2010

A summary

Here’s a quick link summary of my 2010, including both major events/work and smaller moments that took the form of blog posts. Happy new year, all. Disney cease-and-desist – the turtlenecked hairshirt – the Art History of Games – Hacks, Remakes, and Demakes – Heavy Rain – Pascal spoken here – I hate gamification – Knight News Challenge – philosopher… read more

Click.

More Zynga bullshit

Kyle Orland, co-author of the forthcoming book Farmville for Dummies, writes this introduction to a two-part feature over at Gamasutra, by Tadhg Kelly. The title: “How Zynga’s CityVille Has Compelled 70 Million Players.” Given today’s surprising new interest in Cow Clicker over on Reddit, I thought I’d share some delightful snippets Orland extracted from Kelly’s work. One of the keys… read more

Weird Media and Tiny Ontology

Two Teasers

I’m behind in keeping up with my corner of the philosophy blogosphere. In part I’ve been distracted by cow clickery, but more so I’ve been spending as much time as possible writing Alien Phenomenology, which I fully intend to complete before the end of August. I’m thus offering two teasers today, in lieu of earnest content. The first is related… read more

Moos and Merch

Cow Clicker coverage and crap

I wasn’t entirely prepared for the runaway success of Cow Clicker after it’s release last week Indeed in the near future, I might pose the question of what counts as “success” for such a work. In the meantime, here’s a quick rundown of a few of the more lively discussions about the game that might interest some of you: On… read more

About Me

Who I am and what I do

Looking for a bio (long, short)?Looking for photos of me?Want my curriculum vitae?Trying to contact me? Dr. Ian Bogost is an award-winning author and game designer whose work focuses on videogames and computational media. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds an… read more

OOO and Politics

A response to Cameron Kunzelman

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not exactly sure what blogging means to me these days. But whether by accident or design, I’ve been avoiding some of the back-and-forth debate that both helps and hinders the work of philosophy online these days. That said, this is one of those back-and-forth response posts, this on answering some of the… read more

My Mooed Ring

Cowstum Skullworks

My friend Matt Maloney makes custom skull rings. Once I saw the bespoke designs he’d done, and given the knowledge of the coming cowpocalypse, I knew I had to have an artifact to document my year-long bovine madness. Matt and I met yesterday and I took delivery of the ring. Behold it, in all its taurine glory below. You can… read more

Two Books, One Summer

Alien Phenomenology and How to Do Things with Videogames

My goal this summer was to finish two books I’d been working on. By July I had some concerns, as writing wasn’t coming as easily as I’d hoped, and then I got overwhelmed by the unexpected stampede of cows. But I just completed the second manuscript, and I’ll admit I’m quite chuffed to have reached my goal. The first book… read more

Against Aca-Fandom

On Jason Mittell on Mad Men

Television scholar Jason Mittell doesn’t like the television show Mad Men, and he’s written an article about why. It wasn’t news to me; indeed, I’m one of the interlocutors he mentions having argued with about the show on Twitter and elsewhere. I knew Jason was writing this piece and I’ve been eager to read it. Now that I have done,… read more