Before Parliament’s Tom Watson grilled James Murdoch this morning, he tweeted about the night’s preparations. Late, late night playing Portal 2. Early, early morning drafting questions and listening to The Clash on full blast. #brandnewcadillac How has Portal 2 (or the Clash) figured into your publi
[Above: A map of Tweets and Flickr uploads by Eric Fischer.] It seems your ex isn’t the only one reading your public tweets. According to The Atlantic, the CIA maintains a social-media tracking center operated out of an nondescript building in a Virginia industrial park. The intelligence analysts… a
That’s what the BBC is speculating, at least. They point to the fact that this year the amount of PCs sold decreased drastically, with consumers instead spending their money on internet-abled devices such as smartphones and tablets. There’s one arena in which PCs still kill: gaming. “There are signi
If you’ve been playing Battlefield 3, you might have come across the following scene: In the scene in question, the player – a US Marine – is hiding from a passing army of Iranian soldiers. He crawls along a ditch until a rat crosses his path and starts to nip at him. The character, presumably afrai
It’s hard to think of where my wayward youth would’ve been spent if not for Ralph H. Baer, creator of the the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console. At the Utah Cyber Symposium recently he lamented that Modern Warfare was as far away from his image of gaming as possible, but he did sound a hopefu
As a pioneer of cyberpunk, William Gibson occupies an extremely relevant place at the intersection of culture and technology. Speaking last month during a conference at the Chicago Humanities Festival, he made some interesting observations on the decline of cyberspace and the future of technology. F
Right now, you are using your eyes to watch someone play videogames with their eyes. it’s called EyeAsteroids, and it’s touring the country offering gamers a glimpse of what could be gaming’s future: Speaking about the new arcade game, Henrik Eskilsson, chief executive officer of Tobii Technology, s
It’s time for the second installment of the Rap Map, where we talk to rappers from every region of the world (North America is the whole world, right? Cool.) about their favorite videogames. We’re starting with the South, and today we talk with Paper Route Gangstaz, a rap group from Huntsville, AL w
The new Obama campaign ad asks what would have happened Barack Obama had never won the 2008 presidential election. Spooky! For comparison, we’ve posted the trailer of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers below. WHICH IS MORE TERRIFYING??? [via]
All things considered, the XBox Kinect is pretty damn impressive-who would have thought that one day we’d just be able to play videogames by moving our bodies? Well, scientists at MIT might have one-upped Kinect. By a lot. Researchers are working with the brain’s alpha waves — neural oscillations in
Above is a screen shot from Zorba, a new dance game by Kill Screen’s own Pippin Barr. As for the gameplay, imagine Dance Dance Revolution crossed with the video for Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” video, as played by your fingers. Play it at Pippin’s site. He says of the game: Dance?! Did you say d
Another day, another spin on hangman from the kind kids at UCLA’s Game Lab: This game takes hangman and adds ear-splitting sirens and physical pain. Players attach the aluminum foil mask to their heads/faces and input letter guesses by banging their head against whatever they choose to place the foi
The New York Times has an interesting piece up discussing David Foster Wallace’s latent effect on criticism. The piece is fairly damning in its own way, and basically says DFW got away with writing like how a stoned college kid thinks and made the rest of us think we could do the same. Except, the p
Ten bucks says this guy set the tape for the course up from memory. [via]
That’s what Iran’s hoping for, at least. The Iran National Foundation of Computer Games recently announced four new titles, each concerned with the 1980-‘88 Iran-Iraq war. The games Alvatan Battle, Breaking the Siege of Abadan, Battle of Kheybar and Partisan are on the Iran-Iraq war known as the Sac
This video of college kids arguing over their digital hangman game is sort of adorable. They made the thing, too. From the UCLA Game Lab: In this digital form of hangman, players use the five buttons to input letter guesses in binary form (1 = A, 26 = Z) to find the randomly-chosen five-letter word.
ghostfable: The Pixelated World of Shawn Smith “My work investigates the slippery intersection between the digital world and reality. Specifically, I am interested in how we experience nature through technology. When we see images of nature on TV or on a computer screen, we feel that we are seeing n
Freerice, an online game that offers players a chance to earn free meals for those in impoverished nations, has launched in China, users a chance to hone their English skills while helping to provide rice to those in need in China and other parts of Asia. “We have always believed in the Internet as
Steam Postcards is a Tumblr that posts game screenshots taken by Iain Andrews. Unlike most guys who take screenshots, Andrews isn’t interested in capturing action, characters, or even encapsulating gameplay. Instead, he takes shots of scenery, plaintive moments of quiet, computer-animated beauty. Ch
Man, have we got the museum exhibit for you! The Computer Game Museum in Berlin is running a special exhibit on Atari’s 1972 classic arcade game PONG, considering the game’s social, political and cultural implications. They say: There is no other phenomenon that compacts the development lines of our
Trust us. Shouts out to the intern at CBS who successfully screencapped this, because I tried and failed like a thousand times. (For the record, this is a trope from Star Fox 64 and later 4chan for those of you who don’t know.) -Drew Millard
Besides a predilection towards wearing crazy military uniforms, of course. This is sort of insane, but Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi used to have an amusement park at his compound. The New York Times has the whole sad, surreal story of the the aftermath of his fallout in Libya. -Drew Millard
What is the future of music and games? Billboard asks Kill Screen to give their outlook in multi-page spread. Oh, music games! Whither the mighty Guitar Hero and Rock Band! For the answer, Billboard kindly asked us put on our prognostication hat and look at the future of games. (Excellent timing sin
From the vaults come this 2008 New Republic piece by Leon Kass and Eric Cohen on the Roger Clemens Steroids controversy. The whole piece is a marvelous read for its treatment of subjects like cheating, athletic prowess, and what it means to play games. Anyone interested in not just the legacy of the
The above image is from the “Sculpture Forest,” a Japanese work that’s a hybrid of a sculpture and a playground. Check it and many other works designed to enrich children’s appreciation of art through play over at the Kids Web Japan website. We’ll leave you with a “inspirational quote” from the site
