Boomshakalaka!

This new art exhibit puts a human face on hard steel

The Barbican Centre, located on Silk Street in the City of London, is one of the largest performing arts centers in Europe. (The smallest is Captain Franko’s Fantabulous Flea Circus in Covent Garden.) Until January 11th, 2015, the venue is hosting an exhibit called “Constructing Worlds: Photography

Strings and Swings

Why is pressing buttons more faithful to baseball or golf than swinging a motion controller? Abe Stein explains why videogames need to keep their distance from real sports—at least for now.

Choking in the Locker Room

Sports games can make you the MVP hero of your dreams. But professional sports aren’t based on athleticism alone; traits like sportsmanship and agreeableness have a large impact on a team’s success. New sports games like 2K11 and New Star Soccer consider these ulterior aspects to play, enabling the

An Old Hope

Most sports stories play out the same way. Two baseball narratives, The Rookie and The Natural, offer a different understanding of the game by beginning at the end. Our sports columnist responds in-game.

Open Your Eyes

The bifurcation of society into jocks and geeks was supposed to end with high school. So why do the two groups eye each other with mutual suspicion? Our sports columnist argues that the videogame community has wrongly ousted sports gamers.

Next Time I’m in Rio

An experimental videogame called Hokra invites comparisons to sports, but not only for its rules. For Abe Stein, sport is a feeling that runs deeper than the inner workings of games, existing in the events and dramas that we cause to emerge from them. So how do a few pixel squares pull that off, and

The Surreal One on One

In our new sports column, Abe Stein reminisces about playing Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One, how it compares to a modern sports videogame like NBA 2K12, and what is lost in designing for the realism of sports rather than the surrealism of games.