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
Leigh Alexander on my games
Popular game enthusiast site Kotaku just published an article by my friend and game writer Leigh Alexander, about my last two games, Cow Clicker and A Slow Year. My good friend Frank Lantz makes several appearances. I guess I’m not going to say much more about the article, except that I hope you’ll go read it.
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
Brief thoughts on Steve Jobs's Resignation
Steve Jobs is a fascist. That’s what everyone loves about him: he tells us what he wants, and he convinces us we are going to like it. And we do, not because he’s right (despite popular opinion), but because it’s so rare to get such definitive, brazen, top-down, abusive treatment in this era of lowest-common-demoninator wishy-washiness. It doesn’t matter if… 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
Me on Me on Social Games
In the autumn of 2004, I wrote a paper titled “Asynchronous Multiplay” for the Other Players Conference on Multiplayer Phenomena, which was held at IT University, Copenhagen in December of that year. To give you an idea about how long ago 2004 was on the timescale of game development and game research, consider a few facts: Facebook was incorporated in… read more
What Amazon.com's ebook sales figures really mean
Among the many overzealous, under-synthesized tech business stories today, perhaps the most surprising is the news that Amazon is now selling more ebooks than print books. 105 ebooks for every 100 print books, as it happens. While 105 > 100, a more accurate but less scintillating headline might be, “Amazon ebook sales on parity with print book sales.” But I… read more
Videogames against Cognition, against Aesthetics
The Guardian ran a story today about videogames and cognition, which covers the usual assumption that games are popular/good/whatever because they tap into some innate cognitive drive, whether it be for learning or obsession. Good games, the article concludes, are the ones that do what we want, but that we don’t know we want. This, it turns out, amounts to… read more
How To Do Things with Videogames, coming late August
You can now preorder my new book, How To Do Things With Videogames. It’s a shortish book, about videogames as a medium. The book includes new essays as well as new versions of earlier essays, bookended by a bit-sized theoretical argument about games as a medium. Here’s the blurb, followed by the book cover (which isn’t yet up on Amazon): In… read more
A response to Paul Carr and Chris O'Brien
Cross-posted from PBS Idea Lab Earlier this month a group of journalists, game designers, and academics gathered at the University of Minnesota for a workshop on newsgames. I was there, as was fellow Knight News Challenge winner and San Jose Mercury News tech business writer Chris O’Brien. After the event, Chris wrote a a recap of the meeting. In turn,… read more