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Games, play, and culture with Jamin Warren
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The game about shoving people gets even funnier
Yesterday, Unfinished Swan mastermind Ian Dallas told our Yannick LeJacq that deliberate humor in games is hard. He didn’t say anything, however, about pre-release mockumentary trailers. Rad Dragon, the indie behind Shove Pro, a new chase-scene and shove game, released this week a short about their
ESRB announces new self-report digital ratings, trolls cackle with delight
The Electronic Software Ratings Board announced a new, streamlined way to rate the flood of digital-download games washing into the market: The ESRB’s new “Digital Rating Service” gives developers and publishers access to a “brief but detailed online questionnaire” to define a product’s content, age
Adorable Kickstarter project teaches kids how to live-action role play.
Burlington, Mass youth program Guard Up, Inc. is teaching kids how to live-action role play. Meghan Gardner told Wired: “This program is designed to engage kids and teens in live, story-based adventures where they play a character in an ongoing storyline.” Sounds like fun to me. As that saying goes,
See, we aren’t the only people who didn’t like Dishonored
The INTERNET reacted with great anger and furious vengeance when we published Ben Richardson’s mixed-to-negative review of Dishonored. You know what? We felt a little bullied. But then! Penny Arcade said the exact same thing, in succinct, comic form. And then! Internet treasure Yahtzee agreed. So
Do game writers have the right vocabulary to do their job?
Michael Abbott has an essential post at Brainy Gamer today about the state of game writing as it relates to the experience of playing indie games. Game writing, he argues, has ossified into shorthand that does not capture what it is to play truly new-feeling games: What emerges is a stark and narrow
Are board games primed for a renaissance?
Edge reports that digital versions of popular board games, created to serve the booming tablet audience, have greatly boosted sales: While the popularity of the boardgame has never been in question, the growing number of touchscreen enabled devices – and the broad market reach of those products – ha
Ernest Hemingway offers advice for the fledgeling game designer
Sometimes it’s nice to imagine games as occupying the same space as literature. We’re not there yet, but we can do the next best thing with the red pen of revisionism. Author Ernest Hemingway had this to say about the nature of his craft in a 1934 issue of Esquire. I’ve “amended” Hemingway’s words o
Why virtual dogs make better friends than virtual cats
How do virtual dogs fit into the larger world of computer-canine interaction? Matt Novak over at Smithsonian has been doing a deep exegesis of The Jetsons because why not. On the introduction of Astro, the robot dog, Novak makes a salient point on why we need robotic pets in the future: In an effort
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