More on Harman on Time
I recently described time as a phenomenon “on the inside of objects.” Peter Gratton objects that time is “at the surface level of objects” for Harman, because the latter describes it as the tension between sensual objects and sensual qualities. Gratton argues, “if time is at the surface of where things relate then it is not within the object.” Short… read more
On failures to communicate
There’s a great article by Monroe Anderson at The Root titled ‘Obamacare,’ the Video Game?. Anderson recalls asking Obama strategist David Axelrod “why so many voters were so clueless as to how President Obama had spent the first two years of his first term.” Axelrod’s response: “information gridlock.” Essentially, the White House hadn’t been able to communicate effectively with the… read more
A response to Cameron Kunzelman
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not exactly sure what blogging means to me these days. But whether by accident or design, I’ve been avoiding some of the back-and-forth debate that both helps and hinders the work of philosophy online these days. That said, this is one of those back-and-forth response posts, this on answering some of the… read more
I implemented Peter Molyneux's Curiosity inside Cow Clicker
Peter Molyneux is unusual among commercial game designers. He’s very well-known and successful, yet his games are often quite unusual, and his crazier ideas have a reputation for not quite making it to market. Molyneux’s penchant for absurdist, conceptual design koans even inspired a Twitter parody, @PeterMolydeux, whose design one-liners are now perhaps even more famous than the originals they… read more
Notes on the Rise and Fall of Blackberry
In January 1995, a year and a half before Hotmail launched the world’s first web-based email service, a landmark California law banning smoking in most public places went into effect. Back then smoking was already on the decline, especially in California, but it was probably still more common than having an email account. The change was most immediately noticeable in… read more
On the surprising design features of Johan Sebastian Joust. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
In 1987, game designer Chris Crawford introduced the concept of process intensity, “the degree to which a program emphasizes processes instead of data.” Process, Crawford explains, involves “algorithms, equations, and branches,” while data refers to “tables, images, sounds, and texts.” A process-intensive program “spends a lot of time crunching numbers; a data-intensive program spends a lot of time moving bytes… read more
Jimmy Maher's Platform Study of the Commodore Amiga
I’m very happy to announce the publication of the latest book in the Platform Studies series, Jimmy Maher’s The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga. It’s a terrific book about this influential multimedia microcomputer. As someone who never had an Amiga in the 80s and 90s, but who was often surrounded by them, I can vouch for the effectiveness of… read more
Mark Sample's assignment for How to Do Things with Videogames
I’ve been flattered to see so many courses in media studies and related fields adopt my 2011 book How to Do Things with Videogames so quickly. But my favorite use of the book in a classroom thus far comes from Mark Sample’s Videogames in Critical Contexts course. He’s assigned his students to write a “missing chapter” for the book. Here’s… read more
First image out of my Lytro
I just received my Lytro lightfield camera. It’s the first commercialized plenoptic camera, which is an optical device with an array of lenses to capture a scene at multiple focal points. There’s a lot of terrible rhetoric in the tech and electronics communities about this camera, claiming that it will allow you to take a photograph and “worry about focusing… read more
The style of thatgamecompany
While we often see the evolution of artists working in old media, ever-shifting technical terrain tends to obscure videogame makers’ aesthetic trajectories. In Thatgamecompany’s pathbreaking and gorgeous games for the Playstation 3, we get the rare chance to watch these artists at work against a fixed technological backdrop. My review of thatgamecompany’s Journey, in the context of a discussion of… read more