Video Steve Jobs hated buttons. I happen to like feedback on my devices. Tactus Technology may have a middle ground. I’m skeptical but a fascinating thought experiment regardless. While touchscreens provide a versatile user experience, they provide no tactile experience for consumers. Vibration hapt
Benjamin Jackson earlier this year explored the roots of social games like FarmVille in the behaviorialism of B.F. Skinner, questioning their core ethical principles: Many people defend FarmVille as a harmless distraction, arguing that the thousands of hours spent playing the game would still have b
The Week reports on the future of running. All I could think of is the drones from BioShock 2. For those who lack a human partner, researchers Floyd Mueller and Eberhard Grather, of the Exertion Games Lab at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, have developed “Joggobot,” a quad-
Free-to-play games are all the rage. Dmitri Leonov offers a tri-fold theory on what actually makes sense in the freemium model: The Evernote-like Paywall: The way the product is designed, a significant portion of the users will inevitably cross the paywall. The longer you use the product, the more v
Slate advises on the right and wrong ways to name your galactic vessel. (Icarus is a terrible one): Otherwise, if you’re taking on a mission of vital or, let’s say, hubristic scale, the names of Greek tragic figures should generally be avoided. Bellerophon, for example. Sure, he was pretty mighty, a
Wow. Remember that 16-bit episode of Community. An industrious Reddit user has turned it into an actual game. Enjoy it now before some funsucker at NBC takes it down. [via AV Club]
Nick Berry spent ten years at Microsoft’s Casual Games division, and now is the president of DataGenetics, a data mining company based in Seattle. But in his spare time, he decodes the mysteries of board games like Battleship. Although the film adaptation had a lackluster opening this weekend, that
A sad loss and a man who certainly inspired a generation of game designers. NYT describes Bradbury as a shrewd popularizer of science-fiction: Mr. Bradbury was hardly the first writer to represent science and technology as a mixed bag of blessings and abominations. The advent of the atomic bomb in
Brian Lam explores the proper manners around a wide variety of digital activities including using your phone on first dates, running with your phone, and, of course, our favorite, using your tablet public transportation: This isn’t etiquette so much as fear mongering: Grip your tablet tight and be a
The Economist praises misfits for their eccentricities. From quants to hackers to Jobsian acolytes, all hail the Disorganization Man: Wired magazine once called it “the Geek Syndrome”. Speaking of internet firms founded in the past decade, Peter Thiel, an early Facebook investor, told the New Yorker
E3 is this week. You probably noticed. Videogame makers are rushing to capture more and more of your attention. But maybe that’s not such a good thing. One of my fave science writers Jonah Lehrer has a defense of day-dreaming in the New Yorker, looking at several studies that about the benefits of l
Thanks to All Things Considered and NPR producer Justine Kenin for making this happen. Listen!
Screw the Kinect voice commands. Screaming is all the rage. Chris O’Reilly at UCLA’s Talk Therapy is absurd: In Talk Therapy, two players compete by screaming at each other. Speed up or slow down your piece, and yell at the exact moment it lines up with your competitor’s. Ok. Sure. Video
Kill Screen, in conjunction with Pitchfork, is proud to announce the launch of Soundplay, an interactive program focused on the intersections of music, gaming, and technology. Kill Screen has commissioned some of our favorite independent game developers to create new, original games inspired by Pitc
A couple years ago, I was on a panel for the MacArthur Foundation on the future of games and schools. One of the big questions was how games would be integrating and I found the answer of “systems-based thinking” to be convincing. In large part, this philosophy teaches that creation and collaboratio
Haniya Rae at Guernica looks at the brushwork of an open-source artist named Kynd.Info. I couldn’t help but see Draw Something: Originally, Kynd wanted to mimic Adobe Photoshop brushes so that texture and shading could be emulated. Eventually, he wanted to make “good paintings” with these tools. He
On Friday, one of our writers, Michael Thomsen, posted a defense of the new trailer for Hitman: Absolution and a riposte to some of the ensuing dialogue around it. As a community, you responded with disappointment and disgust. While I want Kill Screen to be a place of provocation and debate, this wa
VIdeo Bennett Foddy, the creator of hyper-difficult “sports” games QWOP and GIRP, also has a second life. He’s a philosopher at Oxford. (Perhaps it’s the other way around and philosophy is hobby?). Anyway, the Atlantic has a lengthy interview with Foddy about the ethics of radical aging treatments t
A Tumblr user named Bora has started the Herculean task of drawing nearly everything in the iOS hit Draw Something. He’s basically the mobile phone version of Jason Polan, the guy trying to draw every single person in NYC. Bora’s portfolio is quite impressive as well and boasts quite the wit: “When
As E3 approaches next month, we prepare for the slew of sequels sure to be making waves. BioShock Infinite. Borderlands 2. Halo 4. The list goes on. Games have often been critiqued for essentially creating the same material over and over again. Arguably, there’s something slightly different between
In the early 80s, Parker Brothers published a series of books on their arcade properties including our favorite foul-mouthed androgyne Q*Bert. It was one of many spin-offs from that time period that included frisbees, sleeping bags, and so on. [via OTL Gaming]
Our friends over at Pitchfork have directed us to handiework of YouTube user QuintonSung who has lovingly interpreted Kid A and OK Computer into the closing credits for an NES Final Fantasy title. Video Track listing: 0:00 – Airbag 4:36 – Paranoid Android 10:49 – Subterranean Homesick Alien 15:10 –
How much would you spend to save the thing you love? For one SNES fan, that would be almost a decade and more than $10,000. A programmer by the name of byuu has dedicated his/her life to recreating the Super Nintendo, but unlike other emulation projects that allow you to play games of old, Byuu a te
Video Last week, I attended a early screening of Indie Game: The Movie (which I have the privilege to be in!). The film is playing all week at the IFC Center and around the country and is a testament to the awakening of independent game development. HBO picked up the film to convert into a dramatic
