Keiken's Morphogenic Angels Imagines Post-Human Bodies 1,000 Years From Now
Keiken—Isabel Ramos, Hana Omori, and Tanya Cruz—merge performance, film, and game design to build optimistic post-human worlds 1,000 years in the future.
game design
Long games and the pursuit of lost time
Games demand too much time, creating cultural moats that prevent shared experience and meaningful discourse. What if brevity could unlock their potential?
Why Risa Puno's Games Ask You to Be Vulnerable in Public
Artist Risa Puno transforms familiar games into intimate spaces for emotional processing, stripping away fantasy to confront feelings directly.
A.M. Darke: Games interrogate and explore power dynamics
Critical game-maker A.M. Darke examines the intersection of power, race, and interactive media through projects like 'Ye or Nay?' and the Open Source Afro Hair Library, challenging conventional gaming narratives while fostering meaningful dialogue about representation.
Jose Sanchez: Game as a dialogue
Chilean architect Jose Sanchez blends the worlds of architecture and gaming through his studio Plethora Project, creating innovative city simulators that emphasize sustainability, community care, and participatory design.
Prashast Thapan: To live and die
Through his upcoming game "1000 Deaths," designer Prashast Thapan examines mortality and perspective by having players cycle through multiple lives in condensed 15-minute experiences.
Nick Murray: The intimacy and expanse of interactive narrative
Game designer Nick Murray crafts intimate interactive experiences that bridge poetry, music, and digital art to examine the complex emotions of life mediated by technology.
Rui Hu: The infinite futures of games
Artist Rui Hu blends game engines, installation art, and memory to examine how virtual spaces infiltrate our physical world.
Mario Mu: Transforming Political Reality into Playable Space
Croatian artist Mario Mu investigates the intersection of gaming, politics, and social dynamics through experimental projects spanning LARP, game development, and participatory art, examining how game mechanics shape contemporary culture.
Gareth Wrighton: Breaking Fashion's Virtual Reality
Fashion designer Gareth Wrighton bridges digital and physical realms through projects like The Maul - a post-apocalyptic virtual shopping center that challenges traditional retail while exploring the inherent virtuality of fashion itself.
Colombian heritage shapes Leo Castañeda's gaming universes
Artist Leo Castañeda bridges painting and game design in his project "Levels and Bosses," creating innovative gameplay mechanics that challenge colonial structures while drawing from his South American artistic heritage.
Gayatri Kodikal: Excavating the ruins of history, time, and play
Artist Gayatri Kodikal transforms an archaeological mystery of a severed hand into an immersive game installation that challenges Western notions of time and history while weaving together colonial narratives, resistance stories, and South Asian perspectives.
Constraints Kickstart Creation
"Everything that's interesting has a strong emotional core," says game designer Davey Wreden, creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide.
Girl Scouts can earn videogame design patches now
It’s hard to turn down a Girl Scout, and that’s no accident—I should know, I am one. From the start, we learn valuable business and communication skills through selling cookies (that are, objectively, pretty damn good). Community service often has an emphasis on sustainability and environmental just
Prepare for the Clinton-Trump debate with a political drinking game
If the current presidential election has not yet driven you to drink, the first of three debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump scheduled for Monday (yes, today) may well prove to be the tipping point. Before it has even begun, it is already infuriating: one candidate is likely to be decla
Isaac Vega wants to make board games for everyone
An hour into our interview, Isaac Vega is still brimming with energy, gesturing and talking about his next project with all the verve of a life coach or an eager teenager. Vega’s a lead designer for Plaid Hat Games, who have published the board games Dead of Winter (2014) and Summoner Wars (2009). I
The problem with videogames that don’t trust their players
Imagine that you’ve started a new level in a game that sets the scene for endless opportunities. A new environment riddled with context clues that allow the player to consider their options on how to proceed—until an uninvited UI prompt coddles their decision-making and shatters the illusion of choi
How babies can help teach game design
There are many different types of people to consider when making a videogame and a lot can be learned by discovering their needs. There are those that don’t normally play games, children, as well as the elderly, but there’s one group that’s easy to dismiss, if only because they seem too young: babie
Ancient India: The Birthplace of Modern Game Design
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel Ancient India produced some of the oldest and longest surviving games in history, and though the country’s videogame creators face modern day challenges, its contributions to game design are undeniable. They’ve gone by many different names and
Finals Fantasy creates game design lesson plans anyone can use
As tablets continue to move into schools and games like Minecraft (2011) are repurposed to educate, the idea of gamification, or using games to teach students about the world, has been gaining popularity as of late. However, as an increasingly diverse artistic medium of its own, others are developin
What effect do different drugs have on the Mario Maker levels you create?
Let’s face it, Mario doesn’t make much sense. He’s an Italian plumber living in a fantasy mushroom world which is populated by living toadstools and constantly under attack from a turtle dragon. Fans usually excuse this psychedelic setting out of an appreciation for the series’ gameplay and an exhau
A Two5six conversation about surveillance, in games and out of it
The game designer as hacker
The NFL is awful. Here’s how Madden could help
The conflict of playing an NFL promotional tool.
Scale is exposing the challenges of scaling videogames
Scale is a puzzle game with a straightforward elevator pitch: “You wield a device that can make any item any size.” This is a popular pitch. It earned the game $108,020 in funding from over 5,000 backers during its Kickstarter campaign. Steve Swink, Scale’s creator, subsequently created an alpha ver
Why is Rocket League’s jumping so much fun?
Rocket League is a game that is concerned with a great many things, but verisimilitude is most definitely not one of them. To wit, here’s an excerpt from Psyonix president Dave Hagewood’s excellent interview with Gamasutra about the game’s jumping mechanics: Designing Rocket League‘s rocket-boosting