Remember when you were a kid? Think back. You’d get together with your friends and play. You’d burn for it. You’d be squirming in your seat at the lunch table on a weekend, dying to get away, so you could meet up with your best friend and carry one with the Lego or tree fort […]
Read more "Playing Together: It’s What We DO"Interesting article in Gamasutra a couple of days ago. (I know, I know, I’m late with this – but I’ve been working on other stuff lately.) Jim Preston wades hip deep into the “Are video games art?” debate. Rather than concluding yes or no, he suggests (correctly, I’d say) that the point is moot: As […]
Read more "Games as Art? . . . Who cares?"Running a guild or pack of players in an online game is good practise for running a real corporation – or any other leadership position. That’s the message from a report from IBM (specifically their Global Innovation Outlook). Online games, and specifically massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), offer a glimpse at how leaders develop […]
Read more "Video Games: Training the Leaders of Tomorrow"You’ve heard about the Japanese whaling research expeditions in Antarctic waters. As a journalist, I naturally have no opinion about this, but there are at least three aussies who do, and they’ve just made an editorial game expressing them – Harpooned. Voila le traileur: Download and play the game for free at their website. UPDATE: […]
Read more "Harpooned – an editorial point"America’s Army must have been a success, because now NASA is getting in on the game. They’re launching a massively multiplayer online game about – what else? – space exploration. Way cool. They’ve got this idea that a vast online space simulator could be a great way to get kids interested in space exploration. They’ve […]
Read more "Games. The final frontier."The Entertainment Software Association is the pro-game lobby group in the US. Now they’re starting to play a new game: election politics. Capitalizing on its improved respectability, the video game industry intends to establish a political action committee to donate money to game-friendly politicians and candidates. “We will be writing checks to campaigns by the […]
Read more "Wealth, Power . . . Gaming."There’s a good article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun germane to what we’ve been talking about here on Meme Vector. Jim Rossignol writes: Games aren’t a waste of time. Don’t let their fun facade fool you: they’re changing us, enabling to defeat with complex problems and navigate strange spaces. They’re improving and educating the people who […]
Read more "What he said."I should have linked this all earlier, but it’s time for a belated introduction: meet Ian Bogost, who has some interesting things to say about serious games. Says he: “We tend to think of the world in terms of sound bites and simplistic ideas. Video games allow us to model complexity.” He’s the one who […]
Read more "“Video games allow us to model complexity”"If you still think games can’t transmit serious messages, try this. Not much more to say. Just PLAY IT. Update: Passage is getting some choice reviews in the gaming blogosphere, like this one. And this, and this plea from Ian Bogost. Funny how it’s the sort of game that makes everyone quietly say ‘Please play […]
Read more "Passage"Channel 4 Education has just announced that they’re scrapping a load of television content in favour of interactive web offerings. Media Guardian has the details. They’re cancelling a lot of Education TV – which makes sense, as most of it was on while the kids were in school. (How did that seem like a good […]
Read more "Channel 4 – Scores!"
Philip Trippenbach 