Games for Change: Documentary Games
June 19, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

A bit late, I suppose, but I wanted to post my notes from the Documentary Games panel at last month's Games for Change festival. These are rough notes, but they should be sufficient to give you a gist of the sessions. You can find them after the jump. ...

Shaken Baby? Ok! Brassiere? Offensive!
April 23, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Oh, Apple. You won't let me put a bra in my iPhone game, but it's ok for me to shake a virtual iPhone baby to death. (thanks to Brenda) ...

XNA Game Camp
March 9, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Across the pond, Channel 4 and Microsoft are hosting a 48 hour "game camp" at the University of Derby on March 20, with games to be created in XNA 3.0. The jam-like event will be themed, with the themes to be announced at the event. Here's how the organizers describe it: The event will be themed to challenge the students to develop games that look beyond the traditional puzzle or first person shooter in a bid to create new conversations around gaming and attract the attention of new audiences. We'll have to wait to see the outcomes, but apparently you'll be ...

Jetset Sale, Optional Fairness
March 3, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

I previously announced the release of Jetset: A Game for Airports for iPhone. We've finally done a formal press release about the game. As a part of that effort, we've temporarily reduced the price of the game to $3.99, so now's a good time to buy it on the iTunes App Store. We've also made a few small updates since the game since release. The most notable change involved enlarging the passenger for easier touch-removal of trousers and shoes. But the most recent update, to v1.2, is worth talking about further. More on it after the jump. ...

Social Issue Games Toolkit
January 28, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Games for Change has announced the release of Let the Games Begin: A Toolkit 4 Making Social Issue Games, a multimedia resource for organizations interested in using games as a part of their outreach and communications efforts. Here's how they describe it: The Toolkit guides organizations through the process of making a successful social issue game. It includes video presentations from experts in the field, original articles, and links to many other articles, books, websites, and game examples. ...

Reflect, an Art Game
June 6, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Reflect is an art game created by Mike Treanor as his MFA thesis at UC Santa Cruz. In Treanor's words, the game offers "the ability to see the perspectives of other creatures." I've argued before that one of the powerful features of videogames is their ability to put the player in different shoes. Reflect hopes to take that idea further, with an experience of how other creatures look and move. That said, this isn't a game about the challenges of being wildlife -- in fact, the experience of mimicking creatures is very abstract, representing only one or two gestures that ...

My new column: Texture
May 10, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on how videogames are tactile. But unlike paintings and plats principaux, games are not static scenes or objects -- they are interactive models of experiences. To simulate the behavior, rather than just the appearance of texture, games have to use more than visual effects. You can read the article over at Gamasutra. ...

Chris Crawford's Nine Breakthroughs
April 12, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Games industry curmudgeon and interactive storytelling proponent Chris Crawford spoke at the Game Developers Exchange conference here in Atlanta yesterday. As a part of the talk he explained the "Nine Breakthroughs" that were important to his work on Storytron. I recorded them here, after the jump. ...

Indie Games Have No Mainstream to Oppose
March 7, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Andreas Jan-Sudmann has an article in the newly released issue of the journal Eludamos. In Innovation NOT Opposition: The Logic of Distinction of Independent Games, Jan-Sudmann argues that indie games have no coherent mainstream to oppose, and they founder partly for this reason. The author locates this problem both in indie and mainstream games, wondering if the latter aren't mainstream enough culturally to support a viable indie opposition. Here's a key part of the argument: That such an aesthetic in which the oppositional logic is embedded visibly does not exist yet or only marginally may have various reasons - and ...

GDC 2008: I-fi: Immersive Fidelity in Games
February 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Clint Hocking on immersion. For the last three years I've been the creative director on FarCry 2. I'm not going to talk about my game, but I want to contextualize my talk in relation to it. One of our first tasks opn FarCry 2 was to figure out what the core of the game would be. After a couple weeks, we identified a number of pillars, which formed a mnemonic, FORMIDable Freedom of Gameplay - play the way the player chooses with his own stragei Open World - open continuous workd with no loading Realism - set in a credible ...

GDC 2008: Out of the Box, EA Fuels New Ideas with Madden and Sims Titles
February 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Presentation by Rob Moore, Steve Seabolt (EA) at the Serious Games Summit, Game Developers Conference 2008. Moore got stuck in bad weather but sent along some materials about A number of EA Sports titles are used by athletes, including by NASCAR drivers to get used to tracks, by pro basketball and football players to memorize. These were just unexpected uses of the ordinary commercial versions of games. More recently, sports training professionals have become interested in using versions of these games for their purposes. One such company went to EA with this idea. The result is Madden Play Action Simulator, ...

Dating Violence Game Contest
February 16, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Brian Crecente reports that his brother has launched a flash game design contest for games on the topic of dating violence prevention. First prize is $1,000, and entires are due April 15, 2008. More information here. ...

My new column: Videogame Vignette
February 12, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on a student game from USC Interactive Media called Hush, an unusual game about an unusual historical and political moment. The article uses Hush as and the idea of adapting the vignette style to videogames. In literature, poetry, and film, a vignette is a brief, indefinite, evocative description or account of a person or situation. Vignettes are usually meant to give a sense of a character rather than to advance a narrative. ... Hush offers a glimpse, as it were, of how vignette might be used successfully in games. You ...

Parking Wars on Facebook
December 22, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

This isn't the first Facebook advergame, but it's the first I've seen that really tries to take advantage of the service's social graph. There is a new A&E television series called Parking Wars, which starts in January. The subject of the show is probably the only division of the police force not yet to have their own reality/documentary series: metermaids and parking enforcers. Parking Wars the game is a Facebook game built to promote the show. It's very simple. When you add the app you get your own street with a handful of spaces. Some have special rules, like only ...

Do Girls Prefer 2D Games?
December 18, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The term is finally over and I'm ready to get back in the saddle here, at least until the holidays further interrupt our regularly scheduled programming. This study isn't new, but it's the first time I'd seen it. Tina R. Ziemek published the results of a study on 2D vs 3D game preference in boys and girls ages 13 and 14 in Two-D or not Two-D: Gender Implications of Visual Cognition in Electronic Games. The study asked boys and girls to choose games from a Nintendo 64 emulator start screen and measured preference through choice and post-study ranking. The results ...

Please play Jason Rohrer's Passage
December 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I am back from Montreal, where I attended the Montreal International Games Summit and spent some time with the folks at Concordia and also attended Kokoromi's Gamma 256 show. There's lots to say about all of these, but for now I want to point you to one of the games from the Gamma show. The constraint of the contest was 256 pixels square or less. All the games were very good, but the standout for me was Jason Rohrer's superb specimen, Passage. I don't even want to say too much about it here, but I think it's a terrific example ...

Slamdance Game Festival shutters, festers
October 20, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Almost three years ago, Persuasive Games exhibited at the Slamdance Game Festival. We had a great time, and got a strong feeling of real "indieness" from the event and attendees. We were lucky enough to go back in 2006, showing Disaffected!. We had an equally great time, including getting to watch friends Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern win the Grand Jury Prize that year for Facade. Then last year, Super Columbine Massacre RPG was named a finalist at the festival, and subsequently pulled by the festival organizers. Considerable drama ensued, the details of which are too many and too complex ...

Two Outstanding Perspectives
August 18, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Andy Nulman on why there's nothing wrong with single-player games: But, given the success of community Web sites like MySpace and Facebook, all of a sudden everyone thinks there needs to be "community" associated with everything. It's "community this" and "community that." Hey, have you ever heard of the game "Solitaire"? It's one of the most popular games in the world and it's just one person enjoying a game all by themselves. Nothing wrong with that. Rob Fahey on why "game" needs to mean more than gamers let it: Besides, the accuracy doesn't matter; the word "game" is a label ...

My new column: How I learned to stop worrying about gamers
August 2, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one a response to Justin Peters' Slate article on educational games (previously discussed here on WCG), and a meditation on who players are, at least the ones I'm interested in. I still have nothing but respect for my more traditional industry colleagues, but I’ve stopped worrying about impressing the games industry and its pundits. Or at least, I’ve stopped worrying about impressing them first. Read the whole article over on Gamasutra. ...

My new column: Designing for Tragedy
June 14, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, Designing for Tragedy, about V-Tech Rampage and making games about profoundly tragic events. Today, a month after Lambourn first released the game, discussion of it has all but disappeared. Some might point to this fact in an argument for the game’s insignificance; it spurred little reaction save shock and disapproval. A web forum set up by a third party to discuss the game has logged no more than five total posts. But I do not believe we ought to forget, or hide, or disavow this game. Read the whole thing over at ...

My new column: Why We Need More Boring Games
May 22, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Gamasutra has published my latest Persuasive Games column, Why We Need More Boring Games. From the column: But few developers set their sights on a lower-hanging, if more bitter fruit: games that would demystify the medium, to use [Marc] Ecko’s words. Literature and film are indeed media in the service of art, but they are also media in the service of much more mundane goals. Read the whole thing over at Gamasutra. ...

Intimate Controllers
May 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Think you've seen every kind of alternate interface? NYU ITP student Jenny Chowdhury has devoted her masters thesis work to making a videogame controller out of a bra and undershorts. She calls it Intimate Controllers. Players have to touch each other in intimate places to play games created for the device. There's a video of one of the prototypes on her website, which seems to be a rhythm matching type of game tied to an abstract fiction about compatibility with one's partner. Great stuff. (thanks to Nico) ...

Life of a Mii
March 22, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

From G4, this hilarious and also sad exposé of the existential crisis of the Mii, which you can watch over at YouTube. (via Kotaku) ...

Games, Art, and Airplane Safety
March 16, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Brian Ochalla just published an article in Gamasutra, Are Games Art? "Here we go again.". It's a nice article with input from Tim Schafer, me, Denis Dyack, Santi Siri, and others. For our readers here, though, I want to pull out one of my quotes, something I've been thinking about a bit lately: "Film can be used for deeply charged emotional expression, or it can be used to show you how to use the oxygen mask in case of cabin depressurization. If video games are indeed a medium, then they too will speak on different registers. "If you look at ...

GDC 2007 Poetry
March 12, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

We've been completely silent for the last week due to the Game Developers Conference, which just wrapped. Apologies to our readers: I didn't blog a stitch during the event. That said, you can find Mia Consalvo's wrapup of our Game Studies Download over on Terra Nova (get the list itself here). Raph Koster also blogged the session in detail. I'll be digging up more coverage over the next couple days, but for now I want to share this year's awesome GDC speaker gift. For those of you who don't know about this tradition, every year CMP provides a small yet ...

Finally, a good farting game
February 28, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I know you've all been waiting for it. Check out What a Fart, a farting game with a convincing core mechanic. You play the role of a gassy chap waiting at a bus stop. Gas builds up in your gut that must needs be released, but take care not to offend social convention and disturb another fellow at the bus stop. Wait until cars pass by and take the opportunity to mask the sound of your flatus with their engine noise. Don't build up too much gas or you'll explode. Longer farts mean more points! The game itself is in ...

Playce: games as navigation
December 10, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Steffen Walz has an interesting little project up, which he calls playce. It's essentially a portfolio site, but you can choose to navigate it by playing one of four small arcade style games. I think I enjoyed shooting down the paratroopers to navigate most :). When we talk about non-entertainment games, or serious games or whatever, usually we think about content innovation, but Steffen's effort here suggests that there are plenty of other, less explored opportunities for games as a part of everyday experiences. ...

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 ...

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. ...

Unit Operations on 50 Books for Everyone
October 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Ernest Adams, Game design consultant and co-author of the just-released textbook Fundamentals of Game Design, has written a list of 50 Books for Everyone in the Game Industry. I was honored to see that my book Unit Operations made the list, along with a number of other academic books on games, including Jesper Juul's Half-Real and Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck. Egoblogging aside, this is a really great list, check it out. ...

Playing with fire: my new column at SGS
October 3, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

As Ian announced, now is my turn to kick off my "Playing with fire" column at the Serious Games Source. Its title is Serious Hype, Serious Opportunities and it deals with the oh-so-hyped world of serious games. Serious games also make good headlines. Actually, too good. They are quite similar to the promises that fill up my spam folder. “Play games and get smarter” sounds almost as tempting as “Make 150k while working from home”. Can videogames be the magic solution to all our educational needs? Of course not. Can they help us to improve the situation? Hell, yeah! I ...

Native Dancer - Virtual Powwows for Health
August 28, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Here's a rare example of an game that simultaneously attempts to educate, preserve an at-risk culture, improve health, and tackle an interesting game design problem. The Native Dancer Diabetes Education Game is a project in development at North Dakota State University and supported by the White Earth Reservation Tribal Council. ...

Merchant Ivory Games
August 8, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Ernest Adams has written a provocative article just published by Gamasutra, entitled Where's Our Merchant Ivory?. Adams's premise is simple: games need an elite form, like Merchant Ivory is to film or ballet is to dance, that legitimates other, "lower" forms of the medium and rallies high-society support around it. Lipsmacking tidbits from the article include this one: Now I know from long experience that a certain percentage of you are making derisive snorts of contempt because you personally care nothing for high culture and see no reason why anyone else would either. But even if you don’t like it, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Amazon.com Wishlist Game
December 12, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Here's a new game I just invented that you can play this holiday season, or anytime. All you need is a web browser and an Amazon.com account. It's part gift economy critique, part Oulipian writing. How to play: Go to the Amazon.com Wishlist page. Under "Find a wishlist," enter a name. Any name will do, forename or surname, and it's better if it's not someone you know. Browse the search results for a wishlist that actually has items in it (a lot of people don't add to their wishlist). Based solely on the contents of the wishlist, write a story, ...

Insert some Revolution joke here
June 8, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I play nothing but my DS these days. Why? Because I simply don't have time for any larger time commitment (I have posted about this before at Ludology.org, my other blog). Thanks to GGA, I just ran into an article arguing that Nintendo may open their upcoming Revolution console to independent developers who would be able to create downloadable content. Funny, I have read quite a few things about Revolution but so far I never heard that before. It seems this info was inferred by Boing Boing from Nintendo's Press release, so I won't expect this happening anytime soon (I ...

E3: New casual games: less casual!
May 25, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I know E3 is quickly becoming a faint memory, but it may take me weeks to catch up on everything I saw. Patience, dear readers. Many of you may know that former Warner Bros. chairman Terry Semel has been at the helm of Yahoo! for several years now. One of his strategies has been to transition the company from an anonymous information portal into, essentially, an entertainment company. Incidentally, he made more than $200 million last year. Yahoo! had a bizarrely vague presence at E3 this year. They had a big booth boasting "big changes" coming to Yahoo! Games. The ...

E3: In-Game Advertising Workshop
May 21, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

As I mentioned previously, I ran a workshop on in-game advertising during the conference sessions this E3. It was more like an interactive panel session than a workshop, and we covered a lot of ground. We had an analyst (Michael Goodman from Yankee Group), an ad man (Brandon Berger from OgilvyInteractive), a brand (Jeff Bell from DaimlerChrysler), an in-game ad platform creator (Guy Bendov from DoubleFusion) and a game/game tech creator (Dave Madden from WildTangent). Several stories are out now that covers the topic pretty well, including several references to the workshop as well as quotes from participants (including yours ...

Teenage Mum, the game
March 23, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Take a look at this TV spot for Teenage Mum created by the Belgian public health department to encourage contraceptive use and raise awareness about teenage pregnancy. It's really just a PSA (created by Belgian agency Duval Guillaume) advertising a fictitious game, but the fictitious game's design is just brilliant. The player is invited to change diapers around the clock, study while your baby cries, and manage your relationship with friends while looking after your kid. What I love about this spot is that it completely nails what would go into a design for a teenage pregnancy game -- balancing ...

Are casual games a salve for film licenses?
February 27, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

With the Oscars poised to air tonight, it seems an appropriate time to meditate on the fate of film license games. I've written before on Hollywood's propensity to use games as a film marketing tool, as have I mused on the dangers of games mixing themselves up with film licenses. A new set of film licenses for games suggests that this stagnation might be ending... or worsening. For example, EA bought the Godfather license, promising to bring Brando's voice to the small screen. Majesco bought the Jaws license. Warner Bros. announced its plans to adapt the Dirty Harry franchise, with ...

Chickenfight
November 4, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Burger King has a game to go with their new TV ad campaign "chickenfight," which is in turn -- this gets complicated -- part of some kind of crosspromotion with DirecTV. Chickenfight the game has some clever features. It's a mock-cockfight game (with the chickensuited guys from the tv spot), and if you have a mic you can play by shouting "PECK" into it. The louder you shout, the harder you, well, peck. Interesting use of audio input. (thanks to Nico) ...

GTA: Diebold City
November 2, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I voted. Georgia is what those electoral college tracking apps call a "Strong Bush State," so who knows what effect I'm having, but nevertheless I did my part. Given that all previous elections I can immediately recall used the chad-producing punch-cards, and considering all the controversy about the newly minted Diebold electronic voting machines, I was curious to try one out. My verdict? A curious experience that I tried to run through the game design filter. Here's how it went: (Update: Boing Boing reports on a "Dumbold" voting machine download for The Sims, and There sports its own voter registration ...

How the Stupid iPod Photo is Like the Stupid Games Industry
October 27, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Today, Apple announced the iPod Photo. iPod Photo is available in 40- and 60GB configurations, and comes with a new color LCD display capable of displaying 65,000 colors. You can view your image library on iPod photo, 25 thumbnails per page, and you can connect the iPod Photo to a TV to show slideshows with music. I'm a dedicated Apple user. I have a PowerBook G4 in my lap, a G5 and Cinema Display on my desk, and an iPod 3G in my backpack. But the iPod Photo is easily the dumbest piece of consumer electronics I've seen all year. ...

Orgasm Girl
September 21, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ok, so this is just straight-up porn. "Orgasm girl is the hottest lesbian angel around..." But, it's quite interesting as a kind of procedural sex toy. Good God, I really said that. Anyway, if you're not at work, try it out (as it were). ...

F*ck the Vote
September 8, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

We had a lively discussion recently over on Grand Text Auto about representations of sex in gaming, and I now officially feel stupid for not thinking of a way to tie the topic into political games. Why, you ask? Because now there's Votergasm, a website devoted to increasing voter turnout by tying acts of voting to sex acts. The concept is simple: you sign a pledge to vote and have sex on election night. You can even find Votergasm parties in your area on the site. I guess it's MoveOn meets Meetup meets Adult Friend Finder. ...

The Truth is pretty bad
July 27, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The American Legacy Foundation's ongoing anti-smoking campaign truth has released a game created by Templar Studios based on truth's "Crazy World" ad campaign. Here's what Templar's president Peter Mack had to say about the game: The game, which is aimed at a wide audience, ages 18-50, was created to show both smokers and non-smokers the dangers of cigarettes using humor and irony. Players score points by avoiding moving green puffs of radioactive smoke. If they get caught in the smoke, they mutate into an alien-like form. "The idea is to attract people to entertain themselves and keep the message within ...

Busy: Games & Painting
June 28, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Some of you may have noticed that it's been a bit slow here on WCG of late, and here's why: I'm trying to get my new game done for a launch this week, AND I've been moving into my new house in Atlanta. So, I've been making games and painting. In fact, I've painted just about every room in my new place. When I do just about anything, I try to rustle up a game design based on it, just to see where it goes. I think a house painting game has a lot of promise. You have to lay ...

Industry flubs advergaming, again
June 17, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

AdAge just ran an report on advergames, from their coverage of AdWatch: Outlook 2004 conference in New York. They report that the increasing costs of TV ads are driving brands to consider games, and the increasingly broad demographics of gamers are helping. Despite the trends, the gaming industry continues to flub their approach to advergames. Here's why. ...

Visualization is the new eBusiness
June 12, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I was in New York most of the week, first on a panel at the Serious Issues, Serious Games conference -- which I'll write about soon -- and then hanging out with my friend Britt Blaser, the Dean campaign technology adviser who was instrumental in making the Howard Dean for Iowa Game happen. Britt and I spent a lot of time thinking, talking, and doodling about games and game-like visualizations for some new projects he's working on. Back in the late '90s I remember hearing about Fortune 1000 companies commissioning "digital dashboards" for their executives to get real-time snapshots of ...

Gaming Techniques for Citizen Engagement
May 27, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Chris Quigley, from the British organizational consultantcy Delib, has published Game On: A thought paper on the use of gaming techniques for citizen engagement and e-participation (120k Word Doc). Here's the abstract: In this paper Chris Quigley examines the applicability of gaming techniques in citizenship engagement and e-participation. The paper looks at three main areas: (1) The need for more effective citizenship engagement techniques; (2) The commonality between gaming and citizenship engagement; (3) Recommendations based on developing more effective democratic environments The paper also cites several example games that were new to me: Smart | Connect, a game designed to ...

Games, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll
May 25, 2004 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Wired.com features an interesting article about the use of drugs within online worlds. ...

Create your own cereal box ideology
May 23, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Ok, it's not really a game, and it's a bit metatextual for this forum, but I'll bite anyway. PBS Kids has a really cool section called Don't Buy It, which teaches kids to think critically about media and become smarter consumers. They recently launched Freaky Flakes, a gadget that lets you design a kids cereal box to understand the tricks advertisers use to get consumers' attention. The interesting feature about the tool is that it lacks any kind of content filter whatsoever. I created the box of "Rumsfeld Crunch" depicted at right, but you can imagine much more, uhm, creative ...

Do home video marketers prefer games?
May 3, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Universal has published a new advergame, Go, Fish, Go! promoting the Pay Per View/On Demand release of The Cat in the Hat. It's a Frogger or Chicken-inspired cross-the-road game; you play as the fish in a bowl. The game adds some interesting variations on Frogger, including a low-friction bowl that loses water if you steer too quickly. The game has high visual production value, but it has major design flaws. For one part, it's quite hard; it took me several plays to actually get the bowl across the road. There is also poor balancing of vehicles, speed, obstacles, and water ...

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) ...

Some Casual Games notes from GDC
March 26, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Mia Consalvo has been blogging from GDC, including this post on the Casual Games Summit. I was surprised by a few points raised at the summit (although I did not attend the entire day). First, even though the conversion rate for casual game purchases remains at direct mail levels -- perhaps 1 - 2% -- casual game publishers still insist that US$20-25 is a reasonable price for a casual game. I remain convinced that near-micropayment games in the $5 range would offer a brighter future for the segment. Second, I thought it was telling that no women appeared on the ...

More on Women Gamers and Casual Games
March 4, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I did an interview today about the recent AOL online games survey, which we discussed here on WCG. Gave my still nascent opinions about women and casual games. In preparation for it, I did an informal survey among a group of mothers ages ~ 35 - 45, asking why they play these games. As I mentioned in the last post and comments, I maintain that casual games function much like these non-game activities: Knitting Flipping through a magazine in the bathroom Doodling while on the phone Sylvie objected that knitting yields some kind of an end product, and thus isn't ...

Virtual Worlds Dull Pain
February 25, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The BBC reports that Dr. Hunter Hoffman of the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle is using "immersive virtual worlds" to treat pain in severe burn cases. SnowWorld, for instance, takes users on an absorbing virtual journey through glaciers and ice caves whilst having to defend themselves from attack by polar bears and penguins. In another example, Hoffman has created a 9/11 simulator meant to desensitize post-traumatic stress disorder patients. The article calls the treatments "Virtual Analgesia" and "Virtual Exposure Therapy," respectively: a kind of focused, supersensory kind of meditation. In the past, I've been critical of virtual reality or augmented ...

Women Dominate Online Games?
February 14, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A recent AOL Study claims that women over 40 are more likely to play online games than any other demographic. Even though men spend more time on the Internet each week than women (23.2 vs. 21.6 hours), female game-players over 40 spend the most hours per week playing online games (9.1 hours or 41 percent of their online time vs. 6.1 hours - 26 percent of their online time - for men). These women were also more likely to play online games every day than men or teens of either gender. The question, of course, is what does this mean? ...

A note on the Digital Democracy Teach-in
February 14, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

This Monday I attended the Digital Democracy Teach-In at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Originally I was going to tag along on Britt Blaser's introductory session to talk about campaign games, but at the last minute Joe Trippi signed on to do the first session. Recently ousted, his talk was "Down from the Mountain: My Experience with the Dean Campaign." danah boyd was there and shared her reaction to Trippi's message. I just listened to Joe Trippi speak at Etech. Everyone was ecstatic, enthused, wanting more, wanting to see how to extend it further. I was disappointed, reminded of why ...

IM Virus Osama Game
February 11, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A strange group called BuddyLinks has an Osama game (WARNING: if you click, do not play the game! read on!). The REALLY fascinating thing about the game is that it spreads itself through a virus that sends AIM instant messages to everyone on your buddy list when you play the game. This is why you shouldn't install it. Here's what the IM looks like: check this out... http://www.wgutv.com/osama_capture.php?5P5m It comes from the screenname of the friend who played it, so it's very credible. I haven't played it (thanks to the Mac for saving me from the world's viruses), but here's ...

Legislative Design
February 9, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Wired reports on virtual world game designers helping design the new eRegulations government project on legislation crafting. From the article, "the government and the gaming industry both rely on a similar method of soliciting comments." This collaboration apparently came out of an offshoot of the State of Play conference at NYU late last year. ...

The Transportation Security Administration Game
February 7, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I was traveling today, and I checked my bag in at the curb. For the first time, I decided to watch the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer screen my bag. Those of you who have traveled recently in the US were probably required to have your bag chemical screened at the ticket counter, but you may not know that the TSA may also open your bag and do pretty much whatever they want with it behind the scenes. This is what I watched them do at the curb. I sort of hid myself out of the way so I wouldn't ...

Fairy Tale Games
January 24, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I had a fun conversation with Francis Steen at dinner tonight after our long but rewarding all-day game conference (featuring Mimi Ito, Ted Castranova, Jordan Peterson, Celia Pearce, Francis Steen, and myself, among others). Anyway, Francis and I were talking about folklore, fairy tales, and games. Red Riding Hood especially. Francis pointed out that Red Riding Hood requires quite a bit of complex cognition, really more than a child can handle: the child has to recognize that the wolf is going to eat Red Riding Hood, but he recognizes that if he does, she'll scream. And he hears hunters nearby, ...

Learning from Playmobil
January 10, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I've been spending some time lately getting up to speed with the Playmobil brand of kids toys. I've seen these on the shelves forever, but I never had any, so I never thought about them much. We bought some recently, and I've become absolutely enchanted by these toys. I originally thought there was no way they could underwrite the kind of creative play Lego does, since the latter can be recombined in many more ways. Then I started to see the ingenuity of the Playmobil sets. There's Castle Hide Out (#7078) with frothing beer steins, a part of the Merrymen's ...

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. ...

British Airways, Rubgy, and Power Laws
October 26, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

British Airways is sponsoring the 2003 Rugby World Cup, and they've just launched an advergame to promote thier sponsorship of the event. The game was hard for me at first, but when I realized I'd misread the instructions I was able to make progress. The mechanics are somewhat complex; the player has to use the arrow keys and the mouse to play, and I doubt that most casual users could handle the arm-pretzel necessary to compete. Brands that sponsor sporting leagues or events often try to take advantage of games as a way to promote their sponsorship. This is meta-advertising ...

The Grocery Game
October 25, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

I recently found out about The Grocery Game on a parenting/education message board. The website gives subscribers access to a special grocery list, sorted by store and US location. The list is designed to maximize savings through strategic use of coupons and stockpiling. It's admittedly not an electronic game in the traditional sense. But I found it interesting that she chose to call it a game -- there is certainly an underlying goal (save as much money as possible), as well as a simple ruleset (stockpile rules + coupon rules - "I use coupons like trading stock!") that yields an ...

Advergaming tools
October 23, 2003 - by Gonzalo Frasca

There are several obstacles that have prevented advergaming from reaching its full potential. Most of them deal with every actor understanding that games require a paradigm shift: it is not about product placement anymore but rather about simulating an experience (more on this later). Still, one of the problems that game studios face is the lack of appropriate tools for delivering good games in a fast way. This market has been dominated by mutant Macromedia tools that were never created with game development in mind. ...

Workshop on video game rhetoric
October 23, 2003 - by Gonzalo Frasca

As part of the Level Up conference in Utrecht, Holland, I will be hosting a workshop entitled “Games with strong opinions” on November 4, at 10.30 am. The workshop will deal with design techniques for conveying ideas with games (and videogames) as well as providing a set of theoretical tools for better understanding how we can use games to persuade, manipulate and communicate. ...

Mountain Dew, Object Fetishes, and Cannibalism
October 22, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

I got an email from Joe Varet over at Groove Alliance on their new game for Mountain Dew. It's a skateboarding game; the player skates around an outdoor arena à la Tony Hawk and collects Mountain Dew products to keep his "Mountain Dew Power" meter filled. I'm actually a big fan of 3D Groove's technology; it's one of the only ways to get lightweight, cross-platform 3D into a browser. And I know that Mountain Dew is a youth brand that would benefit from the whole overwrought extreme sports weltanschaaung. But here are a few points to consider. ...

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. ...