Beginnings

Hi!

Two things you may or may not know about Unwinnable:

1. We have around 1500 articles in our archive (according to Stu).
2. One staff member (me) has a Masters of Library and Information Science.

Starting this week, once we’ve gotten ready for the weekend, I’ll be publishing a little piece like this that pulls a few stories out for you to read over the weekend. They might not be our best work (we wouldn’t want to raise your expectations too high, now). They could be two years or two weeks old. But there will be a theme.

Sometimes that theme will be relevant and timely (for example, next week’s major movie release could provide some focus). Sometimes they will be arbitrary. Sometimes the same article could appear in multiple entries! I’m not looking to be exhaustive or authoritative, just trying to shine a little light into our dusty corners.

And so, in keeping with this being the initial entry in this series, here are four posts about beginnings:

We Need New Maps (6/3/2010) – Unwinnable’s first post, by Stu Horvath, is a kind of manifesto for the site. It’s about the challenge of finding new ways to write about things, which I’m guessing is one of the reasons many of us write about games instead of movies or books. And I know, there are some older posts in the archives than this, but they’re all brief summaries of his work elsewhere. Did you know Unwinnable started as Stu’s portfolio?

Everything is Bigger in Texas: What Was Your First Computer? (7/30/2010) – When our own Chuck, Charles Francis Moran VI, got his first computer, a TI-99 4/A, for Christmas 1983, I wasn’t two years old yet. It’s a little memoir, a little computer history and there are TWO embedded Youtube videos: a commercial for the TI-99 4/A and gameplay video of Microsurgeon.

Massive: Origins Part 1 (11/23/2010) – Richie Procopio gives a quick introduction to the MMO with a brief trip from MUDS to Ultima Online.

Rookie of the Year: The Newlywed Game (4/25/2011) – Last April, Matt Marrone (Maccone) bought a TV and an Xbox 360 and started playing videogames again. Though more of a return to games than a beginning, this is the first entry in his column, which continues to run on the site biweekly.

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Brian Taylor is an information technologist by day and a freelance librarian by night. He’s not sure which title is more made-up. Follow him on Twitter @BrianMTaylor.