Walden Video Game‽

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It really depressed me to read the following in the Wikipedia article on Henry David Thoreau's book Walden:

The National Endowment for the Arts in 2012 bestowed the University of Southern California with a $40,000 grant to create, based on the book, an online video game in which players "will inhabit an open, three-dimensional game world which will simulate the geography and environment of Walden Woods."

Why? The obvious frivolity, the source of the funds, the likely insufficiency of those funds to complete the game, and of course above all the idea that a video game could be anything but the exact opposite of the right environment in which to learn any lessons of a Walden-like life experiment. Oh, and get off my lawn!

It'd be a lot cheaper and nicely mind-expanding to read and contemplate Walden, and if some modern technology is needed to spruce up the experience, listen to and study the mind-boggling Georgio Moroder's Knights in White Satin disco remake.

Comments

  1. Phin JensenSaturday, May 25, 2013 3:14:00 PM

    It sounds really exciting to me. You get to fish, cut down trees, and contemplate life. Awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ivy SkinnerMonday, June 03, 2013 9:38:00 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

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