Right, that’s it. I’m pissed off, honest to blog. Recently someone I was corresponding with warned in grave fashion that video games were eating their children, that they enhance addictive tendencies and unchecked will consume all spare time to the exclusion of any other form of play. Here’s a medium that’s arguably more powerful than […]
Read more "Rant: Oldtimers Unbellyfeel Gaming"Some interesting headlines coming out of Web 2.0 in SF this week. You can turn just about anything into a game. Game Design in a broad sense is just the idea that you can structure any user experience in ways that inherently encourage participation. Fundamentally, a game is just an incentive system. You can incorporate […]
Read more "Web 2.0 – All about game."Richard Bartle is one of the Elders of the Univesrse when it comes to Game Design. He had a good rant in the Guardian the other day. I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about it before. But there you go . . . I’m talking to you, you self-righteous politicians and newspaper columnists, you relics […]
Read more "Attention, Non-Gamers: Extinction Approaches"In a recent article, Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield (right) has voiced some pretty significant concerns about video games. With their explosive growth into mainstream culture, video games are taking up more and more of our collective brain cycles. What effect will this have on our species? Quite a profound one, she suggests. I agree – […]
Read more "Is Gaming Melting our Brains?"Wii fit went on sale this weekend in the UK. It’s not just for your body, either. I love this – I’ve blogged it before but now there’s nifty embedded video . . .
Read more "Meditation – the Video Game"National Public radio in the US has been running some interesting pieces on video games recently. Lately they’ve taken a stab at a question that becomes more and more important as gaming revenues continue to swell: Are video games art? Other media have a long history of relevant, moving social commentary. Movies and books lately […]
Read more "NPR Radio: Are Video Games Art?"When I was growing up . . . OK, actually when I was in J-school, I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. Going to far-flung places, seeing the world, dodging bullets, meeting important people – it sounded like a really cool job. Shame they’re an endangered (doomed?) species. As part of a series of articles […]
Read more "Foreign Correspondents: Doomed"Today, the Olympic torch is making its way through London, where I live. Of course, it’s being covered by all the media. There’s some tension: a lot of people in this city view the torch passing as the perfect opportunity to send a message to the powers in Beijing. The BBC covered the torch relay live. […]
Read more "London, YouTube Torched"Video games are like crack cocaine. In a good way. And that’s why we need to use them for journalism. Yesterday I led a seminar with Paul Dwyer’s Media class at the Univeristy of Westminster. The subject was games as a maturing medium: one capable of great sophistication, depth and variety of expression. I think […]
Read more "Why we need to use games for Journalism"Can games be journalism? Take a look at Exhibit A: JFK Reloaded, from now-defunct Scottish game studio Traffic Management Games. It’s a first-person shooter designed to accurately model what happened at about half-past noon on November 22, 1963. You are in the position of Lee Harvey Oswald – on the sixth floor of the Texas […]
Read more "Shoot the President"
Philip Trippenbach 