Part 2: What Kind of Videogame?
In part 1 of this series, I introduced the idea of a metaphysics videogame and described why such a thing might be a good idea for philosophy. That was the easy part. In this post I’m going to explore what such a game might look like, in the abstract. The idea is not to suggest only the most viable approach,… read more
Speculative Realism and Digital Media
Last week I had the opportunity to visit in Cairo with philosopher Graham Harman, someone whose work I’ve known and admired for some time now. It was nice to meet him in person for the first time, not to mention having a local guide for getting around this enormous, insane city. I also got to deliver Graham’s first copy of… read more
The Atari in the Boston Globe
The Boston Globe today features an interview with Nick Montfort, my Racing the Beam co-author, about the Atari VCS and our new book. My favorite part of the interview is reproduced below: IDEAS: People … are still creating 2600 cartridges? MONTFORT: At this point, it’s sort of more like zines as opposed to commercial book publishing. It’s on a different… read more
IGI Global and Other Vampire Presses
For those of you who have become cynical in the face of academic publishing, an enterprise sometimes accused of supporting itself in spite of rather than in support of the ideas contained in the books that are its product, I share with you the following email I received from IGI Global: Subject: Forthcoming Copyright Years – Invitations to Publish Dear… read more
An art game for EA's Sims Carnival
A number of websites attempted to capitalize on the user-generated content craze of the late 2000s, but for games instead of text, images, or video. In 2008, Electronic Arts’ Sims division released their go at a community site where users can upload and play games, Sims Carnival. Unlike some of its competitors, Sims Carnival offers three different ways to create… read more
Reflections on scholarly writing on the web
Or more subtly: reading online isn’t the same as reading on paper, yet we continue to treat the web as a distribution tool rather than as a medium with its own material constraints, both suited and unsuited to certain kinds of content. I’ve been thinking about this recently after I started reading a lot more scholarly writing online. Let me… read more
Who I am and what I do
Looking for a bio (long, short)?Looking for photos of me?Want my curriculum vitae?Trying to contact me? Dr. Ian Bogost is an award-winning author and game designer whose work focuses on videogames and computational media. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds an… read more