15 years of the best of game-based arts and culture

Rollercoaster Tycoon creator takes a stab at a $25 computer for developing world

David Braben, best known for the Rollercoaster Tycoon, has created a pint-sized wrist computer for the developing world.  To work the system, all one needs to do it plug a USB-based keyboard and mouse setup into the USB 2.0 port on the opposite end of the Pocket PC’s HDMI port. Additional storage co

Flashback: 1969 clip of Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison with a ping-pong videogame

Chimps can play videogames, demonstrate self-awareness

Researchers at the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto have been testing the limits of chimp’s self-awareness by seeing if they can play games.  One aspect of the self is known as self-agency – the feeling that we each control our own actions. To see if the ability existed in chimpanzees, humanity’s

Today on KS: We take iOS game One Single Life at face value

The title is emblematic of the lack of thought put into One Single Life. It’s redundant, for one. Was “Last Final Life” taken? Its two central ideas are borrowed from better sources. One Single Life is about jumping from one roof to another. While it emphasizes singular bounds over fast-paced parkou

PAUSE: Gary Zhexi Zhang’s "Grids"

More of Zhang’s work here. [via]

How has LEGO bested other toymakers? Games, of course.

The Economist dives into what’s made LEGO so successful as of late.  No surprise that it’s games that are making a different for the Danish company: Small wonder Lego’s profits are “extremely satisfactory”, as Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, the chief executive, put it last month. After nearly going under eig

Listen Up: Kill Screen’s Jason Johnson on videogames and the Japanese suicide problem

For our Intimacy issue, writer Jason Johnson explored the world of Love Plus+ and Japanese suicide. New Hampshire Public Radio brought Jason on to talk about the issue. In 2009, the Japanese government reported more than thirty thousand suicides, though the World Health Organization puts the number