Have you ever found yourself wanting for a 7-foot papercraft of an imposing anime robot? Probably not, but graphic designer Taras Lesko did, and he built one to scale from a Gundam model. He has posted a plethora of images of it while it was under construction, as well as a fast-motion video of the
In honor of alt-games blog GameSetWatch’s closing: Posts about robots! The Robot App Store is just what it sounds like – an App Store for Robots. It allows robot app developers to upload programs to the store, and robot owners to download them. Somehow I’m guessing that these two segments overlap, b
The Jawbone UP was supposed to be the product that finally made it easy to track how effective your exercise regiment was doing. Snap it on your wrist, download the app onto your phone, and you were ready to let gamification work in your favor and shed some pounds. But in a recent article for Co.Des
The chaotic, state-of-nature propensity for violence exhibited in George Miller’s classic post-apocalyptic action film Mad Max has always seemed a perfect fit for videogames. So it makes sense that since its release in 1979, the film has had an enormous influence on what is now firmly established as
This Kickstarter project from Starr Labs, makers of many a Ztar, promises to turn Apple’s tablet “into a 21st century musical instrument” they are dubbing the “iTar.” Designed for musicians and aspiring guitar heroes alike, the designers leave the question open as to how it will apply to interactive
Chalk this one up as speculation, but it seems like more than coincidence. It is well-known that the surrealistic art of Giorgio de Chirico was an influence on Fumito Ueda when he made Ico, but did he go so far as to name the game after him? As NeoGAF forum member Dunan points out, the last three le
A thread on popular gaming forum NeoGAF is paying homage to the paintings of videogames. Not lowbrow art that portrays Mario and Kronos on canvas, but digital paintings that hang on the walls in games like Assassin’s Creed. While it is debatable whether games belong in museums, the thread shows that
Various government agencies got together in October to discuss how games can be used to help solve problems within their respective departments. More than 70 federal employees from 23 agencies held a confab at the White House in October to discuss projects they are working on to use games to address
I thought Team Bondi’s painstaking recreation of 50’s LA was impressive, but Ana Serrano’s has taken the crown. The piece, entitled Salon of Beauty and currently installed at the Rice Gallery in Houston, is a replica city block made entirely out of cardboard. While cardboard provides a practical and
The Narrative of Victor Karlock is an upcoming film that uses puppets instead of their CG counterparts. The film is billed as Victorian ghost story, but has a striking resemblance to BioShock, due to the chilling atmosphere and portrayal of a vintage diving suit. Source: The Spirit Cabinet. -Jason J
Remember that scene in 2001 where Dave and Frank discuss disconnecting HAL, but don’t realize that HAL can read lips? Well, we’re one step closer to that dystopian future: Eurogamer reports that a source has disclosed that the Kinect 2 will be sensitive enough to read lips. Kinect 2 will come bundle
Like a really nerdy cockroach, interactive fiction-those text-only computer games of the pre-graphics era-will live forever. Rock, Paper Shotgun has posted a link to the best short interactive fiction of the year. Taking the main gong this year is Taco Fiction by Ryan Veeder, which is an agreeably w
In an article entitled “Game Thinking,” Martin Pichlmair posits that if you want to understand gaming, you have to understand the underlying principles behind it: Games are rules systems that only flourish upon interaction. The dynamics and aesthetics of play is what we design them for. In design th
You could easily spend as many hours reading Skyrim as you can playing it. Scattered around its many bandit-filled fortresses and haunted caves are stacks and stacks of books. Instead of quietly reading them to yourself in front of your flatscreen, somebody has gone to the trouble of compiling them
Over at Etsy’s blog, there’s a fascinating clip of a fascinating craftsman. How many countless hours have we all spent in our favorite RPGs hunting for mythical loot?: Korehira Watanabe is one of the last remaining Japanese swordsmiths. He has spent 40 years honing his craft in an attempt to recreat
A British company has decided to delight bar patrons and headline writers with their latest invention, urinal gaming stations. The company, Captive Media, is hoping to install games in urinals that allow for urine controlled games. Men relieving their bladders can aim at different sensors in the ur
GameSetWatch, the influential “alternative” videogames blog, is no more. At its brightest, GameSetWatch was smart and fun. Founded by Simon Carless in 2005, GameSetWatch began as a place for him to run content that was more lighthearted than found on his main project Gamasutra. It was one of the fir
Perhaps sick of people calling Modern Warfare exploitive trash, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg decided to lash out. There’s a sense that games are more exploitative in a way that The Hurt Locker – which also was designed as form of entertainment – isn’t. I think they are an art form, and I think that
Angus Finlayson of the Quietus has an excellent analysis of the role of sexism in the UK dance music scene, culminating in the following quote: Music has political meaning woven into it the moment it is played, whether on a dancefloor or in a bedroom. And every act has political implications – wheth
The only things certain in gaming are death and (sales) taxes, so in All’s Well that Ends Well, Pippin Barr just cuts to the chase and presents the player with an essentially untenable situation-you are an object, sometimes an airplane, sometimes a Lego figurine, sometimes a fork, and you have to na
The newest solo show from street artist/arcade fetishist Invader at the Outsiders Gallery in London will be Space Invader-themed (and hopefully flavored) waffles. -Jamin [Arrested Motion]
If only something like this existed in the Nintendo Power hotline days: The system infers emotional states of human emotion based on vocal data. It calculates tone of voice as well as speech patterns to deduce what the emotional state of an individual is and makes decisions on how to proceed based o
Sony has had a tough year from the tsunami in Japan that cost the company billions to the spate of hacks of the PlayStation Network to the realities of adapting an 160,000+ employee company to the realities of the the Internet age. As CEO Harold Stringer likely approaches the end of his tenure, acco
An oldie but goodie for our horror fans. Two years ago, Men’s Journal’s Mischa Berlinski traveled to Haiti to separate fact from fiction around the idea of the zombie. The results are riveting: Shortly after that incident, I started taking Creole lessons from a motorcycle-taxi driver named Lucner De
While this Kickstarter project is intended to let common household objects give you notifications over the internet, it is only a matter of time before your washing machine is challenging you to a game of chess. -Jason Johnson
