15 years of the best of game-based arts and culture
Games, play, and culture with Jamin Warren
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Will there be a new golden age of local multiplayer?
The age of the great local multiplayer game is long past. The NBA Jams, the Goldeneyes, the Mario Karts; pushed aside by faster internet connections and faster machines. Counterstrike and Team Fortress and World of Warcraft have immeasurably enriched our gaming lives, but something has been lost, to
This mod switches Wind Waker’s Link into a girl
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
Making FAQs less neccessary
I’ve been to game FAQs much more than I’d like to admit. The times I find myself there are usually not to solve a puzzle or to get through an action sequence, but to find out the potential outcomes of an in-game choice. Nonlinear narrative requires decisions that do not always have the clearest outc
A week after Sandy, the game that lets you keep your house from flooding in a storm
Drip Drip, the new time management game from Imminent Games, puts you in the role of an elite drip collector [who] manages the Disaster Response Team. With a team of tools and water collecting and building fixing skills, travel across the USA and visit 24 exciting cities on your mission to ensure th
Expressive faces in games access our emotions
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
An audio game that teaches blind people to navigate
Very cool news: The system, developed by a team led by Lotfi Merabet of Harvard Medical School and Jaime Sánchez of the University of Chile, is called the Audiobased Environment Simulator and uses only audio-based cues to allow blind users to learn about the layout of a previously unfamiliar buildin
Why is game music so unsophisticated?
Why has game music lagged behind other aspects of presentation so much? This the central question of a wonderful deep dive on Gamasutra about the state of cinematic scoring in games. The money graf: As we dip into the uncanny valley and emerge on the other side at nearly photo-realistic visuals, it’
2012 election shows signs of American progress
A nationwide (even global) magnifying glass was placed on the 2012 election and campaign trail. Most of the attention was put on the presidential race, but Nov. 6 was a day of progress in many states for reasons that had nothing to do with the presidential ballot. Washington and Colorado legalized r
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