blog

August 9, 2008

Ordinary Olympians

Why athletic excellence alone cannot be appreciated

My sister-in-law Susannah is a world-class gymnast. Despite the fact that her event, tumbling, is much, much more atheletic and arresting than plain old artistic gymnastics, it didn't make the cut even for exhibition at the Beijing games. That may have something to do with China's weak performance in the sport. ...

August 2, 2008

The Geek's Chihuahua

A Review of the iPhone

Despite attempts to maintain my geek cred, despite my propensity for gadgeteering, despite my favor for the cult of Apple, despite my lust for shiny things with microprocessors, I didn't get an iPhone when it first came out earlier this year. Indeed, I also didn't get one when the new ...

July 27, 2008

Videogames, circa 1920

Today Tristan (age 8) and I took a break from Wii Play to enjoy some NES Ice Hockey, thanks to a Wii Virtual Console download. After we were done playing, I asked him what he thought of the game. He liked it; it was simple and he successfully figured out ...

July 18, 2008

Learning from Amazon Associates

Referral reports and privacy, insight, surprise

Like many, I use the Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program when linking to books and some other products from my websites. It's a simple referal service. Users can create links and when readers on their websites follow those links and make purchases, Amazon pays a referral fee. There are lots ...

June 30, 2008

My Platform Studies Talk

from the Software Studies Workshop

I attended the Software Studies Workshop at UCSD back in May, where I gave a talk on platform studies, the subject of a new book series co-edited by Nick Montfort and me. The first title in the series will be our book on the Atari VCS. The UCSD crew has ...

June 27, 2008

Every Computer Animated Film Ever

A universal plot summary

After the worst of a long series of well-meaning but destructive deeds, an anthropomorphized creature protagonist is shunned by his community. He enters into a series of adventures in the pursuit of a seemingly impossible task to prove his worth. During this pursuit the protagonist meets a rival and, to ...

June 21, 2008

Introducing the Broccodevil

My experience with Make My Own Monster

I received a Make My Own Monster kit for Christmas last year. It's a service offered by the North American Bear Company, which has the distinction of having the worst shopping site I've seen in some time. Anyway, the Make My Own Monster concept is great: kids (of all ages, ...

June 9, 2008

Resisting the Membership Economy

Photography, Flickr, and Me

As regular readers may have noticed, I have an interest in photography. I've started a photography section on this website, where you can view some of the photographs I have taken. Right now I've added galleries for Objects, Places, and People, as well as a photo project I'm slowly working ...

June 6, 2008

Missing the Target

Why Facebook Ads are Stupid

From a business perspective, it was my impression that one of the great promises of Facebook and other social networking sites is that they can offer extremely selective ad targeting. Facebook users willingly provide large amounts of enormously specific information about themselves, from their age and location to their artistic ...

June 5, 2008

Twittering Rocks

A reprise of the central chapter of Ulysses, performed on Twitter

Last year, Ian McCarthy and I puppeted over 50 characters from the Wandering Rocks chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses on the microblogging platform Twitter. We're planning a reprise for this year, including much more notice than we gave in 2007 (Bloomsday is June 16). You might want to consult ...

May 28, 2008

Zimmer Base Ball and Cigars

115 years of sports game adaptation

I have an interest in game adaptation, something that we normally think of only as it relates to film-to-game licensing. In our forthcoming book on the Atari VCS, Nick Montfort and I also discuss another kind of videogame adaptation that was once its primary form: from arcade coin-ops to home ...

May 24, 2008

Three things I hate about Apple Mail

I use Apple Mail instead of competing products like Microsoft Entourage or Google Gmail. I don't use Entourage because I try not to use Microsoft products if I can help it, not just as conscientious objection but also because they are bloated. I refuse to use Gmail because I try ...

May 19, 2008

Safe to Collapse

Using the collapsible Elmar-M 50mm f/2.8 on the Leica M8

As I've discussed before, one of the main ideas behind the 35mm rangefinder camera was its small size and subsequent portability. Since their beginning 80 years ago, Leica cameras have often been coupled to collapsible lenses. The early production Leicas in the 20s and 30s were all designed for a ...

May 15, 2008

After the A-list

This website in The Industry Standard's Top 25 B-to-Z List Blogs

The Industry Standard has compiled a list of the top 25 "B-to-Z List Blogs"... you know, the ones that come after the A-list. It seems that this humble site was selected as one. Quoth the Standard: This videogame theorist and assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology waxes between ...

May 6, 2008

A Response to Roger Travis

who misconstrues my work and that of my colleagues

(1) I'm not going to bother to write a thorough prose response to your recent Escapist article Quibus Lusoribus Bono? Who is Game Studies Good For?, but only numbered objections and comments. Readers, you'll have to go read Travis's article before any of these will make sense. (2) Your article ...

April 30, 2008

CNN Headline T-Shirts

WTF?

I woke up this morning and went through my usual rounds of news. I was surprised to see little t-shirt icons next to some headlines on CNN.com It turns out CNN has a new service (a "beta" one, for effective Web 2.0 cred), CNN T-Shirts. You can order a t-shirt ...

April 27, 2008

Liberal Arts College vs. Research I University: Deathmatch

Ten principles for better academic career advisement

Jason Mittell, a media studies scholar at Middlebury College, recently wrote about his experience being a researcher at a liberal arts college. Mittell's offering points to and comments upon a related article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Kristen Ghodsee, who explained her path from UC Berkeley graduate student ...

April 20, 2008

Technical Evolution and Creative Constraint

The vices and virtues of selective color shift at high ISO in the Sigma DP1

One of the problems with digital SLRs is their large footprint. Not only the size and weight of the camera, but also that of the lens attached to it, especially for serious photographers interested in large apertures and high-quality glass. This is an issue that affects professionals and amateurs alike, ...

April 16, 2008

Tenure

The future lasts forever

This spring I was awarded tenure at the Georgia Institute of Technology and leveled-up to Associate Professor in the School of Literature Communication and Culture. As I tried to think about an appropriate way to announce this accomplishment to my readers here, the phrase that kept entering my head was ...

April 14, 2008

Me on All Things Considered

I got a barrage of text messages and emails and Facebook messages this afternoon, all telling me their senders were listening to me on NPR's All Things Considered. The segment isn't about me but rather about the broader topic of videogames and depth. The correspondent is Heather Chaplin, co-author of ...

March 28, 2008

Stuff White People Like

Straight Outa Canada

This week I was in Canada, which is the country immediately north of America ("the States" for the rest of you). I like to read the newspapers delivered to my hotel room when traveling, so I inhaled today's issue of the Globe and Mail, which is a national coverage paper ...

March 22, 2008

Private Eyes / They're Blogging You

... blogging you blogging you blogging you

Eric Marcoullier and I were tonight embroiled in a riveting, yet wistful conversation about 70s/80s pop duo Hall and Oates. After reviewing classics such as this music video for the #1 hit title track of the 1981 album Private Eyes, it occurred to me: Daryl Hall and John Oates look ...

March 20, 2008

Unbreakable

A structural defect? An object lesson?

Do they put "unbreakable" on it just to taunt people like me? Is it a complex marketing strategy to sell more combs? Is it an object lesson in temptation? (click for a bigger version) ...

March 16, 2008

Text of my GDC Education Summit Keynote

Following reflections on Georgia Tech president Wayne Clough's appointment to the Secretaryship of the Smithsonian

Today G. Wayne Clough, the president of Georgia Tech, announced his plans to step down as of mid-summer to take the top post at the Smithsonian Institute. The Smithsonian has been plagued by many problems in recent years, from major budget overruns to a crippling executive corruption scandal last year ...

March 7, 2008

Reading Online Sucks

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 ...

March 5, 2008

Finally, Smart Web 2.0 Critique

A special issue of the journal First Monday

The open-access online journal First Monday has just published a special issue devoted to critiques of Web 2.0. There have been few such attempts heretofore, the most well-known being fellow Colbert Report guest Andrew Keen's naive and poorly-argued book The Cult of the Amateur. Thankfully, the articles in First Monday's ...

February 1, 2008

Shoes, Laptops, Liquids, Blog

The Transportation Security Administration's new blog

As an airport obsessive, I was interested to learn that the TSA has a blog now. It's a curious thing. For example, they've gone to some significant lengths to humanize the bloggers: Hi, I'm Bob, and I started with the TSA in September 2002. ... I live in Southwest Ohio ...

January 24, 2008

Digital Download Hell

Why downloadables aren't more accessible than physical media

Recently, friend and colleague David Edery wrote a nice feature on Gamasutra about how to make trial versions of downloadable software sell more games. He has some good points, including observations about how a trial shouldn't just be the beginning of the game nor should it give away enough that ...

January 19, 2008

New Student Atari Games

Titles from Fall 2007 just added

Each fall, students in my LCC 2700 - Introduction to Computational Media make Atari VCS games. The students work in teams of three to create them. This term we had a large enrollment and thus a number of games -- 29 new ones, to be exact. There are some superb ...

January 17, 2008

Dwelling Machines

Introduction to a symposium I organized at Georgia Tech

This past Monday the School of Literature Communication and Culture and the Wesley Center for New Media at Georgia Tech hosted a symposium I organized called Dwelling Machines. Here's the description, too small to read in the event poster above. This symposium asks whether and how technology might alter ...

January 10, 2008

Adventure Easter Egg Poster

A glossy, wall mountable version of the first videogame easter egg

Nick and I are putting the final touches on our Atari VCS book. Part of that process includes creating figures for the book. Nick had the great suggestion of creating black and white illustrations instead of screen shots, akin to the kind you used to find in technical books and ...

December 29, 2007

Troll Pimples

Or, why Arby's Cheesecake Poppers are seriously nasty

Being a fan of the limp, slightly wet roast beef sandwich, today I luncheoned at Arby's. In addition to the more savory offerings, they had a new dessert option (new to me, at least): Arby's Cheesecake Poppers. Behold: These are little deep-fried cheesecake bits served with a sweet raspberry sauce. ...

December 26, 2007

The Joy of Pie Vents

Canvases of crust

Every holiday when pies are baked and consumed, I try to make a new pie vent. Pie vents help steam escape from baking pies to avoid boiling over. Some even use ceramic pie birds for this purpose. I prefer the carving method. Here are this year's vents, featuring the Transformers' ...

December 25, 2007

Spartans and Staplers

Selections from my Christmas morning booty

It's Christmas morning, and I wonder how many other lucky souls can boast booty like mine. Below you'll find a part of my under-tree take: a large, talking Leonidas action figure as depicted in the film 300 stands in front of a genuine red Swingline stapler, wrapped not in paper ...

December 4, 2007

Here Comes Another Bubble

The charming perversity of using Web 2.0 to satirize Web 2.0

I'm only blogging it because, you know, the song told me to. ...

November 21, 2007

Snark, Meet Irony

How Boing Boing undermined its own argument against Amazon Kindle

There's been a strong and decidedly split reaction to Amazon's new Kindle eBook reader, which was released this week. As of today, Amazon reports that they have sold out of the device, so people are obviously buying it. But concern over its closed nature, including binding users to Amazon's ...

November 19, 2007

My Week at Kotaku

Links to my week of posts as guest editor

Last week I served as guest editor at popular games and game culture blog Kotaku All in all, I wrote 45 articles at Kotaku, which I've now linked below. I haven't even tried to read all the comments on those threads though. I had a great time doing it and ...

November 12, 2007

Guest Editing at Kotaku

for the week of November 12

Games uberblog Kotaku's managing editor Brian Crecente is on vacation in Australia, and he invited me to serve as a guest editor for this week. I'll be posting links to my daily stories here every day or so, or you can just sift through the archives on the site. My ...

October 29, 2007

Chumby and the Rhetoric of Openness

Small, cute, insidious

Note: Chumby representative Andrew "Bunnie" Huang has replied to this thread, and I have in turn replied to his response with more questions. I encourage you to read through all the comments for more detail. Finally, I should point out that I am not an attorney and nothing herein should ...

October 23, 2007

Jack McCoy-o-Lantern

Sam Waterston in pumpkin, on my stoop

We take our jack-o-lanterns very seriously at my house. It's a challenge of skill, wit, and patience. One year, for example, I had to make a Harry Potter Dark Mark. This year, Abbey got the idea for a Jack McCoy-o-Lantern. You know, featuring Sam Waterston. From Law & Order. Here ...

October 6, 2007

Videogames: Can They Be Important?

My plenary address at the Southern Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo

The following is the plenary address I gave today at the first SIEGE conference here in Atlanta on October 6, 2007. The title of the session was “Games: Can They Be Important?” My fellow plenary speakers were Ernest Adams and Daniel Greenberg.   Today it is possible to work though ...

September 17, 2007

Lucifer Notes

A letter of complaint to U Haul, roughly one decade old

Often I am a cynic, and sometimes I am a grouch. But no matter what glass I might find half-empty, I endeavor at least to do so with grace and with wit. While walking to dinner at the Games Learning Society conference this summer, Doug Thomas, Mia Consalvo, Alice Robison ...

September 11, 2007

Operating Systems Prohibit Film Still Fair Use

Built-in DVD players forbid screen captures with software constraint

Recently, I had the need to capture a still from a DVD a Persuasive Games client had sent over as guidelines for some game assets. I didn't want to rip the whole DVD, so I went to use the built-in screen capture facility in Apple OS X: the old standby ...

September 2, 2007

Atari Games Ahoy

Updated courses and Atari student games

In between sessions of Bioshock, this Labor Day weekend I've been updating this website. Of special note, I've added some of my courses over on the teaching section of the site. I haven't included every class I've ever taught, but rather the ones I thought would be most useful or ...

August 19, 2007

A Professor's Impressions of Facebook

Musings after several months of use, as I prepare to start the semester

This spring, I created an account on Facebook. I'm a web 2.0 cynic (and a cynic in general), so this surprised some of my friends and colleagues. But I was encouraged by so many of them, I wanted to give it a try. For example, Ian McCarthy just wanted an ...

August 10, 2007

My Appearance on The Colbert Report

A clip of my segment and some responses to common questions from friends and colleagues

I appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report on Tuesday August 7. A lot of my friends and colleagues have been asking the same questions, so I thought I'd try to cover them all in one place. First, if you haven't seen the interview, I've embedded it below. It ...

July 20, 2007

The Configurative Book

Reflections on making books that work more like software

A media studies colleague of mine from Middlebury College, Jason Mittell wrote a kind review of my last book, Unit Operations. As Jason points out, it's less a formal review than a reaction to a percieved flaw, focused through the lens on the future of academic scholarship. The flaw in ...

July 16, 2007

On the iPhone: The Anxiety of Openness

The openness of web applications demonstrates the real treachery of the iPhone's closed platform

This is the first in a series of short editorials on the iPhone, which I'll be writing occasionally. Now that the geekqueues of iDay have come and gone, perhaps we can start talking more seriously about the device without all the fanboy ardor. For some of us who have not ...

July 8, 2007

My new book has shipped

Persuasive Games, my book about games and rhetoric, is now available.

My new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, is out and shipping from Amazon.com or your favorite bookseller. The book is about how videogames make arguments. I offer a theory of rhetoric for games, then I discuss a great many examples from commercial and non-commercial games, focusing on ...

July 4, 2007

Fatworld in Canada

Coverage of my studio's forthcoming game via the Canadian newswire

A story about Persuasive Games' forthcoming game Fatworld went out on the Canadian news wire today, appearing on the front page of a number of publications north of the border. You can read the full story in the Winnipeg Free Press, the Victoria Times Colonist, the Ottawa Citizen, or Canada.com. ...

June 28, 2007

Atari VCS Programming in Xcode

Software that makes it easier to make Atari games on your Mac

Download forMac OS X Leopard 56 kb - Mac OS X 10.5 Download forMac OS X Tiger 69 kb - Mac OS X 10.4 Don't you wish programming Atari VCS games on OS X was easier? I'm sure it's a question that keeps you up at night. It sort ...

June 26, 2007

Experience Refreshing Moral Discomfort

Some of my work in the July 2007 issue of Wired Magazine

This month's Wired Magazine (July 2007, or 15.07 in Wired volume parlance) devoted their regular games feature to some of my recent work at Persuasive Games. The main subject of the story is Fatworld, a game we've been working on since Fall 2006 or so. It's a game about the ...

June 25, 2007

Intellivision Homebrew Contest

Texas Instruments engineer announces a competition on the venerable 1979 game platform

If you browse this site a bit, you'll see that I'm a big fan of the Atari VCS, a fervent enough one that I've programmed and written about the machine. Aaron Lanterman, a Georgia Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering colleague of mine, recently told me about Joe Zbiciak, a friend ...

June 22, 2007

Listen to Me on NPR

Talk of the Nation segment, "New Video Games Entertain and Educate"

Yesterday I was on NPR's Talk of the Nation, discussing games about political and social issues. Here's their blurb: Today's video games are moving beyond violence and sports. New games provide chances to play middle-east peacemaker or solve problems regarding immigration or food safety. Ian Bogost, creator of these games, ...

June 21, 2007

Points of Entry

New newsgame about immigration legislation

The New York Times has published this month's newsgame, which we created over at the studio. In Points of Entry, you can compete to award Green Cards under the Merit-Based Evaluation System included in legislation recently debated in Congress. The system, proposed in legislation sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy, outlined ...

June 20, 2007

Where in the World was Middle Earth?

A geography professor's hypothetical geomorphology of Middle Earth

Do you read Strange Maps? You should, if you're at all a map geek. It's a blog about curious cartography. It's really exactly the kind of site blogs seem to promise, regular musings on a subject so specific or arcane that another medium couldn't support regular publication. Thanks largely to ...

June 18, 2007

How to use the Leica M8 with Apple Aperture

Free software to make Aperture understand your M8, and to automate imports

Download for Mac OS X 152 kb - Mac OS X 10.4+ Apple Aperture is a digital photography post-production tool for Mac. Apple bills it as a professional-grade product on par with Final Cut for video or Logic Pro for audio. Digital camera technology advances quickly, espeically at the ...

June 16, 2007

Bloomsday on Twitter

A performance of Wandering Rocks on Twitter, and a commentary on both. Created with Ian McCarthy.

I do not like Twitter, the micro-blogging service that allows users to send short (SMS-sized) text-based updates that are displayed publicly and shared with friends social-network style. ...