On diversity in games. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
Every now and then someone objects to game design methods by arguing against “historical aberrance.” This line of reasoning claims that a particular trend is undesirable on the grounds that it is new and abnormal, unshared by historical precedent. Let me share two examples. First, a few years ago Raph Koster invoked this argument about single-player games. As Koster put… 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
David Foster Wallace on "Academic English"
In comments to my response to Geoff Dyer’s critique of academic writing, Bill Coberly suggested that “a lot of the tolerance for lousy writing in academia does come from that (probably unconscious) desire to keep academia sacred and mysterious.” There’s probably something to this. On a related note, the faslanyc blog responded to both articles by excerpting a portion of… read more
On Bad Writing and Isolationism in the Humanities
In Friday’s New York Times, the novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer wrote a scathing indictment of academic writing. An Academic Author’s Unintentional Masterpiece takes aim at the well-known art historian Michael Fried, but it could easily have been written about almost any scholar in the humanities, veteran or novice, successful or luckless. It lambastes the bad, turgid, unclear writing so… read more
Todd Sampson in a Cow Clicker t-shirt
Watch this TV ad. Pay close attention around 0:23. Did you see the guy in the Cow Clicker t-shirt? Pretty crazy. I posted about this on Facebook and Twitter, but here’s a bit more information about how that may have come to pass. The Gruen Transfer is an Australian TV show about the operation of advertising, specifically how particular advertising… read more
An easier way to make Atari games on your Mac
Download the TextMate Atari VCS Support Installer (Mac OS X 10.5+, 60k) Several years ago I was really getting heavily into Atari VCS programming—for teaching, for art, and for research on Racing the Beam. VCS programming is notoriously hard at first, but like anything once you get the hang of it, it feels natural. What never felt natural, however, was… read more
On online video subscriptions
As you couldn’t possibly have missed, Netflix announced changes to their subscription plans this week. Specifically, they separated streaming subscriptions from disc-based ones. It used to be possible to add DVD rental to a streaming subscription for $2 extra, but now you’ll have to pay $7.99 more for a single-disc plan. While many are complaining that the company raised their… read more
An Open Letter from Cow Clicker to Pig Assassins Worldwide
(Cross-posted from Cow Clicker) For almost a year now, Cow Clicker has helped thousands of people from dozens of countries engage in the affectionate practice of clicking a cow every six hours (or even more often). While the lamentable practice of cow-tipping may get more public attention, cow clicking harms neither virtual cows nor real ones. To click a cow… read more
It’s interview season, apparently. I’ve done a number of interviews recently, and I figured it would be easier to link them all at once for my devoted readers enjoyment (that’s you). First, Laureano Ralon published oan interview with me on Figure/Ground Communications. The interview covers the state of scholarship and the academy, McLuhan, and game studies. Laureano has been conducted… read more
Lingis on Videogames
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the passage in The Imperative in which Alphonso Lingis discusses videogames (albeit in brief): But although we use our automobile only to roll to one end of the city and back again, transportation evokes the existence of remote and enchanted destinations or the roar of the sun and the wind in… read more