Many of us believe the rules of regular life apply to our online interactions; a good measure of whether or not a comment is appropriate is if you’d say it face-to-face. This standard does not hold across all cultures. David Herold in the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research uses Bakhtin’s carnival as
Children want to be the heroes of the stories they’re playing. But for a five-year-old girl, there aren’t that many female heroes to emulate. One father, Mike Hoye, got tired of switching genders while reading the game’s text out loud and made a mod to change all the pronouns in Windwaker from mascu
Games can put players through an emotional gauntlet. With The Walking Dead especially, players feel empathy for and anxiety about their characters. One aspect of the game that enhances its emotional power is the expressive, realistic character animations. We can recognize by their facial expressions
When I was in college, I was excessively concerned with using my time efficiently. If I took a break from studying to watch a movie or play a videogame, I considered it a waste of time. But as I matured, I learned the value of leisure time in keeping my sanity (and also having something interesting
Kids who play videogames can become overwhelmed with positive feedback loops and can’t stop playing. They’ll risk peeing their pants or making parents angry just for one more minute of game time. But all of the time spent playing games isn’t rotting their brains. For 12-year-olds, the amount of time
Watching a movie in 3D is different from watching it in 2D: it’s more likely to fool part of your brain into believe the situation is real. In a study by Brendan Rooney, 3D viewers had a higher heart rate compared to viewers of a 2D film. Christian Jarrett at BPS Research Digest explains that this m
All too often, videogames accentuate the difference between men and women; women characters wear pink and have long hair while the men have huge muscles and big guns. Real-life genre preferences are often accounted for by the difference between men and women’s spatial reasoning, or ability to visual
If you ever played The Longest Journey or its sequel, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, you’ll be happy to know that a third game in the series is in the works. It’s called Dreamfall Chapters, and if it’s anything like the older game, it will have wonderfully deep characterizations. Adam Smith at Rock
Usually when you play a game with a customizable character, your avatar ends up looking like an idealized version of yourself. But what about those of us who want a warts-and-all avatar? Joshua Dennison at Pixels or Death wanted an avatar with a pot belly, but found no games to fulfill this desire.
Looking at the Ouya controller and the Wii U Pro controller, it seems like videogame inputs are reaching convergence. But some games will still be defined by their unique interfaces. Punch the Custard takes usual videogame inputs and surrounds them in custard. Brandon Boyer at Venus Patrol explains:
Do you remember the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) educational initiative for countries without public school systems? OLPC got tired of trying to teach children things, and decided to help them help themselves. OLPC left a box in a remote village with enough solar-powered tablets for each child. OLPC
Pixel art has been having a renaissance for the past few years. Its less popular cousin, low-polygon art, is still finding a niche; these designs by Tim Reynolds have me convinced that it’s a form worth pursuing.
If a horror move gets too scary, you can always close your eyes. You can close your eyes during a videogame too, but it will probably end with your character dead. On his blog Ruminatron 5000, Peter Shafer describes how much he didn’t want to play Silent Hill. Games like Silent Hill create an intens
Borderlands 2 is a shooter where you can collect loot and level up. It’s similar to many RPGs in that you can decide to find every single chest/loot holder or bypass some. Ethan Gatch on Medium Difficulty found that he couldn’t ignore loot. I was a loot fiend in the worst kind of way: grabbing usele
Why does Mrs. Pac-Man need a bow, lipstick, and eye makeup to show that she’s a woman? Well, she’s the female version of a male character, so she has to be somehow different, right? And how else can we signify femininity, if not with lipstick and bows and breasts? Anjin Anhut at How Not to Suck at G
With electronics getting cheaper and more mod-able, (like when Entertainment Weekly embedded a phone in an advertisement), there’s more of an opportunity for books and screens to collide. While this Myst book is basically a fancy skin for a single-purpose electronic device, it speaks of media to com
Tetris has affects the human brain strangely, whether it’s with afterimages or blocking traumatic experiences. Tom Stafford at Mind Hacks theorizes that the appeal of Tetris lies in its continual presentation of unfinished tasks… much like popular RPGs, only without any pretenses. Tetris holds our a
Educational games are getting better. Instead of being interactive flash cards, they’ve become worlds where players can come to an understanding of real-life concepts. A Slower Speed of Light from the MIT Game Lab looks at what it would be like if you could walk at the speed of light. From their sit
The postmodern mass-murder lark Hotline Miami is being pirated. Normally this wouldn’t be news, but it turns out the game’s developer provided the pirates with tech support. T.J. Hafter at PC Gamer found Jonatan Söderström leaving helpful comments on torrenting sites. Not only does Söderström (posti
With the election coming up, military drone strikes are getting more attention. President Obama has increased the role of drones in the military and Mitt Romney has given every indication he would continue the trend if he wins the election. Unmanned, the grand jury prize winner at Indiecade, deals w
When I can’t bring myself to finish a game, sometimes I watch the ending in a user-made play video. You know the ones… they usually have play commentary that no one wants to hear. But there is an art to realtime videogame commentary. This smooth jazz of Let’s Play of Sonic originally appeared on the
In the last few years, games with a “retro” or “nostalgic” style have become popular. Some of the games riding the childhood wave are excellent. Brendan Keogh found that Retro City Rampage‘s CRT overlay brought to mind fond memories: I could remember what the lounge room of my family’s house was lik
Tevis Thompson, who wrote about his disillusionment with Zelda, and David Hellman, the artist of Braid, have teamed up to make a graphic novel about a young woman discovering the truth about her civilization, with an emphasis on suggestion rather than telling you exactly what’s happening. A universe
While we were thinking about how post-release developer layoffs may do more harm than good, Zynga was busy laying off most of their Austin-based studio. Ian Miles Cheong at Gameranx has the gorey details: We are told that the employees were given less than two hours to clear out their desks followin
The Internet contains too much information for any individual to read it all. One approach to this problem is to go on a “raw” information diet of reading actual bills in Congress and original scientific papers. It’s… an interesting idea rooted in the local slow food movement, and strikes me as kind
