A paper of mine on the social education of youth in _Final Fantasy 6, 7,_ & _8_ appears today. It’s in the online journal Reconstruction: Studies in contemporary culture, in a “special issue”:http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/contents.shtml on videogame culture.
This paper (mentioned in a “previous post”:http://benhourigan.com/archives/2005/01/21/you-need-love-and-friendship-for-this-mission/) has a tortured history. The editors of this issue of _Reconstruction_, Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Davin Heckman, had initially issued a call for papers for a book of collected essays. Having put the collection together, they struggled in vain to find a publisher, and eventually gave up and decided to publish the essays in the journal. Aside from my own essay, there’s a lot papers on interesting subjects in the special issue, so “check it out”:http://reconstruction.eserver.org/061/contents.shtml. Just be prepared to endure some awful web-design on the site.
If you’re actually planning to read the essay, I recommend my “unofficial PDF version”:http://benhourigan.com/documents/2004/bh2004-youneed1.1.pdf. As far as I know, it contains the exact same text, but unlike the official version, it won’t assault your eyes with a monospaced font.
