Making controllers accessible to people with arthritis or only one hand is… doable, but kind of hard. Researchers at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, decided to forget physical controllers. They found a way for humans to control a flying robot with their minds. New Scientist reports: The quad
Programmers everywhere are excited about the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift. Valve’s Michael Abrash talked about the future of virtual reality gaming and the Oculus over at RockPaperShotgun. In the long run, it seems unlikely [that controllers will be] the interface you’ll want [with VR]. Mayb
One of the advantages independent videogame projects have over professional ones is that, with a smaller team, it’s easier for the designer’s personality to permeate various aspects of the game. Deirdra Kiai has begun creating a stop-motion musical adventure she’s crowdfunding on Indiegogo called Do
A team of European researchers decided to try their hand at designing a videogame to help players learn stress management, planning, and relaxation techniques. The game, PlayMancer, takes place on an island where stressful activities like diving are contrasted with relaxing ones like star-gazing. Th
Attention, Nerf and paintball enthusiasts: you can now print your very own gun parts! The amateur gunsmith Michael Guslick downloaded the blueprints for the frame of an AR-15, a close cousin to the M-16. In this case, Gunslick used commercial off-the-shelf parts to manufacture his gun and used the
Ever wonder what the insides of your enemies look like? Not just the blood or wires, but their innermost core? For Portal 2 turrets, this would be the personality core. Artist Alex Gabbott reveals the inner workings of the turrets in this cross-section. The turrets are too small for the batteries th
Augmenting reality, whether it’s through portals, free running, or controlling gravity, is a videogame specialty. A group of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students take advantage of the thrill of speed in their skating game, Zineth. Their trailer makes all the skating look easy, but there is a te
There’s some new screenshots out for the upcoming 3DS/DS game Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?, a game based on Pendleton Ward‘s TV series, which shows how BMO interfaces with the player. BMO also carries around loot like salt and ketchup, which are no doubt necessary for s
How do you show someone what it means to be you? You could tell them, or write about your experiences alongside photos. Or if you’re Alan Kwan, you attach cameras to your glasses every day and turn the footage into houses in the virtual landscape of your mind. A recent graduate of the City Universit
Videogame journalism is tough to break into. Often other writers don’t want you to know about their favorite places to get published, or they simply assume you already know about them. There’s no point where your future income is set, and there are all kinds of weird tax laws when it comes to contra
Tired of boring website layouts? This website for the East India techno-fest, Concetto, lets you play Mario to navigate between pages. Jumping to hit a block scrolls through photos of past events, and caves of pipes take you to various sub-pages. Fun for a first-time visit, but probably kind of a pa
Videogame fans are growing up, and we aren’t always satisfied with a five-dollar poster anymore. While there are plenty of prints and figures for the fan with a little more money, some prove their love of videogames with long hours of labor. Eponases made this cross stitch of all original 151 Pokémo
The new art style for the still-in-beta game SpyParty is a paragon of taste. SpyParty is a game where you must hide in plain sight and engage in psychological sleuthing to figure out who the other spies are. It also involves massive amounts of meta-gaming and high-level brain manipulation on the le
Google has been making its own trendy, well-designed publication with Think Quarterly. Designed by the Church of London, the current issue, The Play Issue, recalls another, similarly-named issue of a quarterly publication. Their article on Disney’s “Imagineering” shows former LucasArts designer Jona
This bipedal robot, called PETMAN, was developed by Boston Dynamics for the US Army to test chemical protection clothing (which is often very thick, so being able to move in it is a problem). Boston Dynamics put a demonstration video on YouTube, and then Tim Trusler put it to music. It’s kind of cut
Dwarf Fortress is notoriously difficult to learn how to play, and also incredibly detailed. The dwarves you order around can go insane or lose limbs. Individual trees have unique names, though the ASCII-like art makes it hard to tell what’s going on for the uninitiated. One game with a similar feel
The Scrabble dictionary is full of odd words that seem poised to give players excellent triple word scores. Often, these words are archaic forms or thrown in to make two-letter combos more exciting. Part of the game of Scrabble, in competitive play, is memorizing which words are allowed in tournamen
Quora, the question and answer site that encourages users to take pride in their real names and coherent answers, occasionally features answers from videogame professionals. John Romero recently reflected on the difficulties in developing Doom: – – – Each person on the team had a hard time with whic
What happens to those games on Newgrounds that no one ever plays? After they shrivel up like a raisin in the sun, Zero Feedback spotlights them. The Tumblr is dedicated to finding videogames on game forums that have received no feedback. The quotes that accompany the games asking for feedback are a
Videogame fans are growing up, and so is the paraphernalia associated with games. Instead of taping posters to the wall, fans can have chic furniture in their living rooms. This arcade-inspired couch and shelving come from Igor Chak out of LA. Chak describes the sofa as “an old friend that kept tryi
Hackers may be able to use your brain against you, if you’re using an EEG-measuring device like NeuroSky. One brain wave that an EEG can sense, called the P300, signals that an object is important or recognized. Mind Hacks summarizes the study on P300 signals called “On the Feasibility of Side-Chann
If you have a Minecraft world that’s somehow limited to a small space, it is possible to create a sustainable economy. The ever-essential wood can grow back and animals can reproduce. However, if players have goals other than survival in mind, they can get depressingly destructive. One Minecraft exp
Pinball is a strange arcade game. It’s played with physical objects, yet scores everything digitally. And it’s really hard to get good at. The new games criticism site, Bit Creature, published Ryan Winslett’s experience of playing pinball at a tournment. I stepped up to The Twilight Zone table and f
The cutscenes between levels in Touch My Katamari show an otaku of the worst kind. As he shuns his geeky self, he becomes more successful and happier in life. But what message is that sending to us geeks playing the game? CJ Melendez at the site Rely on Horror sees Katamari as a game specializing in
Most of the games that have been coming out lately seem to focus an awful lot on humans or humanoids. Animals are a completely neglected part of wilderness survival, except occasionally when they can provide transport or meat. Tokyo Jungle might be the antidote to all our human-centric game-playing.
