A Tip of the Cow

Facebook likes Cow Clicker

While they’ve never said so in public, it seems Facebook has always been a silent fan of Cow Clicker. I’ve been tipped off about it several times, including via this shot of a Cow Clicker doodle on the whiteboard “wall” at Facebook HQ. A wider view of the wall cow included, later appeared in an issue of Wired. But given… read more

A Slow Year Limited Edition

Photos of the signed, numbered set of twenty-five

I started working on my Atari “game poems” project A Slow Year almost exactly three years ago. I had spent an idle summer afternoon writing 6502 assembly on the couch, and the first versions of the summer game took form. Slowly, over time, the work revealed itself to me: a set of four 1k games, one for each season, inspired… read more

It’s This for That

The Inflation of Absurdity

A website has been making the rounds over the past few days, called It’s This for That. It’s one of those simple, satirical text generators, of which there are dozens by now. This one target’s today’s technology startups, answering the question, “Wait, what does your startup do?” with a simple this-meets-that answer. Some examples: SO, BASICALLY, IT’S LIKE ASOCIAL GAMEFORCHINESE… read more

The Magic Carpet

Notes on Glamour

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, the Academy Awards were still being held at the Shrine Auditorium, which is located just north of Jefferson, directly across the street from campus. It’s quite a structure, built in the Moorish Revival style and opened in 1926. At that time, the surrounding neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles… read more

Exhaust Objects

Thoughts from an Atari 1978 Board and ROM

In anticipation of the Independent Game Festival next week, today I constructed the first two cartridges of A Slow Year. More on that soon, but for now I wanted to share the object below, residue from the construction. It’s a board holding a 2k mask ROM for an Atari game. The photo probably stands alone as far as a blog… read more

Information is Beautiful

...but it's not necessarily informative

My next book, Newsgames: Journalism at Play (co-authored with my graduate students Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer), is being prepared for publication, and it should hit the streets in late summer of this year. In anticipation, I’ll try to offer some occasional previews of the content we cover in the book. One of the chapters in Newsgames covers infographics, exploring… read more

The Art History of Games

Day 2 and Exhibition Opening

We’re already into the third and final day of the Art History of Games symposium, and as an organizer I haven’t even tried to blog the talks. You’re best bet is to check out coverage online (Gamasutra covered part, but not all, of yesterday’s sessions), or to review the Twitter stream on hashtag #AHoG. Last night’s exhibition opening was great;… read more

Pragmatic Speculative Realism

A stake in the ground

Even though we didn’t really talk much about philosophy, after visiting Graham Harman in Cairo two weeks ago, I was reenergized to think about philosophy in general and speculative realism in particular. In the short time since, a number of friendly bonfires have flared up around the web, most of them camps emanating from Graham’s blog and that of Levi… read more

Guru Meditation Trivia Contest Answers

I'm sure you've been biting your nails in anticipation

A week ago or so, I mentioned a trivia contest I was running on the Touch Arcade forums, with correct answers winning Guru Meditation redemption codes or a signed copy of Racing the Beam. I’ve given away all the codes and the book, so now it’s time to share the correct answers. (1) The Fairchild Channel F, an interchangeable cartridge… read more