Video and transcript of my talk at the Third Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium
Below is the video for my talk at the Third Object-Oriented Ontology symposium, which I delivered remotely by video. I intended the video as the way to experience the content, but upon request I’ve also posted a transcript of the material for those who prefer to read it that way. For a larger sized video, watch on Vimeo or select… read more
A fresh look at computer games as a mature mass medium with unlimited potential for cultural transformation.
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon In recent years, computer games have moved from the margins of popular culture to its center. Reviews of new games and profiles of game designers now regularly appear in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and sales figures for games are reported alongside those of books,… read more
Now Shipping!
My latest book, How To Do Things With Videogames is now shipping from Amazon.com in the US. For those of you in Europe, it’ll be a little while longer. And before you ask, a Kindle edition has been created and should show up Amazon any day now. The book is a little different from my others. It offers a tiny… read more
On embracing videogame diversity and combatting exploitationware
In many of the reactions to Gamification is Bullshit, both in the comments on this site and in responses elsewhere, a common objection is raised. It goes something like, “you’re just afraid of unfamiliar uses of games.” Here’s a particularly odious version of that argument, by Libe Goad on ZDNet today: I often wonder if Bogost’s and other game makers’… read more
How To Do Things with Videogames, coming late August
You can now preorder my new book, How To Do Things With Videogames. It’s a shortish book, about videogames as a medium. The book includes new essays as well as new versions of earlier essays, bookended by a bit-sized theoretical argument about games as a medium. Here’s the blurb, followed by the book cover (which isn’t yet up on Amazon): In… read more
My talk at the 2011 Game Developers Conference "rant" panel
Last year I made a game about Facebook games, called Cow Clicker. You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again. Among the many retorts to Cow Clicker‘s characterization of social games, a common one is about creativity. Players of these games, the argument goes, exercise imagination and creativity far beyond what… read more
Father of the first exercise videogame
Fitness expert Jack LaLanne died yesterday at age 96. He’s most notable for starting the first health clubs, but anyone who lived with television in the late twentieth century couldn’t have missed LaLanne’s many programs and endorsements. Despite his fame, and despite the recent popularity of home fitness videogames like Wii Fit and EA Sports Active, few know that LaLanne… read more
Why physical movement games are incompatible with our homes
The Microsoft Kinect is available today, and with it come innumerable reviews of its successes and flaws (find a summary of them at Gamasutra). A common property of many negative reviews is the enormous amount of living room space Kinect requires, far more than most people will have in a sizable home let alone a modest apartment. I wrote about… read more
About Medal of Honor and Afghanistan. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
In November, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments from the State of California, as the latter attempts to prohibit the sale of certain games to minors. The issue has remained a nail-biter for the industry and its advocates, who see the proposal as an attack on the First Amendment rights of game makers. Despite its importance to American life,… read more
Time Will Tell, But Epistemology Won't: In Memory of Richard Rorty
In 1999, the Silicon Alley entrepreneur Josh Harris rented an underground warehouse in lower Manhattan and subjugated a hundred friends to a home-made police state he named “QUIET.” Its residents slept in open bunk pods stacked atop one another, each with a bus depot television with a closed-circuit feed from every other pod. Quieters partook of bacchanal feasts and abusive… read more