http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamers-outdo-computers-matching-disease-genes/gamers-outdo-computers-at-matching-up-disease-genes-scientific-american An excellent example of distributed cognition. http://t.co/O3V5h1Nv – Sam Scott (bigsagacity) http://twitter.com/bigsagacity/status/184651180788551680 ]]> Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:58:19 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamers-outdo-computers-matching-disease-genes/gamers-outdo-computers-at-matching-up-disease-genes-scientific-american http://www.joystiq.com/2011/09/18/the-artist-is-present-is-a-game-about-waiting-in-line-at-a-museu/ Writing articles about video games is so much fun that we often have to stop, wipe the manic grins off our faces and find something really boring to do. Sometimes we stare at a blank white wall and recite the Declaration of Independence under our breath, other times we watch Lost in Translation. Now we have a new option: We can play The Artist is Present, a game about waiting in line at New York's Museum of Modern Art created by Pippin Barr.

Unfortunately for us, the game's backstory is pretty entertaining. Contemporary artist Marina Abramović held… ]]> Mon, 19 Sep 2011 01:39:30 -0700 http://www.joystiq.com/2011/09/18/the-artist-is-present-is-a-game-about-waiting-in-line-at-a-museu/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:50:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM&feature=youtube_gdata http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/everyones-a-player.html Games are sneaking into every part of our lives -- at home, school, and work. Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and even the Army depend on games. and Pretty soon, you'll be a part of one. We guarantee it.

If Schell's vision seems a little, well, out there, consider this: Much of what he discusses already exists, having infiltrated our culture and our business landscape in ways that are barely recognized. Sure, 97% of 12- to 17-year-olds play computer games, but so do almost 70% of the heads of American households, according to the Entertainment Software Association. The average… ]]> Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:46:00 -0700 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/everyones-a-player.html http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/23960/Analysis_Portal_and_the_Deconstruction_of_the_Institution.php In this in-depth analysis, Daniel Johnson discusses games, language and sociology with regard to Valve's Portal - please note that the article contains story spoilers for the game.

In 1959 Erving Goffman released The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life; a book that went on to heavily influence future understanding of social interactions within the sociology discipline. In it, he discusses social intercourse under the metaphor of actors performing on a stage. Specifically, in the second chapter he shares the idea of a front and backstage to social interaction.

As with the theater, we… ]]> Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:33:00 -0700 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/23960/Analysis_Portal_and_the_Deconstruction_of_the_Institution.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:32:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A&feature=youtube_gdata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28mind_game%29 There are three rules to The Game:

1. Everyone in the world is playing The Game. (Sometimes narrowed to: "Everybody in the world who knows about The Game is playing The Game",[4] or alternatively, "You are always playing The Game.")
2. Whenever one thinks about The Game, one loses.
3. Losses must be announced to at least one person[6] (either by using a statement such as "I lost The Game" or by alternative means). ]]> Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:11:00 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28mind_game%29 http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/05/hands-on-sleep-is-death A lot of game critics you talk to will tell you that, after making a career of playing games, it takes a lot to impress them. But that's not exactly the truth.

Perhaps I shouldn't speak for them, but I know for me that all it really takes for a game to knock my socks off is that smallest yet boldest of features: A single great, new idea. I'm not talking about squishing together the dual-stick shooting of Geometry Wars and RPG elements and hoping for the best. I'm talking about an innovation that takes a single… ]]> Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:03:00 -0700 http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/05/hands-on-sleep-is-death http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/148082 Types of Games: I have come across various attempts to catalogue the possible varieties of stories that exist. The basic assumption being that all plots (narratives?) can be be boiled down to one among only a few types e.g. Hero leaves the kingdom; Hero steals fire, etc. I am looking for a similar classification system for GAMES, that is: how many fundamental types/kinds of game are there? Note: when I say 'game' I mean everything from checkers, through hide n' seek, pool and soccer up to and including Tower Defence, Super Mario or Halo. I know this might be… ]]> Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:39:00 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/148082 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmwtykJj47Y&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:43:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmwtykJj47Y&feature=youtube_gdata http://secrettechnology.com/explode/evidence.html A surreal webgame, littered with explosive potentialities. Help the arrow escape influential pages from historical art movements. ]]> Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:54:00 -0700 http://secrettechnology.com/explode/evidence.html http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26639/Opinion_The_99_Best_Free_Games_Of_2009.php Gamasutra is teaming up with game criticism weblog Critical Distance to present Christopher Hyde's round-up of the wealth of excellent games being produced outside the realm of 'AAA' titles in 2009, compiling his take on the best 99 free to download video games released this year. This past year will go down for me personally as the year in which my spending on video games plummeted, due to personal dissatisfaction with the costs in money and time demanded by most of the AAA products out there on the shelves. To that end, I’ve since turned my eyes towards the burgeoning… ]]> Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:50:00 -0700 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26639/Opinion_The_99_Best_Free_Games_Of_2009.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulbotKa5LnM&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:12:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulbotKa5LnM&feature=youtube_gdata http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/ Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted. Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player's mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an… ]]> Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:30:00 -0700 http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/ http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-friday-game-this-is-the-only-level This is the Only Level is a 2D platformer in which you have to guide a boldly unanimated elephant over a series of pits, some of which are filled with spikes, past a switch that will raise a door, and deliver him safely to the exit. And that’s it. The twist is that, once you have initially completed the task, you’ll find you have to do it again, guiding the elephant over the same pits and the same spikes, and past the same switch that raises the same door, the difference being that this time the game’s mechanics have changed… ]]> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:54:00 -0700 http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-friday-game-this-is-the-only-level http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7MSTpt346o ]]> Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:33:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7MSTpt346o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H54u4VmDFc ]]> Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:21:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H54u4VmDFc http://grumpygamer.com/8280380 About a year and a little more ago, as I began designing the uber-awesome DeathSpank at Hothead Games, I played all the way through The Secret of Monkey Island to refresh myself on the puzzles and dialog. I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but I don't spend my evenings playing through Monkey Island. It's probably been 15 years since I sat down and really played it. Much like the experience of watching the Maniac Mansion Speed Run, it bought back a lot of memories and little tid-bits of facts, so I started keeping notes… ]]> Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:31:00 -0700 http://grumpygamer.com/8280380 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480006 A surreal spectacle of a game, balanced half-way between the whole and the gap ]]> Sun, 24 May 2009 15:04:00 -0700 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480006