15 years of the best of game-based arts and culture
Games, play, and culture with Jamin Warren
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Whales, the lifeblood of free-to-play
A portrait of a free-to-play cash cow: It was a typical weekday night after work: Lee slipped off his shoes, climbed into bed with his iPad, and booted up Clash of Clans. The free-to-play strategy game, in which he went by the name “Metamorphaz,” had quickly become a favorite stress-reliever for him
Why can’t we create obese avatars?
Usually when you play a game with a customizable character, your avatar ends up looking like an idealized version of yourself. But what about those of us who want a warts-and-all avatar? Joshua Dennison at Pixels or Death wanted an avatar with a pot belly, but found no games to fulfill this desire.
Punch the Custard is the game in which you, uh, punch real custard
Looking at the Ouya controller and the Wii U Pro controller, it seems like videogame inputs are reaching convergence. But some games will still be defined by their unique interfaces. Punch the Custard takes usual videogame inputs and surrounds them in custard. Brandon Boyer at Venus Patrol explains:
Adorable real life lumberjacks played the game about lumberjacking
We told you about Jack Lumberjack last April, then we recommended it to you in our Playlist. It’s just as fun as a game about a grief-mad lumberjack taking his revenge on trees sounds like it would be. It turns out Owlchemy Labs had bigger plans that we thought. They took a copy of the game to the 2
Ethiopian children teach themselves to hack
Do you remember the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) educational initiative for countries without public school systems? OLPC got tired of trying to teach children things, and decided to help them help themselves. OLPC left a box in a remote village with enough solar-powered tablets for each child. OLPC
Is low-polygon art the next pixel art?
Pixel art has been having a renaissance for the past few years. Its less popular cousin, low-polygon art, is still finding a niche; these designs by Tim Reynolds have me convinced that it’s a form worth pursuing.
How does World of Warcraft grieve for its players?
If you think about human death vis-à-vis World of Warcraft, you probably think of the unfortunate 2006 incident in which a guild raided the digital funeral of a player from a rival guild who had died of a stroke. That story was one of those things that you tried not to think too hard about, so poten
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