The Puxxle is the vinyl sticker solution to all your analog, 8-bit idolatry needs–a puzzle made from pixels. Whether its Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Frida Kahlo, Salvado Dali, or a chipmunk, these Spanish designers will box it up and send it directly to your door. Order them al
Pippin Barr’s flash games have dark punchlines. The writer, scholar, and maker designs games like a Steven Wright or Mitch Hedberg writes a joke, sardonically exposing the terror of the banal (waiting in line for The Artist is Present) or the banality of the terrible (Let’s Play: Greek Punishment, S
video In a classic case of medium-is-the-message, a commercial-like manifesto or manifesto-like commercial called “The Evolution of 8-bit” appeared last week on Off Book, which is PBS’s alt-culture Tumblr. It’s a fun-sized, snacktime documentary of 8-bit history and ideology sans specific agenda. Pr
Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth. —Margaret Atwood from The Blind Assassin. Since 2007, we’ve praised touch-screen technology as the key to our technological intuition. Well, Atwood’s line from the science-fiction roman á c
The videogame violence debate is old but not over, because it’s not just worried parents and politicians anymore. Recently, Warren Spector–revered designer of System Shock, Deus Ex, Epic Mickey, among others—told G.I.biz: We have to stop loving it. I just don’t believe in the effects argument at all
The accidental aesthetic of Quick Response (QR) codes has gained the attention of artsts looking to explore its vast storage capabilities and (smart phone) user-friendly scanning. A few QR artists have hung whole galleries, courting comparisons to Piet Mondrian. Another Dutch artist, Sander Veenhauf
The social game giant who owns Facebook’s Farmville and mobile fads like Draw Something and Words With Friends has watched their stock deflate rapidly in the past few trade days. Just a couple of possible reasons for the recent tailspin: dwindling interest in previous games from mobile players and F
At last capitulating to the growing digital hegemony, the hermitic, not-dead-yet novelist–whose beautifully explosive books (Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason and Dixon, The Crying of Lot 49) have left readers, writers, and critics in awe for the last half-century–is all-of-the-sudden fine with his books bec