A clip of my segment and some responses to common questions from friends and colleagues
I appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report on Tuesday August 7. A lot of my friends and colleagues have been asking the same questions, so I thought I’d try to cover them all in one place. First, if you haven’t seen the interview, I’ve embedded it below. It runs about five minutes or so. This clip doesn’t include… read more
A meditation on why this event for videogame collectors could be more than nostalgic
The weekend of July 28, the Classic Gaming Expo took place at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. The CGE is something of a black sheep in the world of video game events. Even though it covers a specialty niche, it’s not an industry event like GDC, and it’s not a player’s event like PAX. CGE… read more
Reflections on making books that work more like software
What I have in mind is not much different from Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes, a configurative sonnet of 1014 possible configurations. Queneau’s composition is a bit too configurative for my purposes, but the principle is instructive. What if we could take core principles of an argument like the one I make in Unit Operations and offer different… read more
The openness of web applications demonstrates the real treachery of the iPhone's closed platform
This is the first in a series of short editorials on the iPhone, which I’ll be writing occasionally. Now that the geekqueues of iDay have come and gone, perhaps we can start talking more seriously about the device without all the fanboy ardor. For some of us who have not (yet) adopted the iPhone, one major disappointment is its status… read more
Persuasive Games, my book about games and rhetoric, is now available.
My new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, is out and shipping from Amazon.com or your favorite bookseller. The book is about how videogames make arguments. I offer a theory of rhetoric for games, then I discuss a great many examples from commercial and non-commercial games, focusing on the areas of politics, advertising and learning. The book should… read more
Coverage of my studio's forthcoming game via the Canadian newswire
A story about Persuasive Games’ forthcoming game Fatworld went out on the Canadian news wire today, appearing on the front page of a number of publications north of the border. You can read the full story in the Winnipeg Free Press, the Victoria Times Colonist, the Ottawa Citizen, or Canada.com. I particularly like the Ottawa Citizen’s website version, because it… read more
Software that makes it easier to make Atari games on your Mac
Download forMac OS X Leopard, Xcode 3.1 60 kb – Mac OS X 10.5 Download forMac OS X Leopard, Xcode 3.0 56 kb – Mac OS X 10.5 Download forMac OS X Tiger 69 kb – Mac OS X 10.4 Don’t you wish programming Atari VCS games on OS X was easier? I’m sure it’s a question that keeps you… read more
Some of my work in the July 2007 issue of Wired Magazine
This month’s Wired Magazine (July 2007, or 15.07 in Wired volume parlance) devoted their regular games feature to some of my recent work at Persuasive Games. The main subject of the story is Fatworld, a game we’ve been working on since Fall 2006 or so. It’s a game about the politics of nutrition, about the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and… read more
Texas Instruments engineer announces a competition on the venerable 1979 game platform
If you browse this site a bit, you’ll see that I’m a big fan of the Atari VCS, a fervent enough one that I’ve programmed and written about the machine. Aaron Lanterman, a Georgia Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering colleague of mine, recently told me about Joe Zbiciak, a friend of his who has written an emulator for the Atari’s… read more
Talk of the Nation segment, "New Video Games Entertain and Educate"
Yesterday I was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, discussing games about political and social issues. Here’s their blurb: Today’s video games are moving beyond violence and sports. New games provide chances to play middle-east peacemaker or solve problems regarding immigration or food safety. Ian Bogost, creator of these games, discusses why he makes games that go beyond entertainment to… read more