Software grows like new leaves
Thanks to Jan Holmevik, Cynthia Haynes for hosting me and Greg Ulmer at Clemson University last week. The occasion was a seminar and symposium on games and rhetoric, organized thanks to Victor Vitanza and his Pre/Text journal. I enjoyed lively conversation with students and faculty alike. Somehow it was the first time I’d met Ulmer, who gave a thought-provoking talk… read more
The adult future of your favorite game characters
Here’s another fun excerpt from the forthcoming Newsgames book, from the chapter on “Platforms.” Once the playthings of children, characters like The Legend of Zeldaâ??s Link and Super Mario Bros.â?? Mario are now blank canvases ready to accept adult scenarios like political scandal, insurance fraud, dysfunctional health coverage, spousal abuse, and more. I’d like to see a Mario Bros. game… read more
Interview about A Slow Year
At the IGF, Adam Niese over at PixelSocks interviewed me about A Slow Year. The interview is now online, and you can read it at PixelSocks.com. Issues we discussed include the idea of the “game poem,” how instructions and other meta-textual materials contribute to a work, reactions and expectations for so-called “artgames,” and the current state of the indie games… read more
My GDC 2010 Microtalk
What follows is my short talk from the microtalks session at last week’s Game Developers Conference. The format was a modified pecha kucha, with 20 slides advancing automatically every 16 seconds. The theme provided by organizer Rich Lemarchand was simply, “Play with Us.” I chose to explore the relationship between developers and their audiences. This is a very famous… read more
Updated Screenshots and Trailer
As the IGF approaches, I have a few updates to relate about A Slow Year. First, expect to see a number of interviews with me about the game emerging over the next two weeks. The first is on Rock Paper Shotgun, and I’ll report back when the others drop. My favorite line from the RPS piece, “I hope the game… read more
Learning about Learning Programming from the Apple ][
Among the many, many things we talk about when we discuss curriculum for the Computational Media degree is how to make learning programming facile and appealing all throughout a student’s career. Many sub-problems arise, for example, how can one help students learn new languages and environments after they’ve become familiar with one or two? Just after having some of these… read more
from Videogaming Illustrated, October 1982
One of my students found a bunch of old computer and videogame magazines and shared them with me last week. I’ve been slowly perusing them as time allows, and I found something surprising in the October 1982 issue of Videogaming Illustrated. It’s from a multi-page feature called Star Words, in which different celebrities, mostly actors, offer their impressions of videogames.… read more
What the Wall Said
One of my students found and snapped this plaque at last week’s Art History of Games symposium. When mounted in an art museum like the High, an inscription this strives to remind its visitors that they stand above the artifacts held hostage in the galleries, despite the apparent attention paid to (and the incredible sums paid for) those artifacts. It… read more
On check-in mechanics and games as loyalty programs. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
I am one of those frequent flyer freaks. I count my elite qualifying miles and plan trips to maximize their accrual. I orchestrate complex bookings based on the class of service available and my ability to upgrade it. I can tell you which seats are optimal on a Delta 767-300 versus a 767-400. I can explain the intricacies of award… read more
...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