In an effort to attract more customers, Star Wars: The Old Republic went free-to-play last week. Wired’s Andrew Groen argues that the MMORPG’s game’s design is obsolete; constantly making new content for an MMO is too expensive. In my opinion, it’s not just too expensive, but relies too much on what
If you’ve used an instant messaging client, you’ve probably run across chatbots who can talk about almost anything with a weird combination of factoids and social failure. One app for iOS presents a twitter-searching chatbot as your boyfriend, resulting in weird and hilarious conversations. Mattie B
As part of his graduation project for design school, Massoud Hassani created a low-cost tool to help locals in places like his hometown of Kabul survey the area for landmines. The cost for finding landmines can be prohibitive, but Hassani’s giant Katamari-style roller is about 40 euros. The crazies
British author Simon Reynolds recently decried the obsession in music for all things old made “new” again. I wonder why we’re so obsessed with the past, particularly in music, because that’s my thing. A lot of the other retro phenomena I find vaguely amusing, but the music is a genuine worry because
While listening to an NPR segment about a young girl who had outfitted her fish tank with MIDI sensors, Michael Rosenblatt realized that more kids should be creating machines. Rosenblatt was part of the first generation of the iPod team and his new project ATOMS Express wants to put machinery in the
Last year, the Game Creation Society at Carnegie Mellon University played an icebreaker to welcome new members. Officers in the club, including then-senior Duncan Boehle, had come up with seed guidelines for teams to develop into little games. “One of the ideas was smell-based stealth,” Boehle said,
James Kochalka, author of the American Elf series and contributor to KS issue #2, had some problems with his Wii U. So, of course, he made an adorable comic about it.
If you’re curious what even a moment of a worker of an MTA pump train is like, David Albert, Michael Geraci, and Nicholas Bergson-Schilcock have an answer for you. Much like Diner Dash and Tapper before it, Pump Train is manic “spinning plates” style game that has you thrillingly at the helm of a, u