So it seems we are at a cross roads. I'm going to be using this blog for a non-IMD class over the course of this semester, specifically, Writing 340. Here's the quick scoop on how this came to be.
After a minor registration mixup, I weaseled my way into Mark C. Marino's Writing 340 class. Some of you may remember him as one of the speakers from a seminar last April. I'm looking forward to the class, and hoping it will be enlightening, contentious, or both. The class has a strong emphasis on blogging, and when I asked Mark if I might use my already existing IMD blog (for the sake of generating less inter-cruft and using a system I'm somewhat familiar with), he agreed. I'll be cross posting to another blog, required for the course, so here is Iste Aleator II. Interestingly enough, the course seems to have a strong grounding in the decorum and rituals that have evolved around blogging. Many of our early assignments are geared towards not only setting us up to be semi-respectable on-topic writers, but also to ground us in the larger community of bloggers. Things like seeking out related blogs, writing insightful comments, and profiling another blog take advantage of the social nature of the web to reinforce better writing habits and to prepare our blogs for participation in those larger discourses we've chosen to engage. We have been encouraged to begin under the cloak of anonymity, but that's never really been my style (I believe mistakes must be honestly made, gaffes must be owned, and changed opinions must be sincere if a writer is to learn anything. Failing that, I'm vain), and of course, this being a standard issue IMD blog, that's already impossible.
Speaking of which, is there an official rationale behind giving us these things, or is it a different sort of grand experiment? This is one of those things no one's ever told me, and I've just kept my head down about asking. It seemed prudent to ask now, in this welcome post of sorts.
So welcome. This is Iste Aleator, and I am Max Geiger. In order to stay relevant and avoid drifting too far off into a digital reverie, the official topic for this subcategory/official series of digressions/line of inquiry will be how games can become more like the web. Yes, I realize that this topic has been explored before. However, it has not been explored to my liking. The question begged by "how can games be more like the web?" is "why must games must be more like the web?" and more largely "why must games be more like anything at all?" I hope to couch a number of digressions in questions of games and culture at large, but we'll have to see how things go.
Finally, I doubt I'll match the pace of the IMD's most prolific resident blogger, but should it become annoying (my fears of flooding the post-stack over on the main page were quickly assuaged when I realized the worst I could do was sit at the top of it with a stupid title), I'll be happy to curtail my posting here and surrender to acquiring yet another blog.