Alenda Chang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Alenda Chang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Growing Games 
Hi Alenda,
Carleen and I enjoyed meeting you at the Bill Joy talk. I thought about some of your comments regarding gaming (Farmville in particular) and how success is measured. This could be an interesting area for my company and you to explore.
I am wondering if you have some time to talk, today if possible. I am having dinner with one of the founders of Zynga tonight and would like to be slightly more informed when talking to him about this area.
I will ping Ken for email address as well. Please excuse the multiple messages.
Thanks,
Tom DeLay
415 302 1133
Hi,
I have been enjoying your blog posts about gaming and Farmville for some time and earlier this year you inspired me to write a reflection about my own experience with Farmville. I thought I’d share it with you. I was going to email it to you, but posting here seems to be my only choice.
http://museumfatigue.org/my-farmville-obituary-how-endless-growth-kill
David,
I’m sorry I didn’t see this earlier! I had a wonderful time reading about your own Farmville swan song (I admit, I have barely touched my own farm in months, despite my neighbors’ kindly efforts at unwithering).
I’d love to hear about your experiences teaching this kind of material. Dr. Barbara Eckstein at University of Iowa is using some of my work on agriculture games for an undergraduate course going on now (Lit and Society: Locally Grown). My email address is simply my first name at berkeley dot edu.
Thanks again for stopping by. – Alenda
Hello Alenda,
I’m currently in the first year of a PhD in Glasgow (all the way across the Atlantic from Connecticut!) and writing on Ecology and Videogames. As you are, no doubt, aware – there are limited resources for eco-minded studies of videogames. So, to get greedy, I have read the first 23 pages of your thesis on Poquest and found them incredibly useful. To that end, I was wondering if you would mind me citing your work in my own? Many thanks,
Conor Mckeown
Hello Conor, lovely to hear from you. I believe the entire dissertation should be available on ProQuest now, but what might be most expedient is consulting my published work: on farm games, games as environmental texts, and ecological violence. etc. Let me know if you need anything directly, and thanks for the citations!
Incredibly helpful – many thanks! I (obviously) take a different approach to the idea of games as environmental texts than you but this has sharpened my whole focus so much and really gives me a launching point.