I’m a late blogger on Playful. I was there on Friday, and enjoyed the event tremendously. Thanks to Toby Barnes and all the guys at Pixel-Lab for setting it up for us. Others have already written copious notes, so I will cheekily link to theirs instead of writing my own. Here’s a few things that […]
Read more "Notes on Playful (With acapella Star Wars!)"More like evening after, but here we are. Good parties are hard to wake up from. BeeBCamp happened yesterday – it was an unconference that I organized with Roo, Mark, and David Hayward from the BBC College of Journalism (internal link). The idea was simple: let’s get everyone at the BBC working on new media […]
Read more "BeeBCamp – The Morning After"A game about energy policy, made by The Economist and Chevron? This I’ve got to see. I missed this when it first came out, but yesterday I saw a full-page ad for Energyville in an old copy of Wired. I got to chatting about it with Adrian Hon. Here’s how it went . . . 11:01 AM Me: […]
Read more "*Gasp* Chevron Video Game is Pro-Oil"Well, I’m a bit disappointed. Ian Bogost just launched Campaign Rush, a flash game about the 2008 US presidential election. You pick a ticket – Democrat or Republican – and then have to manage campaign workers in that party’s war room. The phones are ringing, the e-mails are coming in, and your busy little campaign […]
Read more "Campaign Rush – FAIL"This is a perfect example of how exploring an issue through play can make great journalism. Check out the link and find out all about the US federal budget. Usually this is a fiercely complex topic, with reams and reams of spreadsheets – a general all around snore-fest. It’s one of those stories that’s important, […]
Read more "Budget Hero"I hadn’t come across this before, until my good friend Rusty linked me to it. WoW Detox is a postboard for people who are quitting / have quit / are trying to quit World of Warcraft. It’s a simple site – just a place to tell the world why you left Azeroth. But some of […]
Read more "WoW Detox"I spent a big chunk of yesterday sitting in Sony’s living room talking about games with interesting people. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday. The occasion was GameCamp London – an unconference about games. As an event, it could have been the bastard mashup of a gaming conference and a private loft party […]
Read more "GameCamp ’08"Channel 4 announced they were spending a whole pile of cash on interactive education a while back. The first fruits of that are ripe; you can go try Bow Street Runner, a history adventure game. It’s classic adventure game in style – that is, more interactive film than the sort of game we’re used to […]
Read more "Remember Channel 4?"You know Nintendo’s Wii Fit? Get in shape by waving the baton, right? There’s a balance board, too which allows you to actually practise a bunch of physical skills. And now, mental skills. You can also sit on the balance board in a lotus position and engage in Zazen metitation. Remember to keep your mind […]
Read more "Wii Fit – Now with soul excercise"Games as editorial cartoons: Molleindustria, makers of the amusing (and clever!) Macdonald’s Video Game, have scored a below-the-belt hit with Faith Fighter. It uses comedy and gameplay to convey a rhetorical point. I won’t spoil the fun by telling you what it is – though you might get an idea from their game description: “Faith […]
Read more "Isn’t Blasphemy a Laugh?"