Search Results for videogames

Videogames Go to Washington

The Story Behind Howard Dean's Videogame Propaganda. Co-authored with Gonzalo Frasca. In Second Person, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

Read the entire article in print in Second Person: : Roleplaying and Story in Games and Playable Media On December 16, 2003, popular web magazine Slate published an article by journalist and author Steven Johnson (Johnson 2003). Reviewing simulation games that engage problems of social organization, Johnson posed a question: â??The [2004] U.S. presidential campaign may be the first true… read more

Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy

In First Monday 11, no. 9., Special Issue #7: Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Global Cyberspace

Videogames have dominated popular culture for some time, but only in 2004 did they make a significant break into the world of politics, advocacy, and activism. This paper provides an overview of a variety of types of games used for political speech, from endorsed party messages to activist dissent. After explaining the state of the field, I discuss approaches to… read more

Videogames and Ideological Frames

From Popular Communication 4, no. 3 (2006)

Based on cognitive linguist George Lakoffâ??s notions of metaphor and frame as the principle organizers of political discourse, this article offers an approach to analyzing political rhetoric in videogames intended to carry ideological bias. I then argue for three ways games function in relation to ideological frames — reinforcement, contestation, and exposition — through examples of political games (Tax Invaders),… read more

Videogames with an Agenda

An exhibition of political games

In Fall 2004, Gonzalo Frasca and I curated an exhibition of political games called Videogames with an Agenda. The exhibition marked the UK opening of the documentary film The Corporation. The show ran from October 16 to November 7, 2004 at the exhibition space in the Curzon Soho, a theater in London’s Soho district. Featured games included work from Molleindustria,… read more

Ulysses and the Lie of Technological Progress

How a broken Twitter adaption of James Joyce’s novel reveals the secret of Bloomsday

Today is Bloomsday, a folk holiday adopted to celebrate the life and work of the Irish writer James Joyce, in particular his 1922 novel Ulysses. The name derives from the book’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom, one of the Dubliners the book follows through the day of June 16, 1904. First celebrated mere years after the novel’s publication, Bloomsday festivities have been… read more

Steroid Slugger

An unpublished 2007 New York Times newsgame

In 2007, my studio Persuasive Games embarked on a series of newsgames published by the New York Times. It was Kind Of A Big Deal At The Time, because it was the first real attempt for a major newspaper to publish videogames as news content (rather than as puzzles). We completed two games, Food Import Folly, about the effects of reduced… read more

Video Games Are Better Without Characters

The real legacy of SimCity is its attempt—and failure—to make complex systems the protagonists instead of people.

In the mid-1980s, the easiest way to check out the latest computer games was to go to a bookstore in the mall. Past the John Grisham and the bargain history books in the B. Dalton Bookseller, you’d find Software Etc., a small island of boxes amidst bound volumes, and a few computers on which to play the latest releases. It… read more

Game Studies, Year Fifteen

Notes on Thoughts on Formalism

I know it’s been a long time since I blogged—really blogged, you know, in the style of that form—for three reasons. First, because I’m talking about blogging in the first sentence, and second because I’m sending you here to read the prerequisites for this post. You’ll want to read the linked piece and as many of the subsequent pieces linked… read more

Why Anything but Games Matters

On isolationism in game development; my Indiecade 2014 talk

A couple months ago, I was talking to a friend in technology media. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m in tech,” he started saying. He paused for a beat. “Then I think, at least I’m not in games.” He wasn’t even really talking about the Voldemortian “you-know-what” that was indeed the original impetus for our conversation. That’s just the latest example.… read more

Swing Copters: The Randomness of the Universe, Captured in Pixels

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