![[Talk 4/17] Building Worlds While the Actual World Burns](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/size/w800/format/webp/2026/04/Kara-Stone-Joshua-Dawson-Header.png)
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Games, play, and culture with Jamin Warren
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Do women action heroes always have to be role models?
Must women protagonists be role models before they’re seen as individual human characters? Writing for Think Progress, Alyssa Rosenberg considers the challenges of portraying women heroes in pop culture. “First, members of a minority group, or of a group like women that are a majority but are poorly
Slavoj iek actually has a Call of Duty poster in his living room.
Who knows why the endearingly blustery 21st-century philosopher from Slovenia hung a poster of Call of Duty: Black Ops in his living room? Either way, according to this recent Guardian profile, the celebrated/ridiculed genius/”Borat of philosophy” does indeed have the poster. We can only hope that h
Encrypted mobile communications are here, but will gamers ever get privacy?
If you’re willing to shell out $20 a month, you can encrypt your phone calls and instant messages with a new app called Silent Circle. The app’s creator, Phil Zimmermann, thinks it’s a service worth paying for. “I’m not going to apologize for the cost,” Zimmermann told CNET, adding that the final p
The most dangerous (video) game on the generative English countryside.
Drifting toward a more Deist approach to the in-game world, Big Robot’s in-development Sir, You Are Being Hunted generates its own environment. Ostensibly, Hunted is a game of surviving on moors patroled by rabid, robotic, tea-drunk gentelmen poachers, who presumably shoot on sight. But these spooky
New game teaches scientific reasoning.
You’ve probably heard of the videogame that treats depression; now there’s a videogame that teaches scientific reasoning. It’s called Operation ARA and the initial research looks promising. Students learn the skills of scientific reasoning by engaging in interactive dialogs with avatars. They are tu
Hold your horses, Star Fox. Interstellar space travel may be at least 200 years away.
Travel to other distant planets is a central conceit for many videogames, from Star Fox to Halo to EVE Online. Being in an alien world gives developers an easy excuse for tweaking the laws of physics for the sake of fun and drama. But just how plausible is the idea of reaching another solar system?
9 director Shane Acker to use Source engine to make his next animated film.
For years players have created a roughshod kind of cinema using the games Halo and Splinter Cell, but rarely have professional filmmakers thought to use game design tools for their films. Shane Acker, who directed the Tim Burton-produced 9, aims to change that. He’ll partner with partner with Valve
Neuroscientist explains how survival horror games depend on spatial awareness.
The creation of fear in a videogame is an inexact science but there’s evidence to suggest a neurological mechanism can influence it in some important ways. Writing for Gamasutra, Maral Tajerian, a neuroscientist at Thwackel Consulting, explains the role mirror neurons play in connecting players to t
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