Final result!

Today is the last day of November, which means it is also the last day of Movember, the month in which men raise awareness of prostate cancer (and raise funds to help combat it) by growing out their mustaches. If any of you Dragons and Dragonettes have been wondering whether to chip in a few bucks or not, today is your last day. And yes, they do take credit cards!

Remember: I have four copies of Trine, two copies of Deus Ex and five copies of Portal to pass on to…well, anyone with a Steam account, really. Donate today and I’ll gift you a copy, just like that! Just hit me with your Steam details.

Help fight prostate cancer...and take a copy of this game from me!

Because, yes, the first annual Thanksgiveaway is still on, even though Thanksgiving is now well and truly over (most of you probably don’t have any more leftover turkey, right?).

Once again, here’s how it’ll work: the next eleven people who make donations will automatically get a copy of whichever game they request, upon furnishing me with the basic information I need to “gift” a copy to them (i.e. email address and Steam account name). It’s first-come, first-served, so if you want in on Trine, act quickly!

What are you waiting for?

Support my Movember campaign!

Because Steam is being extra-double awesome today, I’ve been able to expand the first annual Aiera Thanksgiveaway with the addition of Frozenbyte’s 3D platformer, Trine. Steam has really been rocking the indie titles this year, and Trine is among the best of the indie games that came out in 2010.

This is just a freaking cool game.

Which leaves me with four copies of Trine, two copies of Deus Ex and five copies of Portal to pass on to…well, anyone with a Steam account, really.

Thus: if you want a copy of either game, you can do one of three things: a) donate a minimum of $10 to my Movember campaign, b) donate a minimum of $10 to Aiera, or c) drop me a line.

Here’s how it’ll work: the next eleven people who make donations will automatically get a copy of whichever game they request, upon furnishing me with the basic information I need to “gift” a copy to them (i.e. email address and Steam account name). It’s first-come, first-served, so if you want in on Trine, act quickly!

If less than eleven people make donations, the remaining copies of the games will be gifted to randomly selected people who, via the contact form, give me their Steam account name (and email address, but that has to be entered in the contact information fields anyhow). If nobody makes donations, all copies of the games will be doled out in this way. But really…why not support prostate cancer research (or your favourite Ultima website)?

So what are you waiting for? Donate or drop me a line!

Support my Movember campaign!

Because Steam is being extra-double awesome today, I’ve been able to expand the first annual Aiera Thanksgiveaway with the addition of Valve’s first-person platformer, Portal. Which, I admit with no small amount of embarrassment, I have also never played before. Sheesh, eh?

This is also an awesome game.

Which leaves me with three copies of Deus Ex and five copies of Portal to pass on to…well, anyone with a Steam account, really.

Thus: if you want a copy of either game, you can do one of three things: a) donate a minimum of $10 to my Movember campaign, b) donate a minimum of $10 to Aiera, or c) drop me a line.

Here’s how it’ll work: the next eight people who make donations will automatically get a copy of the game upon furnishing me with the basic information I need to “gift” a copy to them (i.e. email address and Steam account name). If less than eight people make donations, the remaining copies of the game will be gifted to randomly selected people who, via the contact form, give me their Steam account name (and email address, but that has to be entered in the contact information fields anyhow). If nobody makes donations, all copies of both games will be doled out in this way.

So what are you waiting for? Donate or drop me a line!

No, I’m not talking about playing The Secret of Monkey Island on your iPhone during another boring math lecture. I’m talking about games forming a part of a course curriculum…in this case, Valve‘s Portal being assigned as “required reading” (so to speak) for incoming freshmen at Wabash College:

Wabash’s incoming freshmen are now assigned the classic first-person puzzler ‘Portal’ as required “reading.” Professor Michael Abbot pushed to have the game added to the curriculum for “Enduring Questions,” a required seminar for all new students that acclimates them to critical readings and discussions in a college environment.

The game is being used specifically as a companion piece to Erving Goffman‘s ‘Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.’ After reading the landmark sociology tome, students will play through ‘Portal’ as an interactive illustration of the struggle over perception at the heart of ‘Presentation.’ Using a video game to augment the interpretation of a traditional text seems like an ideal way to ease both students and educators into the act of “reading” video games. In a blog post, Abbot says he considered including a game as a stand-alone assignment (as apparently ‘Bioshock‘ was on the short list of candidates, too), but, in the end, decided to go with ‘Portal’ and ‘Presentation’ because they make “a good first impression.”

Granted, computer games have had a bit of a niche in education already, as some colleges and universities have added game design courses to their computer science curricula…but this usage of Portal will reach a much wider audience, a significant portion of the student body at Wabash. Given how ubiquitous games have really become in society (consider: Halo: Reach brought in $200 million in its first day of sales; that is a bigger one-day gross than any one-day gross for any movie, ever (although the stats for movies are US domestic, whereas the Reach stats are global), and would be enough — were Reach a movie — to rank 20th overall for largest worldwide opening (besting out The Dark Knight, but being in turn bested by Iron Man), it was only a matter of time before games began popping up in non-technical course curricula.

And now that day is here.