Lacan and the McRib
Each year, the McRib returns for a brief visit to Earth. Its arrival elicits reactions ranging from horror to awe. No matter the tenor, each response’s inspiration is the same: this would-be rib sandwich is really a restructured pork patty pressed into the rough shape of a slab of ribs, its slathering of barbecue sauce acting as a camouflage as… read more
A response to Mike Thomsen
The New Inquiry published a review by Michael Thomsen of my latest book How to Do Things With Videogames. It’s just the kind of review an author hopes for: fair, thoughtful, based on a thorough reading, and full of new ideas and observations. I’m grateful to Thomsen for writing it. Thomsen raises an objection that I’ve been waiting for and… read more
Gamification and Operational Closure
Two seemingly unrelated things happened to me yesterday, which further reflection revealed to have surprising connections. First, I spoke on a panel at the Online News Association conference about games and news. Julia Schmalz (now of Bloomberg, formerly of USA Today) and Rajat Paharia (of gamification vendor Bunchball) were the other panelists. I presented my approach to newsgames and offered… read more
A fresh look at computer games as a mature mass medium with unlimited potential for cultural transformation.
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon In recent years, computer games have moved from the margins of popular culture to its center. Reviews of new games and profiles of game designers now regularly appear in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and sales figures for games are reported alongside those of books,… read more
Part 2: The Digital Humanities
If we accept the premise that the humanities should orient toward the world and not toward a private, scholarly sanctuary, then what trends are already facilitating that process? One candidate is the “digital humanities,” a topic about which I have remained silent for too long, despite the fact that I direct a digital media graduate program and teach in a… read more
Now Shipping!
My latest book, How To Do Things With Videogames is now shipping from Amazon.com in the US. For those of you in Europe, it’ll be a little while longer. And before you ask, a Kindle edition has been created and should show up Amazon any day now. The book is a little different from my others. It offers a tiny… read more
My position statement at the Wharton Gamification Symposium
In his short treatise On Bullshit, the moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt gives us a useful theory of bullshit. We normally think of bullshit as a synonym—albeit a somewhat vulgar one—for lies or deceit. But Frankfurt argues that bullshit has nothing to do with truth. Rather, bullshit is used to conceal, to impress or to coerce. Unlike liars, bullshitters have no… read more
This editorial was originally published on August 1, 2011 at Kotaku. For more on diversity of use in games, read my new book How to Do Things with Videogames, available this month. After the Supreme Court announced its decision regarding a California law that would have imposed state limitations on children’s access to certain videogames, a deluge of reactions flooded… read more
On Bad Writing and Isolationism in the Humanities
In Friday’s New York Times, the novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer wrote a scathing indictment of academic writing. An Academic Author’s Unintentional Masterpiece takes aim at the well-known art historian Michael Fried, but it could easily have been written about almost any scholar in the humanities, veteran or novice, successful or luckless. It lambastes the bad, turgid, unclear writing so… read more
On online video subscriptions
As you couldn’t possibly have missed, Netflix announced changes to their subscription plans this week. Specifically, they separated streaming subscriptions from disc-based ones. It used to be possible to add DVD rental to a streaming subscription for $2 extra, but now you’ll have to pay $7.99 more for a single-disc plan. While many are complaining that the company raised their… read more