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
Newsgames and the Paralysis of Media
I’m at the University of Minnesota this weekend, where Nora Paul has organized a workshop on Newsgames. It’s an excellent group, comprised of equal parts journalists, game developers, and academics. On the flight over, I read Ivor Southwood’s Non-Stop Inertia. It’s about the precarious nature of work in the contemporary world, but I happened across a fantastically wry and apt… read more
In lieu of a real post
I’ve been busy since the holidays catching up and preparing for the new term, which makes this the requisite occasional “I haven’t posted on the blog” blog post. Since I’ve been reduced to such self-referential shame, I figured I might as well take things even further and offer my readers a massive dump of recentish press about me. For starters,… read more
A summary
Here’s a quick link summary of my 2010, including both major events/work and smaller moments that took the form of blog posts. Happy new year, all. Disney cease-and-desist – the turtlenecked hairshirt – the Art History of Games – Hacks, Remakes, and Demakes – Heavy Rain – Pascal spoken here – I hate gamification – Knight News Challenge – philosopher… read more
Game Design, Newsgames, Objects, and Whitehead
I’m doing a whole crap-ton of things in Los Angeles the week after Thanksgiving. First I’ll be visiting Tracy Fullerton’s game design class at USC on Monday. Next I’ll be giving a talk on Newsgames at the USC Annenberg School, at noon on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, I’ll be participating in a one-day event at UCLA, HELLO EVERYTHING: Speculative Realism… read more
Via my doctoral student (and Newsgames co-author) Simon Ferrari, this snippet from Lev Vygotsky’s classic text Mind in Society: A special feature of human perception—which arises at a very young age—is the perception of real objects. This is something for which there is no analogy in animal perception. By this term I mean that I do not see the world… read more
Our Winning Project in the 2010 Knight News Challenge
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s News Challenge award winners were announced Wednesday at MIT, and my project was among the 12 of 2,400 entries to have been awarded a grant. It’s research I’m working on with my colleague Michael Mateas (UC Santa Cruz). Here’s a summary of what we’re doing: Among the casualties of local newspaper cuts… read more
Graham has a short post up mentioning Heidegger’s distaste for the crossword puzzle. Given that we have a whole chapter about crosswords and related puzzles in Newsgames, I’m particularly keen to read this if anyone digs it up. Heidegger’s reaction was actually quite common. Some may not realize that the crossword puzzle incited a moral panic when it rose to… read more
Design Beyond the Object
In addition to our new book Newsgames, the Fall 2010 MIT Press catalog (PDF) includes a wonderful new title called NONOBJECT, by designer Branko LukiÄ? (frog design, IDEO) and writer Barry M. Katz (California College of Design). I paste the press’s blurb below in its entirety, it’s so lurid and wonderful. The “objective” world is one of facts, data, and… read more
The adult future of your favorite game characters
Here’s another fun excerpt from the forthcoming Newsgames book, from the chapter on “Platforms.” Once the playthings of children, characters like The Legend of Zeldaâ??s Link and Super Mario Bros.â?? Mario are now blank canvases ready to accept adult scenarios like political scandal, insurance fraud, dysfunctional health coverage, spousal abuse, and more. I’d like to see a Mario Bros. game… read more