MachineMachine /stream - tagged with games http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com "Videogames are the experience of being ruled" http://killscreendaily.com/articles/essays/will-work-fun/ Revolutions are often thought of in terms of conflict and disorder, but they just as often come on waves of peaceful obsolescence. The old way of doing things is allowed to linger as long as it likes while everyone else gets on with the future. In the last few years the "free-to-play" model— where games are given away on mobile phones or online while the developer makes money through advertisements or the sale of in-game items—has encircled the videogame industry. At first it seemed like a curiosity, a unique idea that made sense in China and Korea, where loot-hoarding games… ]]> Thu, 17 May 2012 03:32:16 -0700 http://killscreendaily.com/articles/essays/will-work-fun/ In the Zone of Alienation: Tarkovsky as Video Game http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/01/zone-chernobyl-tarkovsky-video-game/ Zona, Geoff Dyer’s recent book about Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece Stalker, has been much discussed for its almost comically thorough dissection of the stately 1979 film. In an account that combines summary, memoir, meditation, tribute, and citation into a kind of deluxe version of the TV recap, Dyer sets out to convey the hypnotic effect Stalker has had on decades of viewers, and on himself. And yet, after reading the book, I was left feeling that something was missing. In both the book and the deluge of Stalker coverage its release has occasioned, perhaps the most crucial, and most popular, part… ]]> Tue, 01 May 2012 15:13:27 -0700 http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/01/zone-chernobyl-tarkovsky-video-game/ Network Science of the Game of Go http://bit.ly/JoYn3H They constructed their networks in a simple way: if one board position can lead to another, they are connected. Using a dataset of about 1,000 professional games and 4,000 amateur games, they began to construct these networks. Of course, the Go board is very large and so you can’t compare entire board layouts. Instead, they decided to make it much more tractable and look at the board composition surrounding a newly placed piece (a move in Go consists of putting a stone on an intersection of the grid lines of the board). In this case, they looked at the pieces… ]]> Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:29:50 -0700 http://bit.ly/JoYn3H Makego iPhone app blurs boundaries between digital and physical play http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/mar/16/makego-iphone-app-digital-toys/makego-iphone-app-blurs-boundaries-between-digital-and-physical-play-technology-guardiancouk Fascinating to see word #digital slowly replace #virtual: "Makego app blurs boundaries between digital & physical play" http://t.co/IDBngowN ]]> Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:14:46 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/mar/16/makego-iphone-app-digital-toys/makego-iphone-app-blurs-boundaries-between-digital-and-physical-play-technology-guardiancouk Mari0 Teaser Trailer - Mario Portals http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaoHMjS04vU&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:27:26 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaoHMjS04vU&feature=youtube_gdata Games within videogames: Hoarding http://www.edge-online.com/features/games-within-games-hoarding/games-within-games-hoarding-edge-magazine Hoarding in videogames & MMRPGs Do you? : @Tont_Coles on value of cheese, mutilated limbs and torture tools... http://t.co/TF66uPTJ #kipple ]]> Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:05:35 -0700 http://www.edge-online.com/features/games-within-games-hoarding/games-within-games-hoarding-edge-magazine Re:Thinking Games http://www.furtherfield.org/researchpublicatios/artists-rethinking-games/artists-rethinking-games-wwwfurtherfieldorg Artists Re:Thinking Games | Editors Catlow, Garrett, Morgana | only a few left http://t.co/SmCu4kxu ]]> Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:50:56 -0700 http://www.furtherfield.org/researchpublicatios/artists-rethinking-games/artists-rethinking-games-wwwfurtherfieldorg "How to Do Things with Videogames" by Ian Bogost http://www.creativeapplications.net/games/how-to-do-things-with-videogames-by-ian-bogost-books-review-games//quothow-to-do-things-with-videogamesquot-by-ian-bogost-ibogost-book-review-by-serial-consign-creativeapplicationsnet "How to Do Things with Videogames" by Ian Bogost (@ibogost) - book review by @serial_consign | http://t.co/CSJkki2Z ]]> Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:50:57 -0700 http://www.creativeapplications.net/games/how-to-do-things-with-videogames-by-ian-bogost-books-review-games//quothow-to-do-things-with-videogamesquot-by-ian-bogost-ibogost-book-review-by-serial-consign-creativeapplicationsnet The 20 Best Videogames of 2011 http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/12/best-games-2011//the-20-best-videogames-of-2011-gamelife-wiredcom The 20 Best Videogames of 2011 http://t.co/EWfB5ml8 ]]> Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:35:20 -0700 http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/12/best-games-2011//the-20-best-videogames-of-2011-gamelife-wiredcom VideoGames can't tell stories http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-games-cant-tell-stories Games don’t do storytelling well because they can’t deliver the four key components of story. There is no hero. Time is in the control of the player, not the creator. There is no inevitability or sense of being powerless. And the story cannot have the player’s full attention. So a videogame Hamlet is just a guy running around a castle flipping switches and collecting items to kill his uncle, the big boss at the end. All those speeches just get in the way. The player is not treading the boards at the Old Vic. He’s solving problems, taking action, creating… ]]> Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:53:57 -0700 http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-games-cant-tell-stories The Constraint Histories of Digital Games http://blog.ihobo.com/2011/10/constraint-histories.html Attempts to provide a taxonomy of game genres founder on the lack of consistent criteria, and usually have to be arbitrarily assigned. Connecting ‘shooters’ into a lineage suggests scrolling shooters were direct influences on first person shooters, for instance. But there's no evidence suggesting Zaxxon has any connection with the design of DOOM, or that Space Invaders inspired Zaxxon. As a historical tool, genre categories can provide some useful connections – DOOM certainly did influence GoldenEye 007, for example – but genre cannot be used as a unifying framework for game history because the genre lineages are narrowly valid and… ]]> Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:25:57 -0700 http://blog.ihobo.com/2011/10/constraint-histories.html a screenshot can do things in this tech demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph60iKWmtos&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:32:27 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph60iKWmtos&feature=youtube_gdata The Artist is Present (a video game about waiting in line at a museum) 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/ Inside the Internet Art Bubble http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/inside-the-internet-art-bubble/Content?oid=2170964 The internet finally seems to have made a dint in New York's institutional art world. Cory Arcangel, an artist who began his career manipulating old computer technologies and critiquing web culture, has an entire floor to himself at The Whitney. At the age of 33, his show Pro Tools makes him the youngest artist to receive a solo show at the institution since Bruce Nauman in 1973. Meanwhile, over at MoMA PS1, 30-year-old art star Ryan Trecartin is gathering steam with his four hour-plus video exhibiton of fucked-up child-adults on Blackberries, titled Any Ever. The show at PS1, chock full… ]]> Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:26:27 -0700 http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/inside-the-internet-art-bubble/Content?oid=2170964 Opinion: Design as law - Edge Magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-design-law/opinion-design-as-law-edge-magazine Is #design everything when it comes to making #games? "I think the #idea we need to embrace is that #play is law" http://t.co/wCWg0RI #x ]]> Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:38:35 -0700 http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-design-law/opinion-design-as-law-edge-magazine Opinion: Design as law - Edge Magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-design-law/opinion-design-as-law-edge-magazine Is #design everything when it comes to making #games? "I think the #idea we need to embrace is that #play is law" http://t.co/wCWg0RI #x ]]> Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:38:34 -0700 http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-design-law/opinion-design-as-law-edge-magazine Cephalopods http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/8950883863

Cephalopods

]]> Mon, 15 Aug 2011 06:39:48 -0700 http://tumblr.machinemachine.net/post/8950883863 Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator.ars Emulators for playing older games are immensely popular online, with regular arguments breaking out over which emulator is best for which game. Today we present another point of view from a gentleman who has created the Super Nintendo emulator bsnes. He wants to share his thoughts on the most important part of the emulation experience: accuracy.

It doesn't take much raw power to play Nintendo or SNES games on a modern PC; emulators could do it in the 1990s with a mere 25MHz of processing power. But emulating those old consoles accurately—well, that's another challenge entirely; accurate… ]]> Thu, 11 Aug 2011 04:25:22 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator.ars Brute force or intelligence? The slow rise of computer chess http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/force-versus-heuristics-the-contentious-rise-of-computer-chess.ars When you visit the History of Computer Chess exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the first machine you see is "The Turk."

In 1770, a Hungarian engineer and diplomat named Wolfgang von Kempelen presented a remarkable invention to the court of Maria Theresa, ruler of Hungary and Austria. It consisted of a mechanical figure dressed in (what Europeans saw as) Oriental garb, presiding over a cabinet upon which a chess board sat. Full of gears ostentatiously placed in a front side drawer, The Turk was cranked up by hand, after which an opponent… ]]> Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:39:13 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/force-versus-heuristics-the-contentious-rise-of-computer-chess.ars Chain World Videogame Was Supposed to be a Religion http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_chainworld/all/1 How do you make a videogame that, in some sense, is a religion, especially if you’re an atheist? Rohrer began by defining the sort of spiritual practice that interested him, which had to do with the physical mysteries of everyday human experience. Rohrer spoke about his late grandfather, a colorful man who served as mayor of a small town in Ohio and left behind a legacy that soon turned into legends—the house he had built and the interstate whose path he had altered, forcing it to swerve around his town. (“It’s like my grandfather’s dogleg,” Rohrer said, putting up a… ]]> Sun, 24 Jul 2011 04:03:46 -0700 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/mf_chainworld/all/1