DeLanda on Computation
Apparently Manuel DeLanda has a new book on philosophy and computer simulations. It’s titled Philosophy & Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason, and is scheduled for release in spring 2011. Here’s the blurb: In his new book, the internationally renowned Manuel DeLanda provides a remarkably clear philosophical overview of the rapidly growing field of computer simulations. In this groundbreaking new… read more
in The Atlantic online
Our book Newsgames: Journalism at Play should be hitting the streets in a couple weeks. If you’re eager to get your hands on some of the material in advance, you’ll be happy to learn that The Atlantic just published an excerpt from the first chapter, which you can read here.
The Inflation of Absurdity
A website has been making the rounds over the past few days, called It’s This for That. It’s one of those simple, satirical text generators, of which there are dozens by now. This one target’s today’s technology startups, answering the question, “Wait, what does your startup do?” with a simple this-meets-that answer. Some examples: SO, BASICALLY, IT’S LIKE ASOCIAL GAMEFORCHINESE… read more
The Making of Obsession
I made a Facebook game about Facebook games, called Cow Clicker. You can go play it on Facebook now, or you can see some screenshots on on this site. Here’s the short description, from the page just linked: Cow Clicker is a Facebook game about Facebook games. It’s partly a satire, and partly a playable theory of today’s social games,… read more
On World Cup officiating and the nature of Soccer
The topic of World Cup officiating came up in the comments on my recent Gamasutra column. I offered some thoughts there, but given the fact that the quarter final matches will start up today, it seemed worth rescuing those thoughts from the noise of web page comments. Specifically, I’ve been very interested in all the accusation of bad refereeing in… read more
Gary Yost on Videogames
Gary Yost, creator of 3D Studio Max, on videogames in San Francisco Magazine: Several years later, Autodesk saw Yost’s work and gave him a contract to start developing three-dimensional design software. That got Yost jazzed up; his father was an architect, and he loved the idea of helping to build and create things. But he started having qualms when companies… read more
Journalism at Play
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon Newsgames offers a broad and comprehensive look at the past, present, and future uses of videogames in journalism. Co-authored with Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer. Journalism has embraced digital media in its struggle to survive. But most online journalism just translates existing practices to the Web: stories are… read more
Why I Am Interested in Both
Like every sane person who does anything in public, I egosearch to see how people are reacting to things I’m doing. I use a few tools, but mostly Icerocket, which offers a condensed view of blog, Twitter, news, and Facebook reactions to search terms. The latter results are new, thanks to Facebook’s recent privacy “upgrades” that allow wall posts to… read more
On the White House and Videogames
In a large theater at the 2010 Game Developers Conference, ten thousand game makers gathered for the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice awards ceremonies, where the best indie and mainstream games of the year are celebrated by and for their creators. In between the two, an unusual video was shown. Aneesh Chopra, the United States’s first Chief Technology… read more
On the achievementalization of the world. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
In a widely disseminated talk at DICE last month, Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center professor Jesse Schell made a provocation: can game-like external rewards make people lead better lives? To answer the question, Schell explored hypothetical scenarios that might combine awards of XBox Achievements-like scrip with emerging sensor networks that would track our everyday behaviors. Teeth brushing might earn… read more