A note from my critics
I have many critics. Critics are helpful, wonderful creatures who produce as much pleasure as ire, partly because they provide amusement as often as commentary. Normally I don’t respond to the more vocally invective ones, but I’m making an exception for “videogames bitch-site” Remedial Waste. They offer the Remedial Lexicon, a list of “unsound videogame terminology.” It’s mostly vituperation sans… read more
New in-browser emulators for classic Atari games
Atari has been through a lot as a company. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded it in 1972. They sold it to Warner Communication in 1976. Ray Kassar ran it through the crash of 1983, after which he was forced out due to accusations of insider trading. Warner split Atari into Atari Games (arcade) and Atari Consumer Electronics (hardware). The… read more
Or is it the other way around?
While I’m catching up from last week’s trip to the Mobile Media Symposium at UCLA (more on that later), and this week’s new deadlines, I thought I’d drop a few CFPs for those of you who might be interested. First, the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games has published a CFP for the 2010 conference, which will take… read more
Abstract for my SLSA plenary
The Society for Science Literature and the Arts annual conference is about to start up here in Atlanta. The program is online, and the SLSA folks have updated it with the abstract for my Friday evening plenary. I thought I’d reproduce it here for those of you who are interested in such things. In recent years, a small cadre of… read more
A chapbook of game poems for Atari VCS, PC, and Mac
among the “Ten Most Anticipated Games of the Year” —Voxy “Excellent and completely out there.” —Wired “A Slow Year takes zen inspiration a step further, with four interactive haiku.” —Boing Boing Winner of the Virtuoso and Vanguard awards 2010 Indiecade Festival A Slow Year is a collection of four games, one for each season, about the experience of observing things.… read more
My Spring 2010 seminar
Some of you might be interested in this, the course description for my Spring 2010 graduate seminar/studio course, LCC 8823 Special Topics in Game Design and Analysis: The Atari Video Computer System: Hacks and Demakes In this intensive seminar, we will explore every aspect of the Atari VCS (2600), the most important early home videogame console. Based on a critical-technical… read more
Learning from the jazz pop instrumental
I seem to wind up in the car for at least part of the early afternoon every Saturday. As a result, I’ve developed a habit of listening to the reruns of America’s Top 40 with Casey Kasem that play on satellite radio channel 70s on 7. This week’s chart was from thirty years ago exactly, October 29, 1979. The number… read more
The miscellany of autumn
I’ve been a bit of a mess this week, as I’m finishing up the Newsgames book with my two graduate students and preparing my keynote for SLSA the week after next. Fortunately, interesting things have gone on without me. As I previously mentioned, on Monday, we hosted a colloquium on “how to think about narrative and interactivity,” featuring Espen Aarseth,… read more
Thoughts on Kindle and electronic editions
Apparently my publisher has started issuing Kindle editions of my books. Two are now available in Amazon’s electronic format: Persuasive Games and Unit Operations. Readers might be interested to find that MIT Press seems to have taken up a different strategy with their electronic book pricing. Specifically, the Kindle editions do not necessarily cost less than the print books. To… read more
A colloquium with Espen Aarseth, Fox Harrell, and Janet Murray
The School of Literature Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech is hosting what is sure to be a great colloquium next week, “How to Think About Narrative and Interactivity.” It will be held 4:30-6pm on Tuesday October 20th in the Skiles building on campus (map), room 002 on the ground floor. The colloquium will feature the following speakers and topics,… read more