Each year, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) puts out the results of its survey of gamers. In last year and previous years, the surveys showed that a fair amount of gamers were middle-aged, a trend that gave the impression that the gaming market was becoming broader. But this year’s surve
Cathode ray tube monitors (CRTs) are no longer being manufactured. Good riddance to those oversized monsters, right? Well, since CRTs have less lag than LCDs, retro gaming may never be the same. Why would anyone want to put up with the size and weight of a CRT these days? One reason is the refresh
A new research study looks at the possibility of deliberately forgetting a story from one’s past. Researchers had participants remember a short instance inspired by a keyword, pair another word with it, and then repeat this procedure for 23 more word pairs (read word, remember something associated w
Interactive proofs are when humans or some theoretical questioner ask a computer questions, and they can’t trust the computer to really understand what they’re getting at. Asking multiple computers different questions makes this style of proofing more efficient. But because quantum physics is weird,
Does it really matter which way you hang a Kandinsky? According to a study by George Mather at the University of Sussex, the answer is yes: Experiment 1 asked whether naïve observers can appreciate the correct orientation (as defined by the artist) of 40 modern artworks, some of which are entirely a
Murder in the Dark, Mafia, Hide-and-Seek: these free-to-play games have long been part of the neglected history of street games. Ludocity is a site dedicated to real-world street and social games and houses a list of game rules and events. Some of the games on Ludocity overlap with theatre, painting
It’s fun to play with LEGO, building things and then imagining how they fit into a world. The versitility of LEGO make them great tools for psychologists, who use them to asses spatial reasoning, as play therapy for autistic children, and to help salarymen and women think creatively. David Whitebre
Over at Brainy Gamer, Michael Abbott teaches how to play Skyrim with the under-7 crowd by sharing his experience in playing the high-fantasy game with his 4-year-old daughter Zoe. Unsurprisingly, it’s a constantly-supervised activity, but with the right guidance an open-world RPG can be a great teac
ModDB, a site that gathers and distributes videogame mods, (also known as modifications, usually fan-made changes to a game’s code), celebrates its tenth anniversary. Back in 2002, before MySpace, right after Napster went under, was when ModDB was created to help organize the modding community. For
We have pretty dang good graphics in our blockbuster games. But when are we going to get a game where we can have a natural conversation with a non-player character? Emily Short, who wrote the text-based dialogue game Galatea, is interested in exploring the problem of NPC dialogue. She’s helping dev
As we get older, it gets harder to make new friends. We hold our high school and college friends closer; making a new friend seems to take lot of time and effort. We’re less willing to befriend someone completely strange to us. The NY Times has some explanations in their article: As external conditi
There are plenty of ghosts, liches, and spectres in games set in Renaissance and Medieval times. But how did people at the time, in our world, explain things like static electricity and diabetes? Robert Burton (1577-1640), in investigating depression in his Anatomy of Melancholy, digressed into a st
Learning a foreign language often includes making a lot of flash cards and just brutally memorizing their meanings. Well, now you can brutally memorize language vocabulary in a virtual world, with visual aids! Rob Howland’s 3D Dictionary, or SanJiten, is a game where your mission is to study virtual
Whether you’re catching up on classics or re-living your childhood, this browser-based Game Boy Color emulator has all the most popular games available. The only downside is that you can’t save your progress or trade any pokemon.
Videogames in exotic locations like India, Japan, and Brazil have the thrill of tourism along with their other game portions. But how do locals feel? For one Brazilian, playing Max Payne felt like a way to get revenge on his muggers. Instead of feeling like a tourist, Nightmare Mode’s Fernando Corde
Playgrounds needn’t all look alike; they can be works of art. This isn’t a new idea either; Pierre Szekely made a few play sculptures in France in the 1950s and 60s that I wouldn’t mind having in my neighborhood. Paige Johnson at Playscapes has collected Szekely’s playground sculptures chronological
video The surrealists had a game called The Exquisite Corpse which had players create sentences together without looking at what had been written before. London’s Tate Modern takes the game to the internet, allowing anyone to build on to a short animation made by another. The result: brief, surreal,
There is just too much positive thinking on the Internet. Too many “likes” on Facebook and comment threads and not enough room to express disapproval. Not to worry; the upcoming hate app allows you to express your disapproval (assuming it’s not another Internet joke).
Astronomers all over are searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). While they’re primarily concerned with detecting a signal and not decoding it, the detecting devices are attached to computers, making a tiny bit of risk. Andrew Siemon of SETI-Berkeley explains the small but existent dange
An Australian videogame store includes staff-written reviews, adding personalized flavor and humor to the store. [via Shtuff Happens]
While playing cards sybolize games of chance, it turns out our preferences for said cards are anything but chance. New research shows we definitely have biases when it comes to remembering and choosing cards: Simply asked to name a card, there was a strong bias for choosing the Ace of Spades, follow
video Sometimes I wish we had more playgrounds for adults besides ski slopes and bike trails. In Minneapolis, Keetra Dean Dixon created a corridor of swings for their arts festival, usable by adults and big kids. Another big-person friendly play structure is a lighted seesaw with programmable resist
Video Google is doing so many projects that it’s hard to keep track of them all. One you might not have seen is called Build, a place to build with legos on plots of land that are correlated with Google Map plots. You can see your neighbors but unlike Farmville there’s no waiting to tear everything
Video There’s a proper way to pack to ensure that the weight of your shoes is distributed evenly and that fold creases don’t show up as huge wrinkles. Since few of us have a valet to pack for us anymore, Louis Vuitton has supplied an interactive site called The Art of Packing to teach us. It include
The Dead State Kickstarter has received its funding, and Doublebear founder Brian Mitsoda reflects on his inspiration in surviving a hurricane in Miami: In 1992, Miami was hit by a category 5 hurricane that leveled the entire city. It changed the landscape, such that you couldn’t really use landmark
