring Ian Condry on the Soul of Anime. Dr. Coundry is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. He has done fieldwork research in Tokyo's anime studios which has included interviews with creators, merchandisers, and fans. His book, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan's Media Success Story (Experimental Futures), can be found on Amazon.