Jeffrey S. Bryan

A few weeks ago I joined a karaoke fan group on Facebook. After having a chat with the site admin, I was advised to check out a few shows run by particular KJs, among whom was DJ Chocolate Bunny. Being that Easter was on its way, I thought a visit with a chocolate bunny was due. DJ Chocolate Bunny, otherwise known as Shed Washington, runs a CD based karaoke show. His is by far the most analog show I've seen (aside from, of course, live band karaoke). A notable difference in h

This week I was at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. It's a fairly small conference that happens every year in mid-March in Orlando, FL. While the conference is primarily for humanities scholars, and literature scholars in particular, they have a Visual and Performing Arts category which gladly takes submissions from game studies scholars. And as I entered into all of this scholarship as an English major with aspirations to teach videogames like one

While attending ICFA, my friend and fellow game scholar at UCF, Taylor Howard, organized a "Nerdy Karaoke" night, with my research in mind. What an incredible nice thing to do! Taylor studies video games, digital media, Writing Across the Curriculum, and critical theory. He believes that "games can be a particularly effective way to explore critical concepts, and hope to expand on the idea of "critical playing" as a mode of theoretical practice" and is a fantastic scholar. No

Game Design class update! Prior to teaching this college course, I spent three years teaching game design to middle school students. I always told them the instruction they were receiving was on part with a college course, but to be honest I wasn't always sure about that. I certainly modeled it off of the game design course I took under Celia Pearce at Georgia Tech, and always assumed my students could build with any tool any other novice could build with, regardless of age,

Games are ubiquitous to all cultures. They are among the earliest forms of communication. Johann Huizinga argues that they're "older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society." Roger Caillois even argued that games are part of what civilized us, emphasizing the "importance of its role in the very development of civilization." Games are so ancient that they've been represented even on the walls of the Lascaux caves. What histori

A few weeks ago, Josh Tanenbaum, my PhD advisor at UCI, sent me an email with the subject line "Furry Karaoke!" Obviously, I was stoked. I know next to nothing about the Furry community except that 1) they exist, 2) it's not about sex parties, 3) there's more to it than people simply dressing up in animal costumes. Interestingly, most of what I do know about the Furry community I've learned from the Cartoon Network series OK K.O. and Steven Universe. Honestly, cartoons are aw