When most people see a chatbot, they tend to ignore it. Clive Thompson, on the other hand, has a fruitful conversation with one that tries relentlessly to get his credit card number. Thompson has a very one-sided discussion with the bot, pondering the tests of Alan Turing and what it means to be hum
Here’s a bite-size list of some mainstream videogame news from the past day or so. -Pick yourself up a Gears of War 3 replica retro lancer this September. -“Master” Toshiyuki Takahashi parts with Hudson Soft. -Activision release footage from Modern Warfare 3. –L.A. Noire is the fastest selling new v
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has kept on the cutting edge. This weekend he’ll be speaking at the 2011 Maker Faire, a wild showcase of avant-garde contraptions by inventors and designers. And he wants Forbes writer Brian Caulfield, and the rest of us, to put down the controller and find unusual kinds
A very noble new game, developed by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine and spearheaded by Schell Games, aims to educate so-termed “at-risk” youth about the dangers of HIV and methods of prevention: Funded from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Developme
NY Times columnist Virginia Heffernan’s experience with the History Channel’s iPad app, Civil War Today, made her wonder at the morbidity of virtual re-enactment, and how so many keep their distance from painful history: Any directive to relive painful history – and “preserve” it, for that matter –
The developers at Team Bondi captured the look and feel of 1947 L.A. in their highly anticipated game L.A. Noire, but not without help. Archivists from the UCLA Department of Geography to the Huntington Library shone a light on old maps, aerial photographs and the city’s seedy underbelly to provide
This Fabian Gonzalez creation dares you to see if you can name them all. –Lana Polansky [via]
The Neuroshima Hex series has a long history. And according to Tim Maly, the wrinkles of old age are beginning to show. He explains why Neuroshima Hex Puzzle is a game that has too much baggage: There is a higher enforced-text-per-minute density here than in Myst, which, you may recall, is a puzzle