Culture
The Short Game
This month, the Experimental Gameplay Project, a monthly challenge for game designers, released the results of their latest effort. They wanted...
Culture
The Armchair Revolution in Gaming
A videogame designer recently posited something interesting: Players are getting older, he said, and there's more integration between the lives...
Culture
Gaming's Environmental Toll
In last year’s indie hit Flower, you play as a flock of flowers, wistfully floating through the country landscape, collecting fellow petals, and...
Culture
Putting the Medium in Human Hands
Jason Rohrer's new game takes improvisation to the next level. One of the central tenets of gaming is that the computer remains an active...
Culture
How to Have More Fun
A new iPhone app makes productivity fun and fun productive. "Everyone is so busy, aren't they?" As a designer at Namco Bandai Games, Keita...
Culture
Guerrilla Gardening for Gamers
"The Earth laughs in flowers." -Ralph Waldo Emerson In most videogames, plant life is merely party of the scenery-which is why I was surprised...
Culture
Videogames' Slow Move Toward Accessibility
For people with disabilities, many videogames have long been off-limits. Times are changing, though. "The continuing existence of unfair and...
Culture
The Rise of High-quality Nonprofit Videogaming
A new nonprofit shows that well-designed games can also do the world some good. "Good works are links that form a chain of love." -Mother...
Culture
Paying to Play
How some videogames are rallying for Haiti—and why others aren't. The expansive relief effort to the earthquake in Haiti has been extraordinary....
Culture
Bite-sized Gaming
A short-and-sweet game for those of us who can't stay up all night playing videogames anymore. "A Mayfly flies a single day / The daylight dies...
Culture
Landscapes from Virtual Worlds
James Barnett makes fauvist paintings of picturesque videogame environments. "I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between...
Culture
A Videogame to Fight Cubicle Malaise
Paolo Pedercini's experimental game, "Every Day The Same Dream," challenges players to escape the dreariness of the working world. When the...
Culture
Advancing the Art and Science of Virtual Crowds
How Assassin's Creed 2 captures the rhythms of the masses Every crowd has a silver lining. –P.T. Barnum Every morning when Chris Weiler...
Culture
Playing with Color
A crop of current videogames is exploring new chromatic possibilities. "Seek the strongest color effect possible. The content is of no...
Culture
Post-Katrina New Orleans as "Fictional Space"
Videogame developers often shy away from putting real places in their games. That's perhaps for good reason. In 2007, Insomniac Games provoked the...
