Essay
Games are too damn long
Why length of playtime should no longer be a defining criteria of the medium.
Jamin Warren
Jamin Warren founded Killscreen. He produced the first VR arts festival with the New Museum, programmed the first Tribeca Games Festival, the first arcade at the Museum of Modern Art, won a Telly, and hosted Game/Show for PBS.
Article
Disney can’t make good games. Can Star Wars save the Mouse?
Disney Interactive Studios has struggled to find its niche. Will the new power of Lucasfilm give the gamemaker a lift?
News
New footage of Glorkbot’s Mini Adventure is a homage to Metroid, projectiles
A very earlier Kickstarter project, James Kochalka and Pixeljam’s collaborative Glorkbot’s Mini Adventure is going on its third year of development. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — we’re all busy people and the team has been eeking out details along the way. James sent me a note about new foota
News
We’re ok! Just a little wet.
No subways here in NYC and a lot of debris on the streets. Tom lost power and Joe has no internet. Mine is spotty, so apologies in advance for a light writing day!
News
Lana Wachowski on how Dungeons and Dragons birthed the Matrix
The New Yorker goes deep on the Wachowski sibs as prep for their upcoming adaptation of Cloud Atlas. Fascinating little nugget buried below: It was around the time that Larry and Andy saw “2001” that they first directed together: on cassette tape, they read a play inspired by the “Shadow” comic book
News
We did not see this castaway simulator coming, but it is here.
As part of the Ludum Dare competition, animator Tom Campbell went all Tom Hanks on his entry by creating Adrift. Skirting the game/non-game conversation for a moment, Adrift falls somewhere between interactive wallpaper and Tamagortchi. You are, well, you and you are stuck on a boat for the foreseea
News
Adorable Kickstarter project teaches kids how to live-action role play.
Burlington, Mass youth program Guard Up, Inc. is teaching kids how to live-action role play. Meghan Gardner told Wired: “This program is designed to engage kids and teens in live, story-based adventures where they play a character in an ongoing storyline.” Sounds like fun to me. As that saying goes,
News
Ernest Hemingway offers advice for the fledgeling game designer
Sometimes it’s nice to imagine games as occupying the same space as literature. We’re not there yet, but we can do the next best thing with the red pen of revisionism. Author Ernest Hemingway had this to say about the nature of his craft in a 1934 issue of Esquire. I’ve “amended” Hemingway’s words o
News
Why virtual dogs make better friends than virtual cats
How do virtual dogs fit into the larger world of computer-canine interaction? Matt Novak over at Smithsonian has been doing a deep exegesis of The Jetsons because why not. On the introduction of Astro, the robot dog, Novak makes a salient point on why we need robotic pets in the future: In an effort
News
Trailer for Eleven is delightful ode to Kubrick on the Swedish astral plane
Christoffer Hedborg is a gameplay programmer for Might and Delight, developers of the charming forthcoming Pid. But apparently he has free time to do explorations of his own. Hedborg has given few details about the nature of his side project Eleven. What we can divine, however, is that it’s very geo
News
Our Picks for Your Fall Sports Videogame Lover
It’s fall. That means you’ve nestled up on your sofa, arranged the magazines on your coffee table in a visually-acceptable arrangement, and will now spend the next dozen consecutive weekends glued to your television. You will be watching sports, playing video games, or hopefully doing things that in
Review
The Kill Screen Review: The Unfinished Swan, or, all hail the young king
Ian Dallas’ years-in-the-making debut is not without erudition, even pretention. Thank god.