A big public game of benevolent assasination. Created with Jane McGonigal.
Cruel 2 B Kind is a game of benevolent assassination. At the beginning of the game, you and a partner-in-crime are assigned a secret weapon. To onlookers, it will seem like a random act of kindness. But to a select group of other players, the seemingly benevolent gesture is a deadly maneuver that will bring them to their knees. Some… read more
A review of media studies scholar Henry Jenkins's recent book
I read Henry Jenkins’s new book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide this weekend. The book is a short, smart, buttery read on a hot topic, and it is sure to draw both popular and academic interest. Jenkins is a multifaceted media scholar, a critic of vaudeville, fan fiction, comics, film, games, and more. He is also the… read more
A first date simulator. Distributed in vol 1 of the Independent Games Collection.
Sweaty Palms is a First Date Simulator. Players take on the role of a nervous guy or girl trying to allure their date at the movies. The game is an attempt to demonstrate the potential for abstract, expressive games on a small scale. While that might sound trite and obvious these days, it wasn’t so common when the game was… read more
Co-authored with Janet Murray, Michael Mateas, and Michael Nitsche. Published in IEEE Computer Society, June 2006.
Electronic games are growing rapidly as a cultural form, a set of media technologies, and a global industry. Humanists are looking at games as a new expressive genre like drama, opera, or movies, social scientists are examining them as a new form of collective behavior, computer scientists, engineers, and industrial designers are finding them a new focus of invention. New… read more
An Approach to Videogame Criticism
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon A book about comparative videogame criticism: games, philosophy, literature, and art. In Unit Operations, Ian Bogost argues that similar principles underlie both literary theory and computation, proposing a literary-technical theory that can be used to analyze particular videogames. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond videogames: Bogost suggests… read more
Paper presented at the Digital Arts and Cultures conference, Copenhagen Denmark, December 2005.
Recently videogames that use physical input devices have been dubbed â??exergamesâ? â?? games that combine play and exercise. This paper offers a historical perspective on exergames, from early arcades to the Atari 2600 through contemporary consoles, as well as a theoretical analysis of the different rhetorics such games deploy to influence players toward physically-active gameplay.
In Games & Culture 1:1 (2006).
This article explores comparative criticism and videogame software development through thef igure of the bricoleur, the handyman who assembles units of preexisting meaning to form new structures. An intersection of these two domains — what the author calls comparative videogame criticism –suggests a more intimate interrelation between criticism and production. The author offers a critique of functionalist approaches to videogame… read more
An academic paper about multiplayer games played in sequence. Presented at the Other Players Conference on Multiplayer Phenomena, Copenhagen Denmark, December 2004.
Big budget, high commitment 3D MMORPGâ??s have generated significant revenues and theoretical bounty. But these games still alienate most casual players. This article offers a promising future for multiplayer experience, especially casual experience, in the form of asynchronous multiplayer games, or games in which small or large numbers of players play a game in sequence rather than simultaneously.
A game about corporate connectedness. Created with T. Michael Keesey.
Horde of Directors was designed and developed specifically for the Videogames with an Agenda exhibition, London UK Fall 2004. I was created by myself and T. Michael Keesey. The game was also exhibited at State of Play: Games with an Agenda, at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia, March 22 – June 8, 2005. The game… read more
A riposte to the Critical Simulation section of Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's edited collection First Person
You can buy First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game in print. You an also read this article with cross-references to other pieces in the volume at the electronic book review. Simon Penny discusses a specific kind of physical embodiment, having to do with corporeal coupling to simulation devices and videogame characters. Reading his call to consider the… read more