In an article entitled “Game Thinking,” Martin Pichlmair posits that if you want to understand gaming, you have to understand the underlying principles behind it: Games are rules systems that only flourish upon interaction. The dynamics and aesthetics of play is what we design them for. In design th
You could easily spend as many hours reading Skyrim as you can playing it. Scattered around its many bandit-filled fortresses and haunted caves are stacks and stacks of books. Instead of quietly reading them to yourself in front of your flatscreen, somebody has gone to the trouble of compiling them
Over at Etsy’s blog, there’s a fascinating clip of a fascinating craftsman. How many countless hours have we all spent in our favorite RPGs hunting for mythical loot?: Korehira Watanabe is one of the last remaining Japanese swordsmiths. He has spent 40 years honing his craft in an attempt to recreat
A British company has decided to delight bar patrons and headline writers with their latest invention, urinal gaming stations. The company, Captive Media, is hoping to install games in urinals that allow for urine controlled games. Men relieving their bladders can aim at different sensors in the ur
GameSetWatch, the influential “alternative” videogames blog, is no more. At its brightest, GameSetWatch was smart and fun. Founded by Simon Carless in 2005, GameSetWatch began as a place for him to run content that was more lighthearted than found on his main project Gamasutra. It was one of the fir
Perhaps sick of people calling Modern Warfare exploitive trash, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg decided to lash out. There’s a sense that games are more exploitative in a way that The Hurt Locker – which also was designed as form of entertainment – isn’t. I think they are an art form, and I think that
Angus Finlayson of the Quietus has an excellent analysis of the role of sexism in the UK dance music scene, culminating in the following quote: Music has political meaning woven into it the moment it is played, whether on a dancefloor or in a bedroom. And every act has political implications – wheth
The only things certain in gaming are death and (sales) taxes, so in All’s Well that Ends Well, Pippin Barr just cuts to the chase and presents the player with an essentially untenable situation-you are an object, sometimes an airplane, sometimes a Lego figurine, sometimes a fork, and you have to na