A review of Adam Kotsko's book
Adam Kotsko’s little book Awkwardness is a pleasurable and insightful read, yet another reminder that Zero Books is quickly becoming the trusted source for short, punchy works on philosophy and cultural theory. In the book, Kotsko offers a tiny theory of awkwardness: “The tension of awkwardness indicates that no social order is self-evident and no social order accounts for every… read more
A book series, Ian Bogost & Nick Montfort, series editors
Platform Studies is a book series published by the MIT Press that invites authors to investigate the relationships between the hardware and software design of computing systems and the creative works produced on those systems. Platforms have been around for decades, right under our video games and digital art. Those studying new media are now starting to dig down to… read more
Please buy one!
I’m happy to announce that my award-winning game A Slow Year is now available for purchase. I often have the pleasure of announcing a new videogame I’ve made or book I’ve written. Today I get to do both for a single release, as A Slow Year is both a book and a videogame, the one packaged inside the other. The… read more
Let me know if you want one.
A Slow Year is about to ship, and I’ll be posting information about it in the very near future. As I’ve mentioned before, the game will be released in two editions, both packaged as unusual books of poetry: a Windows/Mac edition running in a custom emulator, and a numbered, signed Atari cartridge edition, limited to 25. The general edition is… read more
I’ve had a very busy week with both GDC Online and Indiecade, following right on the heels of two other conferences back home. There’s much to report, and I’ll be doing so in the coming days. For now, I want to note that Newsgames is now shipping, and you can get it from Amazon.com or your favorite bookseller.
Cultural Studies, circa 1995
I recently fell upon this reprint of a Lingua Franca article from 1995, “The Routledge Revolution: Has Academic Publishing Gone Tabloid?” written about Bill Germano during the golden age of cultural studies book publishing. One thing is for certain: By spotting intellectual trends ahead of the curve and responding with a flash flood of suitable titles, Germano has changed the… read more
The book jacket for my game
A Slow Year has gone to the printer at long last. I thought I’d share the jacket art. I’ve shown the illustration here before, but not the cover. This is the jacket for the standard edition, which will be available in trade paperback with software for Windows and Mac. The limited edition with Atari cartridge will be different, of course,… read more
In Facebook and Philosophy: What's on Your Mind?, edited by D.E. Wittkower
In Facebook and Philosophy I received two degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, but Facebook won’t let me join the UCLA network. A Facebook network is an organizational category that allows my profile to come up when someone searches or browses in a particular group. At different stages in the life of the service, networks have been organized… read more
Cheaper and Floppier!
Persuasive Games is finally available in paperback! You can see it in all its perfect-bound glory at the bottom of this post. This is great news for everyone, as the paperback copy now costs a mere $12.82 on Amazon.com. If you prefer the hardcover, it’s down to $23.40, and the Kindle edition is now $11.54. Those prices will likely fluxuate,… read more
Stop it.
A week or so ago, I had a Twitter discussion with a few academics about writing pet peeves. I’d started the exchange with this simple request: Free advice to academics: if you find yourself writing “in many ways,” stop and delete it. Other suggestions followed. Alice Daer suggested “the ways in which.” Robert Jackson offered “could we not suggest that”… read more