Essay
My Purple-Haired Made-Up Best Friend, and Why She Had to Die
With the Transmedia fad at large, questions of authorship threaten to detract from the point. Chris Dahlan recounts a literary heroine’s stint in the blogosphere.
Essay
Essay
Difficulty and the Neoclassical Era
What sense can be made of the influx of game mechanics and forms? Michael Thomsen argues that recent videogames have pruned their rules with purpose, bringing us into the beginning of a neoclassical era of game design.
Essay
Things I Ate in Skyrim
Gus Mastrapa tells the consumer’s side of the story in Bethesda’s upcoming role-playing sprawl, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
Essay
For Us, By Us
Adrian Sanders attends the first Practice conference at New York University, uncovering the common bonds between Monopoly, BioShock, and football—as well as between game designers that steal and those that do math.
Essay
Safe Shapes
In our latest playground column, we talk to landscape architect David Rockwell about his Imagination Playground in southern Manhattan, “loose parts” for children, and the importance of a park bench.
Essay
Collecting Lives
Emily Flynn-Jones on the death and rebirth of games in museums. All museums preserve artifacts that have passed their cultural lives—how can they address the interactive nature of games?
Essay
Back to Blocks
Scott Wayne Indiana talks to Sifteo’s president and cofounder about the company’s hypermodern take on building blocks, the legacy of videogames, and the digitalization of toys.