Hi - my name is Jeff. I love videogames. This channel is a place where I play, talking about, and dissect lots of different games. In my "real" job, I teach college-level classes about games in subjects like education, English, journalism, and more. Yes, you really can earn college credit playing games (and you can even get paid and *gasp* make a career out of talking about games). What a time to be alive. In this channel I play a whole bunch of different games - some old favorites, some new obsessions, some games I "should" play, and so on. For example, you'll probably catch me playing stuff like: >* CS:GO >* Rust >* Star Trek Online >* Fallout 4 >* Elite: Dangerous >* FTL >* Civ V >* Trendy indie games >* Snobby "art" games >* Silly games I am embarrassed I like This is a pretty casual space - I'll occasionally slip into some philosophical diatribe, academic jargon, or analytical bent, but probably only after a few drinks. Welcome, have fun, and please chime in!

My time is a little up-in-the-air of late, so my streaming will probably be a little sporadic. Please follow me if you want, and don't forget to check out [my YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCARRvwpMu2qODbLZwz2-iGA) for archives of most of my streams as well as other game-related stuff.

The best way to reach me is to message me here on Twitch. You can also check out [my YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCARRvwpMu2qODbLZwz2-iGA) for replays, highlights, and other game-related stuff. I hate social media platforms so, well, sorry.

###Brown? Really? Yes. Brown is best color. ###Can you really play games for credit in college? Yes indeed. Games in academia are an increasingly legit and even potentially revolutionary thing. I teach classes using games (for example, one semester my class met every week in *World of Warcraft* for class), and we talk about games in many different ways. Feel free to ask me about specific stuff, but in general games in education are totally a thing. ###What games do you like to play? Well, in the "About" section I mention a few, but I have pretty wide-ranging interests. I've been gaming for over 35 years now (OG baby), so I count *Empire Strikes Back* and *Basketball* on Atari as some of my earliest influences, and it just goes on from there. I've owned NES'es, SNES'es, GBA's, N64's (I was in the Nintendo school), PS1's and 2's, the original Xbox, the 360, and lots of other stuff. I've also gamed on PC's all the way back to TRS-80's and 8088's; I've played on 286's with 1200 baud modems (where you put a phone into these little rubber cups to get the tone) to connect to BBS and usenet stuff. More recently I've owned everything from P4's to an i7-920 (seriously my favorite CPU ever - such a great performer) to my current AMD build. I've played an absolute crapton of games. More specifically, I tend to like somewhat "slower" games - strategy, RPGs, turn-based stuff and the like. I'm not a terribly good FPS'er but I occasionally subject myself to some good old masochism. I have played somewhere around 6,000 hours of *WoW* and still consider it one of my all-time favorite games. I am not currently subscribed and have not even played the last 3-ish expansions. I count *FF7*, *Portal*, *Red Dead*, *Alpha Centauri*, *Wing Commander*, and the *Mass Effect* series as among the best games I've ever played. ###But you like all those "games for learning" games since you're an academic, right? Ehhh, not really. Most games specifically made "for" learning are pretty awful. There are some exceptions (*Dragonbox*, *Reach for the Sun*, and a few others come to mind). But games are usually good if they are good games *first* - they promote good learning by themselves. Most of the stuff I do revolves around commercial games. They are (usually) great learning and teaching vehicles already and I think they say a lot about what games can do in general without necessarily being made explicitly for learning....but I digress. If you want to learn more (and I totally recommend it), read Jim Gee's [What Video Games Have to Tell Us About Language and Learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Video_Games_Have_to_Teach_Us_About_Learning_and_Literacy) (full disclosure: Jim is my academic advisor but that doesn't make it any less of a great read). ###Recommend any other good work on games? Sure! Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen's [Rules of Play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Play) should be required reading for anyone who is even remotely interested in playing games, or digging deeper. Raph Koster's [A Theory of Fun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Fun_for_Game_Design) is another great read and totally interesting. If you want to get more into game design, Jesse Schell's [The Art of Game Design](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132326/book_review_the_art_of_game_design.php) and Tracy Fullerton's [Game Design Workshop](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Playcentric-Innovative/dp/0240809742) are both excellent. If you like critical stuff, Ian Bogost's [Persuasive Games](http://www.amazon.com/Persuasive-Games-Expressive-Power-Videogames/dp/0262514885) is good if a little heady, and there's a bunch of great stuff about people's experiences playing and thinking about games. Also, check out [Gamasutra](www.gamasutra.com) at least daily. :)

I know, I know - controlling stuff online is a fool's errand. Nevertheless, please respect each other and show a modicum of human decency. >* No harassment (threats, doxxing, etc) will be tolerated - towards me or anyone in chat. I'll determine what counts as harassment, but in general, just don't be dicks. >* Similarly, no racist, misogynistic, misandristic, or otherwise -istic behavior. Again, I'll decide what counts, but just be cool. >* Disagreement - even passionate disagreement - is good; good for the soul, good for the public at large. Be free to disagree, just don't be rude or violent. Alright, all the "don'ts" out of the way, here are a few other "rules": >* Do say "hi" in chat - to me and to others. We (apparently) like some of the same stuff, so let's talk about it. >* Do feel free to speak up on stuff; I love talking about games but about other stuff too. >* Do *ahem* follow me :)