video Sophisticated game design software and virtual reality technology is increasingly being used to treat soldiers and trauma victims in innovative and successful ways. But a new study may suggest that much older, simpler games may prove just as therapeutic for an entirely different class of victims:  A study presented at the British Psychology Society’s Annual Conference this week suggests flashbacks, the jarring mental images that haunt those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, can be significantly reduced by engaging in the visual-spatial tasks of video game play. Soldiers or others who deal with the reoccurring, nightmarish memories have reported the…

video Regrettable orientalist jingoism aside, the “Angry Mob” feature in Command and Conquer: Generals was an interesting example of the struggle of computer programming to track civil strife in a way that realistically reflected social and political tension. A recent article in The Economist suggests that this is a difficulty private firms and military researchers are only just now learning how to quantify and model scientifically: One of the best-known projects in this field is SCARE, the Spatio-Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine, developed at the United States Military Academy at West Point by a team led by Major Paulo Shakarian, a…

Self-tracking has a long history independent of the rising cultural presence of videogames. But if the corresponding rise in corporate and behavioral “gamification” has taught us anything, it’s that everybody secretly likes that graitifying feeling of filling bars up and scoring achievement points, whether or not they matter. Today, Wired reviewed four new gadgets that let you turn that mentality towards your own body: What can these things tell you? No two devices report exactly the same nuggets of data, but they all focus on exercise and health metrics — miles jogged, steps taken, calories burned. You can drill into…

Mashable has an adorable slideshow up of baby clothing fit for any self-respecting geek. My favorite is this restyling of the Nintendo Gameboy available at Etsy.  Batteries not included. [via Mashable]

There has been some argument recently about how appropriate it is to compare videogames to works of literature. Is a game something you can “skim” the same way you would a book? And if a game resembles a physical (albeit still primarily textual) space moreso than a literary world, what does it mean to race through that space? The growing emphasis in games is towards emergent, user-generated narratives. Today at Salon, Willa Paskin described her experiments fast-forwarding through television shows with surprisingly similar results: Here are some of the joy-giving ways in which I flagrantly overuse the fast-forward utility on…

Besides finally earning their place on gallery walls next to comic books and fine art with The Smithsonian’s “The Art of Video Games” exhibit, and, well, augmenting museum exhibitions at no less a place than The Louvre, games may continue to influence the way art and culture is curated and exhibited in modern museums. The Atlantic reports on a bold new show: Patrons who expect multimedia bang for their buck get it at “Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs 1851-1939,” a new exhibit at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The ambitious show, which opened on…

Tuesday. Tuesday? Tuesday! Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception Game of the Year Edition was announced. BioWare has insisted that Star Wars: The Old Republic is not losing subscribers. Activision is going to announce the next Call of Duty title on May 1st. Blizzard revealed more of the Witch Doctor’s properties in the upcoming Diablo 3, including demonic toads.  The first gameplay trailer for Crysis 3 was released. Apparently the next step for high-tech assault weaponry is the bow and arrow. …Wednesday?

How often have you been slinging birds through outer space lately and found yourself wondering, “this seems fun, but is it really accurate?” No, not the part about birds being slung through space without pressurized suits and some source of oxygen, just the physics question. Physics Professor Rhett Alain finally put the theory to the test which he described recently for Wired:  Maybe this is a good analogy. For a quick recap, both the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts have trajectories different than would be expected. How do you find out why? In a way it is similar to the…

The day before I was scheduled to meet with Ken Levine, I caught a brief glimpse of him walking around the floor of PAX East. I didn’t recognize him at first, but standing in a long line of devotees and cosplayers-fans who dress up in elaborately constructed costumes of their favorite characters-a low and fevered murmur spread through the crowd. “That’s Ken Levine!” a woman nearby whispered excitedly. She was wearing the iconic 50’s era blue dress and disturbingly large surgical syringe of the little sisters, an iconic character from Levine’s break-out success from his Boston-based studio, Irrational Games. Videogames…