Experts think social games are at least partly responsible for the decline of soap operas. “Women at home used to have these virtual friends, these soap stars,” says Maria Bailey author of Mom 3.0. “Now their virtual friends have come alive, and they don’t need one-way conversations. I grew up on Su
PAUSE: A zombie-proof house. That is all. Wait, here’s more: The house, with its movable walls, has only one entrance, which is located on the second floor after crossing a drawbridge. More shots and details here.
Missile-targeting tech can also build gorgeous, 3D maps of cities accurate to 15 cm. “Unlike Google or Bing, all of our maps are 360° explorable,” says Smith, “and everything, every building, every tree, every landmark, from the city center to the suburbs, is captured in 3-D-not just a few select b
KS staffer Lana Polansky on GIRP, Oxford prof Bennett Foddy’s game about handholding: I can’t get to the next ring. That grey bird is sitting on it-and the next-closest ring is just out of reach. I lose my footing on that mountainside in Quebec. My fingers slip. The water rises. My nimble avatar plu
A look inside the mind of Flash developer Patrick Smith, creator of interactive sculptures Windosill, Acrobots, Levers, and more. The obsession with objects is reflected in Smith’s studio space. In college, he painted still-lifes of objects he’d find, and his current living space is admittedly clutt
A Japanese video history of the shmup (shoot-‘em-up).
Avatar director James Cameron is unsurprisingly championing 3D technology for home entertainment. “One of the big barriers to 3D right now is that you have to wear glasses in the home,” said Cameron. “Home viewing is very different than movie theater viewing. I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of the
Dogfighting of a different breed in this Android game that has earned the ire of the Humane Society and the NFL’s Michael Vick. The “Dog Wars” tag line reads “Raise Your Dog to Beat the Best,” and it was originally released on March 8, 2011 according to the Android Market website. Players can buy sh
PAUSE: Heaven, or the Tetris game we all had in the backs of our minds. Play it here.
A story about the first major survey on graffiti and street art, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, brings up some worthwhile questions. How does the picture of an emergent artform change when museums enter in? What happens when ‘having permission’ becomes a factor? Man One also said st
PAUSE: Cristian Zuzunaga’s pixelated furniture. Check out more of his work here.
The latest in our series of pre-game interviews features Jason Rohrer, creator of art games Passage, Gravitation, Sleep Is Death, and Inside a Star-Filled Sky, among many others. He talks about playing with knives, lying to the NSA, and wanting to be a mailman on Mars. I had a lot of nightmares as a
The last typewriter factory, in Mumbai, India, closed this week. So ends the loveliest and loudest sound of button pushing. “We are not getting many orders now,” Milind Dukle, Godrej and Boyce’s general manager, told the paper. “From the early 2000s onwards, computers started dominating. All the man
A detained Al Qaeda official told the U.S. Department of Defense about “remote-controlled firing devices (RCFDS)” hidden inside Sega Genesis cartridges. “Detainee discussed remote-controlled firing devices (RCFDS) which were found during raids in Karachi in September 2002. These RCFDS were built ins
The folks at UK Resistance are tired of everything being so serious all the time so they’ve started a campaign to bring back the blue sky in games, just like old times: – Change everything that’s grey into blue. – From now on, everyone wears red shoes. – Make everything happen at midday or sunset. –
Clip from animator Gabe Swarr’s “Life in the Analog Age” series.
Over at Geek Dad UK, a father mixes things up with his daughter and let’s her make up some of the rules. The results are exciting/inspiring: Although inspired by her introduction to chess the day before, her game was fresh and creative — it was different in ways that an adult steeped in chess would
PAUSE: Jason Levesque’s Anatomical Nesting Dolls For those who love Stacking a little bit too much… [via]
The first from our new ethics columnist Dustin Locke, an assistant professor of philosophy in at Claremont McKenna College, who looks at the different styles of ethical play in games: In addition to Restraints and Rules, however, there is a third R of gameplay control: Wrongs. These are the ethical
Host Michele Norris speaks to Jamin Warren, co-founder of the video game magazine Kill Screen, about the cover of the wildly popular Madden Football game series. It’s a big honor for a football player to make the cover of the game. But if you believe fans – and even some players – once you’re on tha
PAUSE: Susan Thai’s “Yves Klein” Based on the French artis Yves Klein’s Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void) More of Thai’s work here.
First, the Great Gatsby. Now the pop artist. [via]
Fast Company has an excellent piece today on how jihadist sites are using gamification techniques that have been all the rage these days. The interview stars security consultants Jarret Brachman and Alix Levine who also wrote a piece for Foreign Policy on the subject: Did any jihadist sites you enco
It’s hard to keep up with mainstream gaming news, so we’ll do the heavy lifting for you. Here are ten things that happened yesterday in the world of games: 1. Deus Ex: Human Revolution composer says “transhumanist” themes inspired the score. 2. The Infamous 2 beta was extended due to ongoing PlaySta
Forget Pokemon. The Times reports on an uptick of bridge among school kids. Their efforts to promote bridge among students have helped revive a game that peaked in popularity in the years after World War II, and have redefined it from a leisurely pastime for the elderly to a game fit for intersch
