Video of my Vienna Games Conference Keynote
Earlier this fall I gave a keynote at the Vienna Games Conference, aka Future and Reality of Gaming, or FROG. The video of the talk has now been posted, and you can watch it in its entirety. The talk tries to answer the question in the title… the gist of my response is that sports videogames are variants, not simulations.… read more
Updated on February 4, 2022 at 11 a.m. ET. Wordle! It’s a word game people are playing online. Each day, the game offers one new puzzle: Guess a five-letter English word correctly in six or fewer tries. After each guess, the game tells you which letters are correct, which are wrong, and which are the right letters in the wrong… read more
A luxury bicycle computer forecasts a welcome future of humble, embedded systems.
The joy I used to feel when using computers has turned largely to anguish. These machines once provided a unique and compelling way to do things, from writing to shopping to communication to entertainment. But today, devices and services strive to replace every activity with computer use itself. Now I think about escaping the computer as much as using it.… read more
A fake social network might be the only thing your smartphone needs.
Binky is an app that does everything an app is expected to do. It’s got posts. It’s got likes. It’s got comments. It’s got the infinitely scrolling timeline found in all social apps, from Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to Snapchat. I open it and start scrolling. Images of people, foods, and objects appear on and then vanish off the screen.… read more
The Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood Trolley introduced a generation to public transit. Now it’s gone off the rails.
As a kid growing up in a car-centric American city, my first introduction to public transit came from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Fred Rogers’ bright-red Trolley conveyed me and all my fellow television neighbors from the rug in front of the living room console television to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. It was just a model train, but even as a very… read more
And it’s stranger than science fiction.
Today Oculus VR, the virtual-reality hardware company Facebook acquired for $2 billion in 2014, releases its flagship headset, the Oculus Rift. In so doing, it launches the era of commercial virtual reality, capping three decades of dreams, prototypes, false starts, and retreats into industrial specialization. Rift isn’t alone: Later this year, Sony plans to ship its $399 PlayStation VR, a… read more
With the Dash button and service, the tech giant wants to make your house do the shopping for you.
I press the white, round button on the Gatorade-branded Amazon Dash Button in my palm. It’s lozenge-shaped, about three inches long, faced with a black bezel sporting the sports drink’s logo. The smooth, concave button is a pleasure to push. It scallops just a little, modestly, less than you would have expected. Then a white LED flashes, and you have… read more
Playing the lottery is foolish, but it affords the public a communal encounter with the weird majesty of mathematics.
As the Powerball jackpot rose late last week, so did the Powerball backlash. The contemporary citizen might revel in devotion to the latest comic-book film adaptation, but the lottery is still considered the lowest of low culture. No intelligent person, many opined in advance of Saturday’s (winnerless) drawing, would buy a Powerball ticket. The dismissal is part of a general… read more
A fond look at the preposterous—and yet essential—pursuit of games criticism
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon Videogames! Aren’t they the medium of the twenty-first century? The new cinema? The apotheosis of art and entertainment, the realization of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk? The final victory of interaction over passivity? No, probably not. Games are part art and part appliance, part tableau and part toaster. In How to… read more
The creator of Flappy Bird is back with a game offering the sublime agony that comes with mastering a craft—and still failing.
Many of the highest-performing professional athletes are also the most superstitious. Serena Williams bounces the tennis ball five time before her first serve, twice before the second. Michael Jordan wore his University of North Carolina basketball shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform. Baseball hall of famer Wade Boggs bore a bounty of superstitions. Among them: He ate chicken before each… read more