YouTube modder Taltigolt has done the world a service by unleashing the comic stylings of P-body and Atlas on the world of Liberty City. This is the Grey Album of GTA mods.
Matt Parker, former Eyebeam fellow and NYC game designer extraordinaire, has just released Recurse, one of the first game’s I’ve ever seen to use the front camera on the iPad. The object is simple — keep your body with the green blocks and avoid the red ones. Simple to play and lightly calesthenic,
KS fave Diego Bergia has a new project called The Primary Invasion and took a run at recreating the Street Fighter 2 car destruction bonus level. Bergia’s a big fan of games and put together an amazing LEPOS exhibition with a fake Neo Geo arcade cabinet.
For the past two years, Ryan Kuo has been our wonderful managing editor. Before that, he helped us put issue 1 to bed way back when. Now, he’s headed to MIT to pursue a Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology. We wish him well and he’ll be posting a farewell note later. But in the interim,
Amherst professor Ilan Stavans laments the state of modern tourism, fearing that we’re missing the point. Modern tourism does not promise transformation but rather the possibility of leaving home and coming back without any significant change or challenge. Tourists may enjoy the visit only because i
Josh Hutchinson’s wonderful piece at the Walrus outlines the limits of brain science and how tweaking our internal motivation systems can push our bodies to amazing things. It also featured this little nugget on how racing an avatar of a past successful performance can spur an even more successful n
I loved The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao from Pulitzer-winning novelist Junot Díaz and his review of Grand Theft Auto IV a couple years back is equally magical. Good to know his new short story collection (below) wears its loyalties on the cover.
Close enough. “A” for unintentional effort. Spotted on Houston and Essex.
I don’t really wear hats. Nor do I like “gamer gear.” But this Zelda-themed cap will be my exception for today.
Ryan Tate at Wired dives into the seedy world of, um, apps. Getting to the top requires a bit of moral ambiguity and he outlines the many ways that app creators are artificially manufacturing buzz. Games, of course, are front and center. Buying users. Let’s say you’re playing a game on your Android
Anonymous artists by the name of “Bored” are taking the streets of Chicago one dice roll at a time. They’ve painted various sidewalk blocks that lovely hue known as Monopoly and even created houses and hotels in the process. Perhaps its tribute to the game’s inventor, Elizabeth Magie, who created Th
Video Google Australia teamed up with LEGO to build a giant board for you to populate with whales, houses, and, undoubtably, inappropriate body parts. (Thankfully, there’s an approvals process, you griefers you.) Check you the site here.
VIdeo French animator and artist Karim Rejeb is all about going to the beach and surfing. The short is a follow-up to Rejeb’s first film LINO and is all set to music by SMILE. [via Laughing Squid]
Too much Freaks and Geeks on the mind this AM. A new program helps kids interact via avatars: The simulation, designed for children ages 8 to 12, allows clinicians to play the roles of the avatars while the children sit at a computer in a different room and respond to situations they encounter routi
This is madness. A Reddit user has been playing Civilization II for more than a decade and the results are awe-inspiring/depressing: A couple of in-game millenia later, the landscape is mostly “inundated swamp land,” as the polar ice caps have managed to melt 20 times. Engineers are constantly buil
It’s in the programming section. Ha.
I connected with A MAZE festival organizer Thorsten S. Wiedemann about a year ago in Berlin when he told me about his forthcoming plans to bring an indie game festival to South Africa’s largest city. It’s finally happening.: From August 28th to September 2nd 2012 the A MAZE. Interact Festival will b
Chelsea’s Eyebeam gallery has been home to some of our favorite digital projects and some of our favorite game designers. Matt Parker, who organized our SF party earlier this year was a fellow as was Kaho Abe, who we featured in Issue 2. Now they’re looking for help to build out their space: The rec
The fifth iteration of the Humble Indie Bundle has added Super Meat Boy and Braid to its already stacked roster of Limbo, Psychonauts, and Bastion. Got a friend who needs an intro to games? Now’s a good time to be a pal.
That’s Gateway computer founder Ted Waitt who recently launched a centrist Super-PAC. [via Mother Jones]
Dan Wilkerson may not consider himself a performance artist, but his role-playing on StarCraft II has a distinctly disruptive feel. Rather than engage in martial combat, Wilkerson adopts a role, ad libs the dialogue, and screen caps the result. This is basically Improv Everywhere for Terrans. Below
Malcolm Gladwell called it. Kids might play Madden someday with the same incredulity as Pitfighter and ask “Did we really used to do that?” HuffPo reports on the lawsuit’s accusation that the NFL knew the risks, but did nothing: The NFL, like the sport of boxing, was aware of the health risks associ
Dana Goldstein ties high-paying jobs in tech to young girls playing more games. The effects of this gender gap reach far beyond whether women are building video games or coding Web apps alongside men (and making technology female-friendly—remember the Siri/abortion flap? Or the more recent dust-up o
At Brainy Gamer, Michael Abbott turns to film to predict what the spate of samey shooters means for modern games. He looks to the demise of Westerns despite their widespread popularity in the 50s: Westerns began to disappear in the late 1960s for reasons relevant to modern game developers: 1) Genre
Art student Drew Linne made a mock Guess Who? board with Nintendo characters. Too tough or too easy?
