Tag Search

June 10, 2010

Cross about Crosswords

Graham has a short post up mentioning Heidegger's distaste for the crossword puzzle. Given that we have a whole chapter about crosswords and related puzzles in Newsgames, I'm particularly keen to read this if anyone digs it up. Heidegger's reaction was actually quite common. Some may not realize that the ...

May 28, 2010

Two Immanent Deadlines

Indie Games and Code and Los Angeles

I have two June 1 deadlines to remind you (and myself) about: (1) The IndieCade independent game festival. You can submit online. The festival will be held October 8-10 in Culver City, CA. (2) The Critical Code Studies conference. It will be held July 23, 2010 at USC. Both are ...

May 20, 2010

Endless String of Meaningless Buzzwords

The Onion on Foursquare

Leave it to The Onion to say what we're all thinking, or should be, about Web 2.0 "social games" like Foursquare. "Foursquare is a little bit of everything—a friend-finder, a local city guide, an interactive mobile game," said company cofounder Dennis Crowley, as if reading from the same tired script ...

April 17, 2010

Newsgames Described

Cover, blurb, price, etc.

MIT Press has put up the informational webpage for Newsgames, and the book should be appearing in the catalog and in books in print (and therefore at Amazon et al) soon enough. You can read the description on the MIT Press site, and I've also pasted it below. The list ...

March 12, 2010

A Slow Year Cover Art

GDC continues, and I owe this site updates. For now, a small one. I gave a short talk about A Slow Year at the Nuovo Sessions today, in which I revealed the cover and label art for the game. I thought I'd post those here for the rest of you, ...

March 3, 2010

Shell Games

On the achievementalization of the world. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.

February 10, 2010

Check-Ins Check Out

On check-in mechanics and games as loyalty programs. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.

February 9, 2010

Information is Beautiful

...but it's not necessarily informative

My next book, Newsgames: Journalism at Play (co-authored with my graduate students Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer), is being prepared for publication, and it should hit the streets in late summer of this year. In anticipation, I'll try to offer some occasional previews of the content we cover in the ...

February 6, 2010

The Art History of Games

Day 2 and Exhibition Opening

We're already into the third and final day of the Art History of Games symposium, and as an organizer I haven't even tried to blog the talks. You're best bet is to check out coverage online (Gamasutra covered part, but not all, of yesterday's sessions), or to review the Twitter ...

February 4, 2010

The Art History of Games

Day One

This evening we began the Art History of Games symposium here in Atlanta, organized by Savannah College of Art and Design - Atlanta and Georgia Tech. After introductions, myself and my co-organizers John Sharp and Michael Nitsche presented a discussion of the concept of an art history of games. Then ...

January 14, 2010

Who Can Beat Nixon?

Defeat doesn't finish a game, quit does.

Here's a lovely specimen I hadn't seen before: a board game released in 1970 about Nixon's then-forthcoming (and ill-fated) reelection. The game seems to resemble Monopoly, although its unclear how the game works from just the board. According to the game's Board Game Geek entry, the game's events (driven by ...

January 4, 2010

A Slow Year in the IGF

My game among the Nuovo category finalists

The Independent Game Festival (IGF) has announced finalists for the 2010 competition. I'm happy to say that my game A Slow Year is among the finalists in the Nuovo category, designed "to honor abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games." ...

A Slow Year

A chapbook of game poems for Atari VCS, PC, and Mac

August 4, 2009

The Ontology of the Game of Life

On Levi Bryant on John Doyle on Levi Bryant on John Conway

Over at Larval Subjects, Levi Bryant discovered Conway's Game of Life. Later, responding to John Doyle's comments, Braynt reflected on the ontological status of the game and its objects. Says Levi: there are not two worlds– one consisting of the really real or "mind-independent objects" and another consisting of mind ...

July 3, 2009

New Guru Meditation Update Available

Adds new sound settings, high score reset

Apple has just approved, finally, my latest update to the iPhone version of Guru Meditation (to 1.2). Here are the list of updates as they appear on the iTunes App Store: Added a Sound Mode setting. Options are Requires Quiet, which is the standard mode, Microphone Disabled, which allows the ...

June 1, 2009

Guru Meditation at E3

For those attending E3, my game Guru Meditation will be shown at the IndieCade exhibit, which can be found in South Hall, booth #652. Unfortunately I won't be there to see reactions to it. If you do, please let me know about them! ...

May 18, 2009

Guru Meditation Released

Om for Atari and iPhone

After two years of off and on development, I've just released my relaxation game Guru Meditation, simultaneously for Atari VCS and iPhone. The game is a re-imagining of and homage to old Amiga lore, an exploration of what a game that legitimately deals with inactivity would feel like, and (through ...

May 6, 2009

Pink, Puzzles, and Piano bars

Apple's Idea of Mother's Day

Thanks to a direct email advertisement, I had the opportunity this week to behold Apple's idea of what mothers like. You can see it below: Just in case you can't see it clearly, Apple manages to pull out every mom stereotype they could connect to their products. Moms like pink, ...

April 22, 2009

Texture, Bleed, Afterimage

CRT Emulation for the Atari VCS

This spring, I had the pleasure of advising a Georgia Tech Computer Science capstone group. The capstone is a requirement for the degree that is meant to draw on all aspects of the students' experience in the program. Each project requires an advisor and a customer. In my case, I ...

A Television Simulator

CRT Emulation for the Atari VCS