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May 1, 2013
Preview: Why Gamification Is Bullshit
From a longer article forthcoming in The Gameful World
My short essay Gamification is Bullshit was a very widely read provocation, but it was never meant to be a complex argument. I've finally written a longer, more detailed version of that argument in an article titled "Why Gamification Is Bullshit." It will appear in Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian ...
Simony
An art installation and iPhone/iPad game about earning or buying station.
November 10, 2012
Digging for Gold in a Turd
My "Fuck this Jam" Keynote
Rami Ismail and Fernando Ramallo have organized a game jam called Fuck This Jam, in which participants are invited to build a game in a genre they hate. Given our experience making games in genres we hate, Rami and Fernando invited me (Cow Clicker) and Zach Gage (Spelltower) to deliver ...
November 5, 2012
Did you know, road trips are just gamified cars?
Gamification has reached such a fever pitch that its proponents have begun sounding like parodies of themselves. An amazing recent specimen is comes from Mashable, under the title "9 Strategies to Gamify Your Startup". The entire article is "worth reading," so to speak, but this one's my favorite: When people ...
October 31, 2012
Coming Soon: Simony
A teaser for my latest game
I've been quiet lately because I've been working like a madman to complete my latest game, a commission in the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville's Project Atrium series. The game takes the form of an installation that will run at the MOCA from November 17, 2012 through March 10, 2013. ...
October 2, 2012
Words With Friends Forever
On cadence and deep design in the current social games environment. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra
August 11, 2012
In Defense of Competition
On sport, games, success, and failure
On her blog, my Georgia Tech colleague Amy Bruckman writes about her dissatisfaction with this year's Olympics. While she loved the games as a kid, Bruckman wonders if her new feelings of disappointment arise from watching them as an educator rather than as a little girl: "I look at young ...
June 11, 2012
Cube Clicker
I implemented Peter Molyneux's Curiosity inside Cow Clicker
Peter Molyneux is unusual among commercial game designers. He's very well-known and successful, yet his games are often quite unusual, and his crazier ideas have a reputation for not quite making it to market. Molyneux's penchant for absurdist, conceptual design koans even inspired a Twitter parody, @PeterMolydeux, whose design one-liners ...
February 28, 2012
Game Developers Conference 2012
My schedule for this year's event
It's almost time for the Game Developers Conference again! To think, last year I was struggling to escape the grip of a certain cow game, and this year I've perhaps almost partly escaped the grip of a certain cow game. This year I've got a relatively light schedule. First, Ben ...
February 27, 2012
Videogames as Art Medium and Inspiration
or, A Slow Year at the Telfair
This week, the Telfair Museums will open Game Change: Videogames as Art Medium and Inspiration. My game A Slow Year is among the pieces that will be on exhibit from February 27 to April 1, 2012. I'll be in Savannah Thursday evening for the Game Change panel, from 6-8pm at ...
February 15, 2012
The Perils of Farmville
Me on NPR's Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane
I've had a chance to be on a number of different radio programs, both national and local. I really like doing radio, particularly longer programs on NPR and CBC since the additional time really allows more sustained exploration of a topic. It's also particularly fun and weird to be on ...
January 31, 2012
Slashdot Q&A
Just a short pointer post for those who get my updates via blog or RSS. Last month Slashdot covered the Wired article about me and Cow Clicker, and invited readers to pose questions. The editors selected some, which I answered, and which Slashdot has now published. The questions were good, ...
January 24, 2012
On Technical Agency and Procedural Rhetoric
A quick response to Joshua McVeigh-Schulz
There's an interesting discussion over at Culture Digitally between Gina Neff, Tim Jordan, and Joshua McVeigh-Schulz on the subject of technical agency, or "how we should (re)theorize the politics of technological systems." Gina Neff's opening comments include a welcome statement about the limits of SCOT perspectives on technical systems: Within ...
November 19, 2011
Two New Interviews
Two new and relatively extensive interviews with me were recently published. The first is in Forbes, conducted by David M. Ewalt. It mostly covers material from my latest book, How to Do Things with Videogames, but there's some new material toward the end. The second interview, with Aaron McCollough, appears ...
November 10, 2011
Innovative Leisure
An exhibition of new games for the Atari
I'm curating an exhibit of new Atari games at Babycastles, which opens this Sunday, November 13th. It's called Innovative Leisure (a term I lifted from an early Atari slogan) and will take place at a new art games arcade at Death By Audio. The show exhibits games by Sonny Ray ...
October 31, 2011
Being-Towards-Winning
Steven Connor on Winning
There are lots of great excerpts to share from Steven Connor's new book A Philosophy of Sport. Here's one: The sudden approach of the finish line involves a significant shift of effort. Instead of pushing forward, to overcome a considerable and continuing resistance, you are about to break through from ...
October 3, 2011
The Unbearable Lightness of Clicking
Leigh Alexander on my games
Popular game enthusiast site Kotaku just published an article by my friend and game writer Leigh Alexander, about my last two games, Cow Clicker and A Slow Year. My good friend Frank Lantz makes several appearances. I guess I'm not going to say much more about the article, except that ...
September 24, 2011
Notes on Loyalty
Gamification and Operational Closure
Two seemingly unrelated things happened to me yesterday, which further reflection revealed to have surprising connections. First, I spoke on a panel at the Online News Association conference about games and news. Julia Schmalz (now of Bloomberg, formerly of USA Today) and Rajat Paharia (of gamification vendor Bunchball) were the ...
July 4, 2011
Social games? Boeh!
Cow Clicker in Het Parool
The Dutch newspaper Het Parool ran a story last Saturday about Cow Clicker. You can read a scan of the story below (in Dutch, click for the large version), but equally interesting to me is the fact that the paper put an enormous Cow Clicker cow on the front page ...
July 1, 2011
Revisiting Asynchronous Multiplayer Games
Me on Me on Social Games
In the autumn of 2004, I wrote a paper titled "Asynchronous Multiplay" for the Other Players Conference on Multiplayer Phenomena, which was held at IT University, Copenhagen in December of that year. To give you an idea about how long ago 2004 was on the timescale of game development and ...
