Is owning a dog like playing a videogame? According to Chris Suellentrop, writer for the New York Times, there’s much to be said about the gaminess of companion animals. That’s probably not the best way to put it. – – – I’ll just let him explain: Playing a video game, much like owning a dog (or caring for an infant, for that matter), can involve rote, mundane, even unpleasant tasks. These duties are carried out on behalf of an inarticulate companion. Doing the bidding of this putative sidekick turns out to be a strikingly effective method for creating intimacy…. Over time…

According to Forbes, the fraud and laundering lawsuit pending trial against online poker companies Full Tilt and PokerStars has been settled. The total amount of restitution comes to $731 million. The third company facing allegations, Absolute Poker, has yet to reach a settlement with prosecutors.  Under the agreement, PokerStars, based in the Isle of Man, will also purchase Full Tilt Poker, a former rival which collapsed following the U.S. government’s move in April 2011 to shut down the U.S. operations of the major online poker operators. The deal calls for PokerStars to forfeit $547 million to the U.S. government and…

Have you you eaten your cultural vegetables? A quick trip to the archive turned up this article by Dan Kois from last year, in which he both laments and venerates those films that we are obliged to consume, the so-called “vegetables” of the cultural diet.  In college, a friend demanded to know what kind of idiot I was that I hadn’t yet watched Tarkovsky’s “Solaris.” “It’s so boring,” he said with evident awe. “You have to watch it, but you won’t get it.” He was right: I had to watch it, and I didn’t get it. I had to watch…

In the 2011 issue of Game Studies focused on reward systems, Christopher Moore tackled the subject of achievements within Team Fortress 2 and, in particular, the game’s hats. If you’ve ever been compelled to learn more about the psychology, social theory, and economics of downloadable fedoras, read on.  While the nine character classes remain stable, the individual gamer can personalize their in-game persona through different combinations of class, hats and items. The affective intensity and shock value of the hat, before the conscious interpretation of the hat’s meaning, is anticipated and inscribed in the polygons of the character models. The character models have…

A startup called Use It Better uses statistics gathered from games to predict the behavior and characteristics of players. While the company began by helping developers detect cheating players and improve user experience, it recently found that it could determine players’ gender, age, personality, and more. According to a recent interview with founder Lukasz Twardowski, the technology could also help diagnose Alzheimer’s, Asperger’s, color blindness, and any number of related conditions.  “Games are the richest and the most meaningful form of human computer interaction,” said Twardowski in an interview with VentureBeat. “We can use [them] to build a full user behavioral profile.”…