Guitar Hero Camp
February 7, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Power Chord Academy is a music camp for 12-18 year olds in Los Angeles. This summer, the school has announced a new program, GameROCKERS™. GameROCKERS™ is our exclusive 3-day cutting edge game-musician program for the new age of musicians who play Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Loaded with competitions and prizes, students play in bands, write songs, record songs, and play a final concert and Battle of the Bands! It's ambiguous in the press release they sent me, but I'm assuming that this is not a "you like Rock Band so learn to play for real" sort of thing, but ...

In-Game Obama
October 15, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

According to the AP, Barack Obama has become thefirst presidential candidate to buy ad space inside a game. Nine video games from Electronic Arts Inc., ranging from the extremely popular "Madden 09" football game to the street racing "Burnout: Paradise," feature in-game ads from the Obama campaign. The ads — they appear on billboards and other signage — remind players that early voting has begun and plug a campaign Web site. It's sort of sad that this might be the highlight of politics in games for the 2008 election cycle. (thanks to Netika) ...

Where are the educational games on consoles?
September 9, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Over at Kotaku, Brian Crecente notes the re-release of Math Blasters for the DS, and then wonders why more console makers don't introduce at least a few good educational games on their systems in order to win over schools, parents, and other groups who might like both entertainment and education. It's a good point, of course, and reminds me of the way Intellivision positioned themselves against Atari in the early 80s. Brian points out the way Apple muscled into schools during that decade too: much of the software used was educational games. The first-party licensing regime is perhaps mainly to ...

Grinding on the Treadmill
September 2, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Last week, Destructoid ran coverage of a couple of guys who fashioned homebrew treadmills and wired them up to World of Warcraft. They then filmed a dorky costumed performance of an obviously exhausting run across Azeroth: Is this exercise? Sure, but it's mostly geekery. I can't imagine the pair will leave their rig set up, let alone use it for their daily workout. But if you stop to think about it, WoW jogging is more similar to real exercise regimens than it seems. Wii Fit and other explicit exercise games promise to make the drudgery of exercise more palatable by ...

Gimmickry, or How Exergaming Went Mainstream
August 25, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

I've been thinking about exercise games lately, primarily due to an onslaught of new games, devices, and initiatives. For example, we've got Footgaming, a sort of promotional blog for a student fitness program called Generation Fit. The group hopes to support casual and educational play with a peripheral called FootPOWR. Judy Shasek, the program's proponent, argues that physical activity contributes to both fitness and academic success. Then there's Wii Sqweeze (pictured at top right), from Interaction Laboratories. The device promises isometric upper body exercise via shoulder abduction and adduction, wrought via a two-handled pumping interface with attached wiimote. There's reason ...

The Clintons on SNES
August 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

For some reason, it was possible to select then-White House occupants Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, or Al Gore as players in NBA Jam Tournament Edition for SNES. The White House routinely issues cease and desist notices for using the President's likeness for marketing, but this wasn't exactly marketing, exactly. One of the features of NBA Jam TE were hidden characters from outside of sports, including Will Smith, the Beastie Boys, and Prince Charles. It's unclear to me what if any likeness reproduction rights Acclaim acquired for these characters back in the early 1990s. I'd love to know. (Thanks to Dakota) ...

Atari Licenses Too Good to be True
August 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Our readers probably know well my interest, even obsession, with both the Atari VCS and licensed games. As Nick and I put the final touches on our forthcoming book on the Atari, I've been doing a lot of final fact confirmation online. In the process of doing so this weekend I fell upon some of the best ideas that, alas, never really were for the system, thanks to the Van Gogh-Gogh's comedy site. The first: Interactive 8-tracks! We've discussed music-game tie ins before (1, 2), but nothing compares to the concept of a double-ender 8-track/Atari VCS game. The fake ad ...

Go Buy Braid
August 7, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

If you own an Xbox 360, it is imperative that you go buy Jonathan Blow's newly released game Braid immediately. There are lots of good reasons to do this, for example, the game is unique, beautiful, subtly meaningful, and important. But if that's not convincing, or you think it's not your style, or whatever other excuse might come to mind, I'll give you a more fundamental reason: Jon has spent the last couple years working on the game, practically alone (David Hellman composed the terrific evocative art for the game), and its important to support that sort of creativity and ...

Simulating Torture
June 26, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to an article by regular MSNBC game columnist Winda Benedetti about it today, Torture Game 2 has been popping up on blogs and in my inbox. In the game (which is really more of a toy, if that's a fair word for it), the player can inflict a variety of bloody punishments on a rag doll physics-driven character dangling from a rope. Torture methods include spikes, gunfire, razor, ropes, and chainsaw, among others. In the article, Benedetti waxes discrepant, first admitting her disappointment upon learning that the game's 19 year-old creator had seemingly little in mind when he created ...

Pictures for Truth, an Amnesty International Game
June 9, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Pictures for Truth is a game about human rights violations in China, and also the first game developed for Amnesty International, according to its developers. Created by a group of professional game developers and volunteers from Quebec in their off time, the game puts the player in the role of a journalist called to help a Chinese colleague detained by police. Somewhat like Global Conflicts, you must investigate via conversation and exploration to obtain enough information to write stories that publicize the problems at hand. like every game that takes the journalist's perspective, the player gets an outsider's sense of ...

Ubisoft to Publish Smoking Cessation Game for DS
May 29, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

According to our friends at Kotaku, Ubisoft is bringing a videogame version of Allen Carr's popular Easy Way to Stop Smoking book/method to Nintendo DS this fall. The press release says very little about the game, and really very little in general, but clearly they are borrowing a page from Nintendo, who brought Dr. Ryuta Kawashima's book Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain to the DS as the popular title Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! ...

Making Room for Wii Fit
May 20, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

At the end of the chapter on exercise in Persuasive Games, I briefly discussed the problems exercise games pose to home use. A student and a colleague did a study and wrote an ACM article about how people negotiate space and play with big controllers like those used for DDR and Guitar Hero. With the release of Wii Fit, these issues are coming to the fore once again. GameCritics.com is running a poll asking people if they have enough room to play Wii Fit (Yes, No, Yes if I move furniture). The results are ongoing, and based on only a ...

iTunes App Store can reject you for any reason
May 7, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Following my occasional series of gripes about Apple openness (1, 2, 3, 4), I thought I'd share a part of the agreement iPhone application developers must accept in order to be able to publish to the forthcoming iTunes App Store: 6.2 Selection by Apple for DistributionYou understand and agree that Apple may, in its sole discretion:(a) determine that Your Application does not meet all or any part of the Documentation or Program Requirements then in effect;(b) reject Your Application for distribution for any reason, even if Your Application meets the Documentation and Program Requirements; or(c) select and digitally sign Your ...

Libery City Satire
April 30, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

In case you didn't notice, Grand Theft Auto IV was released yesterday. The coverage is predictably overwhelming, although standing out among the noise about sales records and politicians is Heather Chaplin's piece on NPR's All Things Considered, which includes a series of interviews with GTAIV writer Lazlow Jones. I've criticized Rockstar before for failing to put people in front of the media to discuss their games, so this is a welcome change of pace. Jones's thesis about the game is summed up in the call-out quote near the top, "It's a satire of not only New York, but of American ...

NASA MMO Update: Brains Pulled, not Funding
April 23, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Earlier this week I reported that NASA had pulled the $3m worth of funding previously committed to an educational MMO project. Other reliable sources ran the same story (1, 2, 3). Sean Hollister wrote a new story on the topic, including some interview material from Daniel Laughlin, one of the NASA project managers and recent WCG commenter. Here's the gist of Hollister's piece: Yes, NASA lost the $3m, but they have another $2m. But, they're not going to spend that on game development. Instead they're going to spend it on "education experts" and NASA insiders The non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement ...

NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0
April 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

(Updated here, 23 April) A while back, NASA started talking about a large-scale, well-funded MMO they wanted to make for educational purposes. The organization published a Request for Information (RFI) that claimed "A high quality synthetic gaming environment is a vital element of Nasa's educational cyberstructure." The goals of the project were to "foster career exploration opportunities in a much deeper way than reading alone would permit and at a fraction of the time and cost of an internship program." The reported budget for the project was a respectable $3 million. Today, the Second Life Herald reports comes news that ...

Air Traffic Chaos
April 17, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Finally something to look forward to! Majesco announces Air Traffic Chaos for Nintendo DS! In Air Traffic Chaos, aspiring air traffic controllers use the touch screen to manage takeoffs, gate assignments, and landings for all incoming and outgoing airport traffic for 14 different airlines in varying weather conditions. As someone obsessed with both air travel and mundane work experiences (having made games about both), this is a must-have. Sure, you can get ATC Simulator for Windows, and some may remember Kennedy Approach for Atari/Amiga/C64, but now we have an air traffic control game you can play while actually waiting to ...

GDC 2008: Wii Fit, Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console
February 20, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

(Takao Sawano on Wii Fit) Wii Fit was released in Japan Dec 1, 2007. This title was first shown at last year's E3 and you may already be familiar with it. Just to make sure, here are some commercials currently being aired on Japanese television. The ads included a demonstration of a height/weight tool, a calisthenics game, a yoga game, a party dancing kind of game. The Japanese version of Wii Fit. sold over 1.4 million copies since the release two months ago. European release is planned for April, North America for May. There are two major components: the Wii ...

Wii Fit Sits Still
January 24, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Recently I wrote an article about meditation and games, suggesting that most existing attempts to relax through gameplay are broken. Among alternatives, I pointed to Guru Meditation, an Atari VCS game I had made to be used with the Amiga Joyboard. To play, the player sits still on the device. Today, Kotaku posts a video of what appears to be one of the minigames from Wii Fit, which appears to boast exactly the same mechanic, as at least one Kotaku commenter noted. Of course, it's hard for me to claim originality here, since I borrowed the idea from the original ...

Will there ever be politics in Second Life?
December 30, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Those of you who keep up with game industry news already know that Cory Ondrejka has left his post as CTO of Linden Lab, creators of Second Life. Cory is a respected friend, and I will be interested to see what he does next. On Friday, Cory mused on his last day on his new blog, Collapsing Geography. That may be one you want to add to your readers. More directly related to our interests on this site, however, is Cory's discussion of one of his 2007 predictions, which have become a Terra Nova tradition. ...

Spoof Research: Wii Not Active Enough Exercise
December 24, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Were you lucky enough to find a Wii console to put under the tree this year? Were you planning to engorge yourself at Christmas dinner tomorrow and then work off all that excess with a family session on Wii Sports? Well, it's not gonna work, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. As summarized in a BBC article last week, Wii play increased energy output by 60kcal, a "trivial" figure according to the report. Researchers did acknowledge that playing such games "stimulated positive activity behaviours," which perhaps would encourage more frequent, more intense activity of the kind necessary ...

My new column: The Holly and the Ivy
December 23, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

With Christmas almost here, this month's edition of my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra is about holiday-themed games. It's not an attempt to write a complete history by any means, but I mention a few kinds of such games, although mostly I wonder why our medium doesn't follow packaged goods, film and others in taking advantage of the season. In addition to all the holiday-themed packaged goods and decorations, all the various media industries take advantage of the holidays. Film studios produce well-timed, if sometimes shoddy, holiday dramas and romantic comedies. Music labels release holiday albums and singles. Book publishers ...

Spurn-A-Bear
December 20, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

You know Build-A-Bear? It's a retail store that allows kids to construct custom plush toys by choosing different styles, parts, and accessories. I recently learned via Leigh Alexander that the company is about to release a virtual world based on their gimmick. As much as I loathe these kiddie virtual worlds, the concept behind Build-A-Bearville does make some sense. When you purchase a real bear, you can get an avatar version as well and play minigames with it in the virtual world. Sure it makes me want to claw my eyes out of my head and feed them to the ...

Imagine Game History
October 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Brian, Alice, and Leigh all wrote something snarky about Ubisoft's newly announced Imagine line for girls. They are right to point out the explicit, troubling, simplistic gender roles the games endorse. But none of them manage to locate these games historically. Videogame critics, bloggers, players, and journalists have a very short memory, and little sense for history. This makes it hard to remember that Babyz was first released in 1999, created by PF Magic, the same company that did the original pet sims Dogz and Catz (collectively Petz) in 1995. Ubisoft bought the rights to the Petz line in the ...

Persuasive Games: The Reverence of Resistance
September 11, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on the Manchester Cathedral controversy in popular PS3 shooter Resistance: Fall of Man. I take a fairly different position than A cynic, unbeliever, or Internet troll might point out the irony of the church pointing the finger, given the millennia-old history of church-sponsored violence. A gamer might rely on the title's status as fantasy fiction to nullify the validity of affront. Such impressions are merely instrumental attempts to foil the church’s parry rather than reasoned attempts to justify the expressive ends served by depicting the cathedral in the game. And ...

Army of Two's Political Agenda
September 9, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

There's a good interview up at Gamasutra with Chris Ferriera, lead designer of the forthcoming EA Montreal shooter Army of Two. Fans might know the game for its innovations in collaborative play, but Ferriera discusses the title's political content and inspiration -- private military contractors (PMCs) -- in encouraging detail. We take [the characters] from their days in Delta Force, and their days as Navy SEALs, and their start as PMCs and how they get trained. We unveil the corruption behind the military privatization, and we explain the problems that poses to society and to America, and the world, when ...

Persuasive Games Wii-bound?
August 21, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I've been really hard on Nintendo over the past year about their support for independent development (here, here, and here, for example). So part of me wants to eat my words a bit, since Persuasive Games just got our Wii developer approval letter late last week. At the very least, I can no longer claim that Nintendo will be using their first party licensing restrictions to perform de-facto content policing. We still have to see how the WiiWare channel really works, of course. There's no question that I'm looking forward to having a go on the gadget to see what ...

Wii vs iPhone product launches
July 2, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I've previously groused about the fact that the Wii's scarcity undermines Nintendo's claims that the console will significantly expand the gaming market. I also argued that the scarcity affected the expansion of licensed Wii developers, an issue that still remains unresolved despite Nintendo's recent announcement of the WiiWare downloadable channel. Wii supply still outstrips demand (you still can't buy one on Amazon.com, for example). I haven't yet seen a comparison of the Wii's launch with the recent launch of the iPhone, but I'd be curious to see someone compare the two launches. ...

WiiWare's Unanswered Questions
June 28, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I have the reputation of the resident cynic regarding Nintendo's long unmet promise to independent developers on the Wii. So, I'm trying to get excited about yesterday's WiiWare announcement. The reason I'm not there yet comes from a number of important uncertainties in the announcement and press coverage of it. ...

Fils-Aime on Nintendo's Future Move
June 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime discussed the company's planned move from Seattle to Silicon Valley. Among other justifications were the following comments: Fils-Aime said Nintendo hoped to develop more software that blends an entertainment experience with an educational or informational use, such as a DS product in Japan that provides food recipe details. Sounds promising right? We'll have to see what comes of it, and in particular if Nintendo intends to do this themselves or increase their collaborations with third-parties. ...

No touching at this dance
May 7, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The folks over at Applied Sciences have designed a prototype for a pressureless Dance Dance Revolution controller. Instead of activating the directional arrows by pressing buttons, the player does so by interrupting lasers beamed across the device. A different pattern of interruptions corresponds with a specific button press. The prototype uses a USB interface and, as the creators point out, it could theoretically be used to play any game that uses directional keys. Gizmodo lavished praise upon the gadget, but I'm not so sure. While the photo at right is compelling, you can't actually see the lasers while the thing ...

Wario Iwata
May 3, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Kotaku points us to the most recent Nintendo investor's briefing, in which Satoru Iwata makes a number of cranky comments. My favorite is this one, about the US lagging behind the rest of the world in sales expectations: When I received a report from the U.S. that they sold 1 million Pokémon Diamond & Pearl already, I asked them, "why did you sell only 10,000 Brain Age last week, when Europe sold through 30,000?" This is a typical example of how I communicate with our people in the U.S. If that segment of customers is encouraged to buy a significant ...

No Marriage, Gay or Otherwise, in Middle Earth
April 28, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

One of our more popular posts here on Water Cooler Games is a mention three years ago about gay marriage in The Sims 2. Just last week, Turbine and Midway released The Lord of the Rings Online, sure to become an absurdly over-discussed and possibly popular massively multi-player game. The debate seems to have begun around the very topic of gay marriage. Today, Salon published a story by Katherine Glover: Why can't gay dwarves get married in Middle-earth?. Apparently Turbine's solution to the quandary was just to pull marriage from the game entirely. The article covers many themes, including social ...

You can never have too many guitar peripherals
April 17, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I'm fascinated by physical interface peripherals of all kinds. In particular, I'm very interested in how peripherals influence players' perceptions of their living space. A new article from the Reuters wire explores this topic: Game accessories strain relationships, decor. The basic premise is that peripherals like Guitar Hero axes and bongos and the like take up a lot of room and they are ugly. Those beloved guitars are even cited as "a particularly egregious affront to interior design." The article suggests that plastic peripherals may be the man's equivalent of the stereotypical closet (or floor) full of shoes. That premise ...

How to Extract Mii's on your Mac
March 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

My Mii obsession continues. Here's how to extract Mii's and use them on your computer. This a Mac OS X only thing, sorry PC goons. Go get the Mii Transfer application. Make sure Bluetooth is on before you run it. Load Mii's onto your Wiimote from your console Run Mii Transfer and save them to files Open the .mii binary files up in Mii Editor (use File/Load). Click File again in Mii Editor and extract a Jpeg. The resulting images are NOT perfect (for example, the hair falls behind rather than in front of the eyebrows,a and the small beard ...

American Idol Mii's
March 23, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I have no idea why I did this. I was writing all day, and my brain started to fry, and I went downstairs to play some Wii Play billiards. I must have been reeling still from the Life of a Mii segment, and I started creating Mii's. Somehow I ended up creating one of the remaining American Idol contestants. And then it started to seem like a good idea to make all of them. So, here you go, here's the ten remaining: I'm not sure how I'll lord my god-like power over them. I could delete one each week. Or ...

Indies continue to wait for Wii support
February 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Back in November, I revealed in a column at Serious Games Source that despite their stated intention to support independent work, Nintendo wasn't planning to review independent developer applications for Wii dev kits until January 2007. We just got an update from Nintendo of America, and it looks like those of us interested in making Wii games, but who don't have a publisher contract, will have to wait even longer. According to our contact, the Wii Independent Developer Program is "on hold" until the end of the month, because "the Wii publishers are taking all of the available inventory, and ...

Nintendo: Wii is not an exercise machine
November 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

There are a bunch of leading articles on Yahoo! this morning about the Wii, including coverage of people breaking their TV's and windows by inadvertently hurling wiimotes. More interesting, though, is a story on "Wii elbow", in which we get an official Nintendo position on Wii as exercise. Short answer? It's not. Nintendo vice president of marketing Perrin Kaplan put it plainly. "[The Wii] was not meant to be a Jenny Craig supplement," she told the WSJ. "If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more." ...

My new column: Wii's Revolution is in the Past
November 28, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Serious Games Source has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on the Wii and its potential in serious games and indie games development. At the risk of putting a bug in our readers' ears, I think it's somewhat iconoclastic. A small taste of one thread of the column: I want to suggest that the major innovation of the Wii for serious, political, art, and independent games is not the unprecedented controller. Nor is it the potential to create new games with a dev kit still unavailable to most developers. Instead, the major innovation is a system that takes ...

Disability and the Wii
November 23, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Kotaku posted a letter they received about from a longtime Nintendo fan who also has Muscular Dystrophy. He's having trouble using the Wii effectively. I can't really play some of the games in Wii Sports, because of the broad physical movement required. ... I can however play games with more subtle movement controls such as Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This leads me to believe that more options related to the adjustment of movement control sensitivity could have been included in games like Wii Sports, as would fit the precision that the Wiimote seems capable of providing. I'm sure this ...

Creepy Burger King on Xbox 360
November 20, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to Brian over at Kotaku for reminding us that the Burger King Xbox 360 advergame / promo games are now available. All three feature the creepy King BK mascot. Pocket Bike Racer is a kart-style racing game, Big Bumper is a bumper car game, and Sneak King is a ... strange stealth action game wherein the player sneaks up on unsuspecting people and delivers them lunch. The games cost $3.99 a piece. One Kotaku commenter notes that they are "worth the price you pay for them," which is to say "they suck for the most part." Another offers positive, ...

StrawberrWii Banana Slurpee
November 9, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Even though we talk about advergames here, we usually don't talk about videogame marketing itself. But every now and then there's reason to. This morning I awoke to a strange banner ad on my usual visit to CNN.com. For 7-11. And Wii. I can buy a StrawberrWii Banana Slurpee and enter to win a Wii. Check out the, uhm, Slurpee straw guy uttering strange pseudo-slang on the site. Marketing promotions often have a charming non-sequitur to them, but StrawberrWii? I guess, erm, sometime after drinking it one does have to... well, you know. ...

Taking Bully Seriously
November 2, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Serious Games Source has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on the controversial Rockstar game Bully. This description sounds like it might have been lifted from a grant proposal for a serious game, one that a researcher might submit to the Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), or the National Science Foundation (NSF). But it’s not. It’s the premise for Rockstar Games' controversial new title, Bully. Read the whole thing over at Serious Games Source. ...

Wii, for non-gamers without jobs or lives
November 2, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Our friends at Kotaku have reported that Nintendo is suggesting that those of us who want a Wii this month should order early. Nintendo will ship 4 million before year's end, but that didn't stop Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime from saying, "The level of demand we're seeing goes beyond the ordinary. Retailers are telling us a significant fraction of customers pre-ordering Wii are nontraditional gamers - people looking for a better way to play." Of course, there's a good measure of marketing rhetoric at work here. But, truth be told, I can't seem to preorder a Wii. I think it ...

Ohmigod, I'm like totally going to the virtual mall
October 24, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Paul Hemp points us to a Harvard Business Review article on the future of e-tailing in virtual worlds. The article claims that e-commerce is going to shift from web transactions to online simulations of shopping, via virtual malls in 3d worlds. The usual references to American Apparel's store in Second Life, but goes beyond virtual stores as advertisements to suggest that shoppers will meet up online to go shopping. Sociologist Bob Moore calls it a return to the "social and recreational aspect of shopping." I'm probably cynical about everything these days, but I wonder if a return to the shopping ...

Dave Perry working on Dance MMO
October 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

According to 1up, former Shiny chief Dave Perry is working on a multiplayer online dancing game called Dance!. Details are very thin, but according to the report publisher Acclaim will offer the game for free, although players will be able (or need?) to purchase clothing and other accessories for their avatars. Details are thin, but the game has an official site with a short statement about the game. You can also sign up to be a beta tester. Strange as the concept might sound at first, it's already been partly proven in Ken Perlin, Mary Flanagan, and Andrea Hollingshead's Rapunsel ...

Right to Bore Arms (and new columns)
September 26, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Gonzalo and I each have a new column at Serious Games Source, the serious games arm of CMP's popular website Gamasutra. The first installment in my "Persuasive Games" column is up now, titled The Right To Bore Arms, about a new NRA-licenced game. ... By making firearms boring, slow, and arduous, NRA Gun Club might actually perform the rhetoric many people, including myself, have previously laughed-off as politicking and fabrication: the responsible handling of firearms. One might even go so far as to say that NRA Gun Club owes most of its rhetorical power to the commercial FPS. The very ...

Have a Paris Riot
August 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I've been increasingly interested in so-called documentary games (or docu-games), such as JFK Reloaded and Escape from Woomera and Waco Resurrection. In fact, Cindy Poremba and I wrote an article on documentary games that should be out in the coming months (click over to her blog for more links on the topic, to which she is devoting her Ph.D. research) So, I was excited to learn about a new game that sounded documentarian in nature. Paris Riots is a mod of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in which the player takes the role of police mustered to respond to rioting ...

Roll Your Own XBox 360 Games? Maybe...
August 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

As you have probably heard by now, Microsoft announced yesterday that they would offer a consumer-grade version of their XNA Game Studio product, allowing ordinary people to make games that run on the Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express will cost $99 (some say it's a required flat fee, some say it's an optional annual fee, not sure which is right) and contain a simpler, yet unnamed, set of tools compared to the professional-grade Xbox 360 dev kits. Apparently Microsoft also plans to offer another version of XNA Express for "professional game developers" early next year. Microsoft VP Peter Moore ...

Hand me the wiimote, stat!
July 28, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Kotaku reports that the Japanese surgery-adventure title Trauma Center: Second Opinion will be a Wii launch title. The game is being developed by Atlus, who created Trauma Center: Under the Knife for Nintendo DS, which I reviewed last year. A surgery game on Wii sounds like a sure thing, and I'm sure Trauma Center won't be the only one we see. Atlus insists that the title is not a port but a "wii-make," which has "new graphics and animation; new surgical implements and operation types; a second playable character with new missions; multiple difficulty modes; and a revised control system ...

Video Game Evangelism
July 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Brian Crecente of Kotaku and the Rocky Mountain News just wrote an article on Left Behind: Eternal Forces, which we've discussed here before (and he also blogs it at Kotaku). Brian asks if the game might be "the first mainstream PC agenda game," and also offers a preview of the gameplay in the article. I played the game at E3 and wrote about it in my forthcoming book, Persuasive Games: Videogames and Procedural Rhetoric. But, you can get a preview of my opinion in Brian's article: The prayer, he points out, is completely generic. "It could be Islamic or Judaic," ...

Microsoft offers Massive services to Nintendo and Sony
July 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

As regular readers will remember, Microsoft recently bought in-gae ad network Massive, Inc. A few weeks ago, Hollywood Reporter columnist Paul Hyman reported that Microsoft is interested in Sony and Nintendo using Massive's services, rather than locking its competitors out of the market. From the article, "If there are three different ad-serving solutions for the three different versions of, say, 'NFL Madden Football' on three different platforms, advertisers may choose not to participate," Browne says. "So we're trying to extend the olive branch and say to Sony and Nintendo that this is an area where we should all think about ...

A paean to Dogz, at whose heels Nintendogs nips
July 10, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Author's note: Nintendo has created a community at Gather.com to facilitate discussion of their "Touch Generations" series of games. I have cross-posted this article there, and readers may want to view the other articles in that series. Nintendogs, as many of you already know, is a pet puppy simulator. You the player adopt a pet (actually you purchase a pure-bred one), then train and tend to it. As some of you may also know, Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired to create Nintendogs after he got a pet puppy of his own. And as many of you also know, Nintendogs sits comfortably ...

Rock out Guitar Hero-style with Bratz
June 24, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

What with the commercial success and popular acclaim of Guitar Hero, it was only a matter of time before we'd see knock-offs. That time has come, and it comes wrapped in a license from Bratz, everyone's favorite sassy, Botox-lipped, fashionista dolls for young girls. Yes, I give you Bratz Groovin' Guitar Game, featuring both knock-off gameplay and these image-obsessed, consumer-frenzied slut-dolls. As manufacturer MGA Entertainment promises, you can "become a rock guitar goddess and play along with the Bratz™! The totally-hot TV graphics tell you when to play!" Like many Bratz products (seriously, you may not want to click that ...

Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, but train it for what?
June 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Author's note: Nintendo has created a community at Gather.com to facilitate discussion of their "Touch Generations" series of games. I have cross-posted this article there, and readers may want to view the other articles in that series. I know the game isn't new, but we never covered it properly here, and I'm rather glad we waited so we can benefit from a bit of perspective on the unusual yet popular title for Nintendo DS. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day was released in mid April by Nintendo as the first salvo in the company's new battle to ...

Own a piece of Exergaming history
June 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

One of the things that bothers me about videogame research is the lack of a sense of history. Sometimes you'd think that the only videogames that exist are EverQuest, WoW, and Grand Theft Auto. I've tried to do my part to correct this in my own research, and to that end I've managed to collect a number of rare and esoteric early advertising games and exergames (including, among others, Jack LaLanne Physical Conditioning). Well, now's your chance to own a piece of exergaming history. Avaialble on Ebay now is a sealed copy of Bandai's Stadium Events, widely considered the rarest ...

The Rapture will be Advertised
June 9, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Left Behind Games, creators of the forthcoming Left Behind: Eternal Forces, have announced a deal to include in-game advertising via the Double Fusion network. The game is based on the wildly popular book series of the same name, in which believers left behind after the rapture battle the army of the antichrist. I interviewed Left Behind Games and played the game at E3, and I've written it up for my forthcoming book but haven't yet done so for Water Cooler Games. I'll be doing that in the next week or so. The game takes place in New York City, and ...

A Merger of Demons, or, Microsoft to buy Massive
April 27, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Reportedly, Microsoft is poised to buy in-game ad network Massive Inc. for somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. The Wall Street Journal has the scoop, but both sides have refused comment. More coverage at 1up, Kotaku. In case you need a refresher, we aren't very fond of Massive and its ilk round these parts. The acquisition makes sense tho, from Microsoft's perspective. They have built their entire business, from DOS forward, on acquiring and refactoring software. That's how Microsoft works. Massive and the other in-game ad networks are conceived, funded, and run solely for the purposes of ...

Bodypad, the full-body controller
April 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Is DDR not enough for you? You may need (?) the Bodypad. It's "a fighting simulator actuated by your arms & legs that you plug as a gamepad on your best Playstation & Xbox games!" You attach movement sensors to your arms and legs, connect the thing to your game console (wirelessly), then kick and box and flail to your favorite fighting games, including Dead or Alive 2, Mortak Kombat Deception, Tekken 5, Soul Calibur 3, and more. If you can't quite envision how it works, there are some videos on the manufacturer's site. And they'll be exhibiting in the ...

Burger King on Xbox 360
April 11, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Rumor has it that market research company Greenfield Online is preparing a plan for Burger King to sell promotional Xbox 360 games in their stores. The games would apparently riff off "the most popular game types," adding the super-creepy Burger King character to an action, fighting, and racing game; customers would have the option of purchasing one for $4 with any Value Meal. No telling if there is any validity to the rumor, but Burger King has already ventured into in-game placement, most notably in the EA Sports title Fight Night Round 3 (click the banner on the bottom left ...

All Things Africa
February 8, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A few bits of Africa-related videogame news to report. First, you can now play and vote for the four finalists in the MTV crisis in Darfur student game design contest, which we mentioned last year. The contest asked student teams to design a videogame to build awareness about genocide in Darfur, Sudan. The network is offering a $50,000 prize to develop the game, although the students don't get to develop it, but rather a professional agency. The students will be invited to New York to advise and participate. Anyway, you can play the finalist games and vote at www.darfurisdying.com. The ...

Disaffected Update, T-shirts
February 7, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I wanted to give our readers a few useful updates on the state of Disaffected!. First and most importantly, we've rev'd the game to v. 1.0.3 on both PC and Mac. The update fixes several bugs, changes some awkward joystick controls (not the intentionally awkward ones), and corrects a few smaller issues. Some Mac users may not have been able to play at all for various reasons, and this update should fix that. If you've already got D! on your machine, I strongly recommend reinstalling this new version. And if you haven't yet endured the trials of our simulated copy ...

What worries the Virtual Magic Kingdom? Impropriety, but mostly sex.
January 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A little more than a year ago, I mused open-mouthed at Disney's intention to create a Habbo Hotel-like virtual world. Then back in May we announced the launch of the beta of Virtual Magic Kingdom (I was so disappointed they didn't call it Marketingland). We logged over 100 comments on that entry, some interesting but most inane -- users scrounging for cheat codes or mistaking WCG for a forum where empty chatter goes without notice. I got tired of the recent comments filling up with such things, so I turned off comments at the start of this month. Then, a ...

Persuasive Games launches Disaffected!
January 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I'm happy to announce that my studio Persuasive Games has released Disaffected!, a videogame parody of the Kinko's copy store. The game puts the player in the role employees forced to service customers under the particular incompetences common to a Kinko’s store. It gives the player the chance to step into the demotivated position of real FedEx Kinkos employees. Feel the indifference of these purple-shirted malcontents first-hand, and consider the possible reasons behind their malaise -- is it mere incompetence? Managerial affliction? Unseen but serious labor issues? Disaffected is the first in (what I hope will become) a series of ...

The Trouble with Handhelds for Indies
January 7, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Gonzalo and I love handhelds. Especially the Nintendo DS and the GameBoy Advance, but the PSP has grown on me too despite its lack of interesting software. I've always been fond of handhelds, from the Mattel eletronic games to Game and Watch. I remember lusting over the NEC Turbo Express, the first 16-bit portable handheld which, ingeniously, played the same game carts as the underappreciated NEC Turbo-Grafx 16 console. Handheld tech "lags" behind consoles by a generation or two, for those people who are concerned about such things. For the rest of us, handhelds offer a welcome respite from the ...

Volvo Drive for Life
November 14, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The NY Times reports that Volvo and Microsoft have collaborated on a game for Xbox called Volvo Drive for Life, "a showcase for the Volvo nameplate, three Volvo models and the longtime Volvo brand identity as the car designed with safety foremost." Clearly, this won't be a Burnout clone -- players drive on a proving grounds course with and without safety features in the Volvo S40 S60R, and XC90. The player can then drive the car in three real-world courses, Pacific Coast Highway, the Italian Grand Prix, and the road to the ice hotel in Jukkasjarvi. Real-world is relative, I ...

DDR finally comes to GameCube
October 25, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

For those of you intrigued by the potential health benefits and den-floor fun of Dance Dance Revolution, but who chose Nintendo's GameCube as your family console, you've been out of luck. Either you needed to add the requisite PlayStation or Xbox console necessary to play the numerous versions of the game pumped out by Konami, or you had to settle for lower quality alternatives. Until today, that is. Available today for GameCube is Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix. ...

McNintendo
October 18, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to our friends at Kotaku for digging up this nugget (har har): apparently Nintendo is about to announce that free DS WiFi service will be available in McDonalds. Perhaps they will later replace the Playplace with a big pile of beanbags for our increasingly large cheeseburger-stuffed lads and lasses to sit whilst they smear their cola-stickied hands over their DS screens. Sticky fingers and chicken nuggets aside, does this move just reinforce the perception that the DS is a console for kids, or does it create new opportunity for a more generally popular game platform? ...

Anti-Japan War Online
August 25, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

According to Interfax China, a Chinese online gaming company called PowerNet is creating Anti-Japan War Online, about the Japanese invasion of China during WWII. Players can only play as Chinese in the game. Here's what the article says about it: "The game will allow players, especially younger players, to learn from history. They will get a patriotic feeling when fighting invaders to safeguard their motherland," a PowerNet Project Manager, surnamed Liu, told Interfax. What's more, it sounds like this is the start of something bigger. The China Communist Youth League (CCYL), who cooperated in the development of Anti-Japan War Online, ...

Farming, Gender, Narcotics, and other related things
August 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Last week Natsume released new versions of Harvest Moon: Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life for GameCube and Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town for GBA. I hesitate to say that I'm a "big fan" of Harvest Moon, but like Animal Crossing it's a game that charms and allures me, both as a player and as a designer. The 3d Playstation and Gamecube varieties felt too complicated, but I've played an embarrassing number of hours of Harvest Moon on GBA, and I've still yet to convince someone to marry my sullen, zucchini-planting avatar. I do still carry my chickens around ...

Islam games, Christian games, ...
July 28, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

We recently reported on the 4th Christian Game Developers Conference, happening this week in Portland. On a related and unrelated note, I recently came upon this op-ed (thanks to Andrew), by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman cites a WCJ report that the Iqra Learning Center, a site investigated after the 7/7 London bombings was the sole UK distributor of Islamgames, "a U.S.-based company that makes video games [featuring] apocalyptic battles between defenders of Islam and opponents." The op-ed cites Ummah Defense I, in which "the world is 'finally united under the Banner of Islam' in 2114, until a revolt ...

Façade Ships!
July 5, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

After 5 years of development, Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas have released Façade, their one-act interactive drama, under their new aptly-named shingle Procedural Arts. You can download Façade for free, or if you don't want to wait for all 800MB of it, you can order a 2-CD installer. Those of you who haven't seen Façade yet are missing out. It represents the latest and greatest in AI-driven characters, dynamic drama management, and it doesn't give up any humanity in favor of pure technology (The New York Times recently called Façade "the future of video games"). You can read more about ...

Virtual World Tourism
June 27, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Wired News just published a story in which I'm quoted on the new GamePal account rental service, a system that allows players to pay a fee to visit MMOGs with characters of their choosing. Here's how Wired explains it: GamePal customers pay a $300 deposit, $150 for the first month and $130 for each subsequent month for access to their choice of 50 accounts (available initially) for 14 popular MMOs, including EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes and Ultima Online. The article has since been Slashdotted, and general sentiments in the /. posts as well as the Wired article ...

E3: Gamics software
June 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm finally getting back to posting my E3 news. Newcomer Planetwide Games is releasing an MMOG called RYL: Path of the Emperor. It's main novel features are guild wars and player-to-player combat, plus a $1 million tournament. But the most interesting feature doesn't have anything to do with the game itself. A couple weeks ago Gonzalo pointed us to Gamics, a resource for creating comic books from games (machinima:film::gamics:comics). RYL is shipping with the terribly named but quite cool GameFreq Comic Book Creator. It's a Windows app for authoring gamics. The software features templates for comic pages with various panel ...

DS Brain Training
May 26, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

A few weeks back I wrote about the similarities between Lumines and performance intelligence tests, and then I fell upon some rumors of mental workout applications for Nintendo DS. No sign of them at E3 this year, so I wasn't sure if it was for real. Now comes word of another, different mental workout game, DS Brain Training. Gaming Age forum poster Jonnyram explains that it's based on a book by Ryuta Kawashima, a cognitive neuroscientist. He explains that you play by rotating the DS and writing on the right (or left if you are left handed). His impression? "Overall, ...

Virtual Magic Kingdom Beta
May 24, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The beta version of the perverse Disney virtual marketing world thing we previously discussed is now available, although as of 10am EDT this morning the site was "too busy to process my request." Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom is a free online multi-Player game that lets you experience the awesome magic of Disney Theme Parks from home. Live inside of Disney's virtual world to create your own experiences, control your online Character and interact with Players from around the globe! (via Guardian Gamesblog, via Alice) ...

The Hollywood Game
May 23, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

The Guardian runs a story on the game industry's Hollywood envy. Well, actually maybe I should say "synergy" rather than "envy", but you get the message. The article quotes yours truly and features this noble website. My point, basically, is that the game industry may believe that its following Hollywood's steps, but that's simply an illusion. Hollywood is a far more complex and polished structure that is very well aware of the complexities of its market and niches, while the game's industry is fixated on the blockbuster. Even the downloadable market sees nothing but the blockbuster (repeat after me: "we ...

E3: The Bible Game
May 19, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm running a bit behind with E3 coverage, but I'm going to try to catch up today. While everyone else covers the predictable stuff, I'm going to try to share my impressions of the more unique games on the floor this year. I knew about The Bible Game from Crave before arriving at the show and was happy to stumble upon it on the floor. There are two flavors, one for GBA and one for PS2. Disappointingly, both are quiz games, although each tries to overcome that creative defect in a different way. ...

Two new medical sims for DS
May 16, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The E3 chatter has begun. Among the more interesting, two new medical sims for Nintendo DS, Caduceus from Atlus Tendo Dokuta from Spike. I find it interesting that so much early coverage has remarked on the novelty of this game... doesn't anyone remember Life & Death from back in 1992? Great idea to use the touch screen of the DS for surgery, but it's funny to see how things come around again. ...

Does expression come in HD too?
May 14, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

By now, most of our readers have heard and seen Microsoft's official unveiling of the Xbox 360, their next-generation console. Following through on Xbox chief J Allard's depressingly trite future vision for videogames at GDC, the focus of the Xbox 360 is visual resolution and graphical clarity. Microsoft's Robbie Bach summarizes the device's potential as seen by its creators: Remember going from 2-D games to 3-D? We're going from today's 3-D worlds to high-definition worlds that really will look like a movie or television show ... That is going to lead to fundamental changes in expectations, and Xbox 360 is ...

Take it easy, it's just a game
April 25, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

What if somebody decided that you are the bad guy/gal? Would you like it to happen to you? What if you are just a fictional bad guy? The obvious answer if that you should take it easy, since it is just a game, right? Everybody knows that you are not really bad, or at least they should. Well, it's an interesting problem, not just in games but in fiction in general, and there is no easy answer to it. Now is the turn to Bangladesh to get really pissed off, since Socom 3 will portray it as a terrorist state. ...

Mental Exercise with Nintendo DS
April 1, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Wow, talk about timing. Following on the heels of my musings about Lumines on PSP and performance intelligence, Spong News reports that Nintendo has announced a set of non-gaming applications for DS, including "a mental workout application featuring mathematical and linguistic problems, a logic-driven selection of puzzles and perhaps most tellingly of all, a complete electronic dictionary." I wonder if these follow on the heels of the WarioWare Touched bonus items... things like a calculator and pet chameleon that you can unlock by playing individual character games. Anyway, click on the screenshots at right for a bigger version; these apps ...

PSP and Performance Intelligence
March 27, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

So, I admit it, I bought a PSP. I hadn't planned to, but there were tons at Target yesterday, and I figured it was either now or later so might as well make it now. I had and continue to have doubts about the device. Again and again Sony tries their hand at this notion of an integrated mobile device. Five years ago they made an investment in Palm and started rolling out Clié devices with the same promise of integrated music, productivity, movies, etc. They never seem to get it quite right. It's not an easy task to be ...

Halo for Jesus
March 20, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

This is different. The Christian Post writes on How to Witness Using Halo 2, a rather bizarre account of how youth ministers are teaching kids to use Halo 2 to "testify the faith." Apparently the ministries really don't like Halo 2 (on account of its violence), but they perceive the game to be so culturally pervasive that they can "take something hugely popular in our culture and turn it into a way to share the most important message." One minister equates the game's premise -- a hero saving the world from aliens -- with Jesus saving the world from eternal ...

Drug Power-Ups
March 17, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Today's NY Times reports on new games that allow players to take drugs as a part of the gameplay (thanks to Jane). Narc, a game about arresting drug dealers, allows the player to take the drugs they confiscate. Each drug temporarily improves gameplay but also has side effects. A digital puff of marijuana, for example, temporarily slows the action of the game like a sports replay. Taking an Ecstasy tablet creates a mellow atmosphere that can pacify aggressive foes. The use of crack momentarily makes the player a marksman: a "crack" shot. What concerns me most about these games is ...

Gaming for Peace (sort of)
February 23, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I have a feeling that we've covered this before, but maybe I'm just starting to see all the military games bleed into one. To be fair, this is a bit different than the average military game. Virtual Environment Cultural Training for Operation Readiness (VECTOR) is a game that provides cultural training for military forces. Of course, the website does suggest that the purpose of such training is "survival and mission success," which isn't a terribly empathetic goal, but I guess that shouldn't be surprising anymore. More interestingly, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict has created a game called A Force ...

Pepsi-branded Nintendo DS
February 21, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I was traveling in Europe and thus a bit disconnected, so this news isn't brand new, but it is branded (that's jetlag humor right there). Anyway, Pepsi and Nintendo have created a cross-marketing campaign around a Pepsi-branded Nintendo DS. The Japan-only console is Pepsi blue and comes with Pepsi-branded earphones. You can also get some cool Nintendo-themed Pepsi bottle toppers (?) to, well, adorn your Pepsi bottles. (via Kotaku) There's no Pepsi-branded game for the console, but this promotion sure is reminiscent of the Coca Cola-branded Game Gear we covered here recently. ...

Maoist game reviews
February 7, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

For those of you bemoaning the lack of red reviews available, you can now read Maoist Game Reviews. Most interestingly, as Clockwork Grue points out over on Game Girl Advance, the maoist reviews focus almost entirely on content and story, while most western reviews focus almost entirely on technical aspects (Maoists on Fallout vs. Gamespot on Fallout). Clockwork Grue segues into a discussion on games journalism, but I'm more interested in what this sort of example suggests about a topic of ongoing research for me: game criticism. It's not surprising that a communist perspective on any videogame would attempt to ...

Wireless Dance Pads have Two Left Feet
January 7, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I hate wires. Hate them. One of the main advantages to the early GameCube days for me was the WaveBird, in my opinion the first good quality wireless controller. So, I was thrilled this holiday season when I saw Datel's PS2800D Wireless Dance Pad. It's got the same non-slip bottom and 1" foam insert material as RedOctane's excellent Ignition Pad, but the Datel runs wirelessly. And best of all, the Datel costs $49.99, half as much as the Ignition. I bought two of these Datel pads recently and just got a chance to try them out tonight. The pads themselves ...

Studieren une langue étrangère con The Sims
January 4, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The Journal of Language Learning and Technology has published an article in this month's issue about learning a foreign language through a modded version of The Sims, written by MIT Comparative Media masters student Ravi Purushotma. (via Slashdot) ...

Swing your plastic peripherals with Xavix
December 28, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I fell upon the Xavix XaviXPORT at Best Buy this week. It's a small game console that seems to be focused on games that use wireless, external peripheral controllers. More specifically, XaviXPORT seems to be designed for sports games; currently, they offer a bowling game with green wireless bowling ball, a baseball game with wireless bat, and a tennis game with wireless racquet. There's little question that Xavix hopes to benefit from the growing market for videogames that engender physical activity, such as Yourself! Fitness (on WCG: 1, 2) and DDR. XaviXPORT runs a borderline-reasonable US$79.99 retail, and each of ...

Review of Yourself! Fitness
December 22, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

This was a big year for the dance fitness game, with significant numbers of new consoles sold after NBC's Today morning show ran a feature about how gamers were losing weight -- significant weight -- playing Konami's Dance Dance Revolution. Sony's Eye Toy has made strides in this direction, and indeed the new version of DDR includes a (quite difficult) mode that can be played with the dance pad and the Eye Toy. In the last month mediocre peripheral manufacturer Mad Catz finally brought a dance pad to the Game Cube. Moving beyond software, more expensive hardware platforms abounded at ...

Politics as unusual
December 13, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Last week, China banned the seemingly prosaic game Soccer Manager 2005 because it depicted Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet as countries, and thus "harmed China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," according to a Chinese news service. This week, South Korea's media rating board announced that it will not approve Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2. The game apparently features commando missions in a war-torn 2007 North Korea, implying a very near-term military conflict in the region (thanks to Nate for the tip). What's interesting about these examples is that they undeniably affirm the fact that games function politically, even games (e.g. ...

Other Playing
December 6, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I'm in Copenhagen for Other Players, which starts today. My talk is on casual multiplayer games, and the paper is available in the online proceedings, here (509k pdf). In addition to general coverage of the interplay between games and the world, the paper covers some of my games, including the Howard Dean Game and Activism. ...

Dance Pads for GameCube
December 4, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Peripheral manufacturer MadCatz has just released the first dance pad peripheral for Nintendo GameCube. They've bundled it with their first published game as well, MC Groovz danceCrazy, for $49.99. The dance pad and game supports 8 directions instead of the normal 4. I'm constantly hedging on console recommendations to parents who want to play DDR type games but also want good games to play with their kids. I have to say, this completely tips the scales, even if the dance game isn't as good as DDR. Of course, judging by the screenshots, it doesn't look as good, and the playlist ...

Play thy enemy
November 16, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

WCG friend Clive Thompson writes at Slate on Halo 2 as a statement about military politics. ... the ideological payload here comes merely from the act of flipping sides in medias res. In jumping across the foxhole, you're forced to acknowledge that your enemy has its own subjective, if flawed, reasons for fighting, that maybe they're something more than a cardboard cutout you use for target practice. I find these observations quite smart. Could it be that the "fictional" games are more political than the "reality games"? ...

Hyrule Music School now open
September 10, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I'm now officially the world's biggest geek. I just got my Ocarina of Time from Songbird Ocarinas. If you had a Nintendo 64, you probably remember it from The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Those of you who were under a ROCK back in 1998 - 2000, there is a great Zelda Collector's Edition for Gamecube that contains those two plus the first two NES Zelda games. Anyway, I've already learned to play Saria's Song and The Song of Time pretty well. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but I'm pretty sure ...

Games Gone Wild
September 3, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Aptly named Topheavy Studios has released The Guy Game for XBox and PS2. It's basically Girls Gone Wild meets You Don't Know Jack, a quiz game in which spring break girls expose themselves. But pay attention Guys ... during the Bonus question, you must play as a team to boost the Flash-O-Meter to See More Skin! Uhm, yeah. I guess it was bound to happen. You can also read the IGN and Gamespot reviews, which are disturbingly positive. ...

Japanese have weirder fun with Rice Bowl and Curry House games
August 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

More evidence that the Japanese are having more fun, or at least weirder fun. Two popular Japanese restaurant chains, curry house CoCo Ichibanya and rice bowl chain Yoshinoya both have their own PS2 titles. Yoshinoya should be familiar to many Westerners  — they were everywhere in Los Angeles, and I stoically recall their profoundly repulsive rice bowls. Ichibanya is probably unfamiliar, but as the review says, it is "the McDonalds of Curry Houses in Japan." The titles are unavailable outside of Japan, but thanks to two new English-language reviews we can get a sense of how they play. Read UK-based ...

Chris Crawford needs Java Developers
July 19, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Well-known game designer and political game pioneer (Balance of Power) has announced that he has released the code for his 1990 enivronmental strategy game Balance of the Planet into the public domain. His goal is to get a version working on contemporary equipment. But the project needs Java developers. If you're interested, visit Chris's site to contact him. You should also have a look around if you haven't before. (via Serious Games) ...

Kuma\PR : more on the reception of newsgaming
July 12, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Important note: Kuma and Kuma\War has no affiliation with Gonzalo's Newsgaming project; I am adopting the term "newsgaming" here in a more general sense. Inc. Magazine ran an interesting piece in their August issue on Kuma\War, the subscription-based game that lets you play recent events in the continued conflicts in the Middle East (and elsewhere in the future, promises the game's developer, Kuma Reality Games). The Inc. piece focuses on the "bad PR" the game has received, including accusations that the game exploits soldiers, takes advantage of real suffering for profit, and panders to the Department of Defense, among other ...

No gay marriage in The Sims 2?
July 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

WCG friend and cool cat journalist Clive Thompson wrote an article for Slate a while ago about gay marriage in videogames. Now he's noticed that the Maxis FAQ on the game no longer talks about gay marriage. Sez Clive, I wonder if Maxis has changed its mind on this -- or whether it's still in there, but the company is just trying to downplay it a bit? It could also be a simple editorial mistake... Anybody know? ...

Opinion changing games
June 20, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A couple months ago, the Guardian ran a story on opinion changing games, featuring me and Gonzalo among others. This month, PC Gamer Magazine invites you to tell them about your own opinion-changing game experiences. I'm having a go, you should too. Has a PC game ever changed the way you think, feel, or acted in the real world? If so, what was the game, and how did it affect you? If not, do you think games can have this kind of power? Send your stories to letters@pcgamer.com and one randomly chosen respondent will receive a free game. ...

Ubisoft to publish US Election Game
June 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

This just in, Ubisoft has announced that it will publish The Political Machine, "a new game for PCs that puts players in control of the 2004 presidential campaigns of either incumbent U.S. President George W. Bush or Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry." From the release: Players will also have the option of creating their own Republican or Democratic candidate or managing the campaign of a historical figure like Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt. The game will allow players to raise funds, barnstorm for votes and join candidate debates. From what I can tell, it sounds like a turn-based strategy game. ...

LucasArts engineer and 9 year-old create cancer game
May 9, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ben Duskin, a 9 year-old in remission from Leukemia wanted to create a game in which the hero kills cancer cells. The Make-a-Wish Foundation teamed Ben up with Eric Johnston of LucasArts. As the press release says, "For months, Ben and Eric have been meeting on a regular basis to make the game just as Ben envisioned it." Here's a blurb about the game: The object of the game is to destroy all mutated cells and to collect the seven shields which provide protection from common side effects of chemotherapy.  The shields are guarded by a “monster”: Colds  - Iceman ...

Homestar Runner for Atari 2600
May 7, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

For those of you who enjoy social criticism the Homestar Runner way, Paul Slocum has announced that the first official Homestar Runner video game will be available in June... only for the Atari 2600. The game was designed by Slocum and Homestar Runner creators Matt and Mike Chapman. According to the site, you can play as Homestar, Homsar, or Strongsad. Strongbad is the enemy. I have no idea if the game will carry the deft (and daft) social humor of the animations, but I sure hope so. You can get your copy from homestarrunner.com for a cool $40 when it's ...

Getting Off in Virtual Worlds
May 4, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ah, irony. Just as TL Taylor launched a discussion on Terra Nova about women players' ability to birth in-game offspring in the forthcoming Wild West SIM MMOG, I got an email about the new Massively Multiuser Online Adult Environment, The Red Light World (warning: nudity). If you're over 18 and want to be a beta tester, they're looking for new, uhm, members. ...

Interactive Design & Children Conference
April 21, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The 3rd Annual International Conference for Interaction Design and Children (whew, call it IDC) takes place June 1 - 3 at the University of Maryland. Keynote rockstars include: Marvin Minsky (MIT), Alan Kay (HP), Seymour Papert (MIT/U. of Maine), Alice Cahn (Cartoon Network), Henry Jenkins (MIT), and Alice Wilder (Blue's Clues). (via miscellany is the largest category) ...

Army not so bad, say gamers
April 20, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Wagner James Au wrote a story last week for Salon called John Kerry: The Video Game, about how video games have influenced young people's opinion about the armed services. Here's a good tidbit: A third of the country's young people have an elevated view of the Army, not foremost for anything it's actually done lately, but because of the computer game they played, which just simulates it. The article continues to describe Au's experience playing Battlefield: Vietnam as "LtJohnKerry" to see if it would influence his political opinion ...

WSJ on monetizing ad space in videogames
April 8, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The Wall Street Journal published an article on Nielsen's new Video Game Ad Tools (paid registration required). Update: you can also read about it via Activision's press release. Nielsen Entertainment and Activision have rolled out a suite of new tools that promise to track the number of gamers who see ads in video games. The tools reflect Madison Avenue's growing interest in video games as ad vehicles, especially in the 18-34 male demographic.   The article points out that most in-game ad deals are barter-based marketing arrangements. Activision and Nielsen want to create a "rate card" and do impression tracking ...

Gay video game characters
March 18, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The second issue of Armchair Arcade is out, including an article on Gay Video Game Characters by Matt Barton. ...

Playstation for the Superbowl
January 31, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Apparently for the last eight years, the Playstation has correctly predicted the winner of the Superbowl. From Sports Illustrated (SI.com). An annual competition between two Super Bowl participants playing 989 Sports' NFL game on a PlayStation 2 has become a perfectly reliable predictor of the real game: All eight winners have gone on to claim the Lombardi Trophy the following Sunday. So, does superstition counts as a real-world effect of videogames? ...

"Save the Whales" for Atari 2600
January 22, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Apparently someone made a game for Atari 2600 called Save the Whales, whose proceeds were supposed to benefit Greenpeace. The game was never released (follow the link above for screenshots). You control a submarine that must "Save the Whales" by shooting the harpoons or nets thrown by the ship at the top of the screen.  You can choose between harpoons or nets by changing the difficulty switch, harpoons are smaller and faster than the nets so they're harder to hit.  If a harpoon or net hits your sub you'll have some damage, if you take five hits it's game over ...

Sony/EA music crossmarketing deal
January 15, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

An interesting music cross-marketing deal for "NFL Street" which I guess is a street football game (?). This is particularly intriguing and, in my opinion, deeply deluded: Two songs from the soundtrack, EA said, will be turned into music videos featuring gameplay footage and will be released as singles for radio. What do you think? Is it an effective way to promote the game? ...

This is not a game - the known and the unknown
December 10, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

Today I got my copy of PC Gamer in the mail. Right inside the cover I found a striking fold-out ad spread; the first two pages show a giant American flag, with the words This is Not a Game etched over the stars. Folding out the panel transforms the flag into the Japanese rising sun, the stripes becoming its rays. Emblazoned over the red sun are the words, This is War. It's an ad for Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, the latest offering in EA's popular World War II series. Underneath the logo, the ad punctuates itself thus: You Don't ...

Who are you? ... Nintendo and the identity of political games
November 17, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

This isn't really what we have in mind when we talk about Political Games, but Nintendo has been running a promotional campaign for Mario Party 5 in which Mario runs for president. The official game site ressembles a political campaign site (in a certain way). Mario's platform is simple: More Minigames for All. The Mario party (as it were) is part of Nintendo's elaborate new advertising campaign, who are you. The campaign represents well-known Nintendo character heads grafted onto news images, art, film, sculpture, and other cultural artifacts. It's something like Apple Think Different meets Found Art. There are some ...

The future of women gamers
November 9, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

A new, longish article on Game Girl Advance talks about the future of women gamers. It focuses specifically on the future of women console gamers, and I'd like to submit that this is the primary flaw of the article. Put more simply, I'm suspicious that the future of women gamers is bound to the future of console gaming. That's not to say that the future of women gamers is wholly unrelated to the future of the console market (for example, several of the comments attached to the GGA article point out that the XBox in its current form factor may ...

An alternative to fun
November 3, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

I gave a talk today at the ITU on persuasive games (I'll post a version here in the near future), and afterward we had an interesting discussion about fun in games. One of my precepts regarding rhetorical games is that they reject fun as a first principle of games. This doesn't mean that rhetorical games are therefore not fun, but rather that they don't measure themselves on the total fun they generate. Instead, rhetorical games need to measure themselves based on the impact they have in the material world. ...

Leapster, the educational handheld gaming device
November 1, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

Educational electronics manufacturer LeapFrog announced the availability of their new Leapster educational gaming handheld, calling it an alternative to Nintendo's GameBoy system, offering "educational alternative for portable game playing." Slashdot also reports on a LeapFrog spokesperson's comments on the launch: ...

The Light-sensitive GameBoy game
October 22, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

Konami has released Boktai, a GameBoy game with a solar sensor that uses sunlight to alter gameplay. According to the publisher, the game has a solar sensor built into the GBA cartridge. Certain monsters can only be destroyed by harnessing sunlight. According to game reviewer Gene Emery, artificial light isn't good enough; the cart required real sunlight. Vampires and other monsters in the game flourish at night, so the physical location of the player has a direct result on the game. What I find most interesting about this game is the direct impact of the physical world on the gameplay. ...