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 a forum for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment
ABOUT About This Site - RSS Feed Ian Bogost (editor) Gonzalo Frasca (editor) SPONSORS
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General Archives
Grand Theft Childhood previewMarch 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost The forthcoming book Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, by husband and wife Harvard researchers Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson is sure to rustle some feathers. Into the tired world of media effects arguments, Kutner and Olson offer a more nuanced perspective on the subject of violent games. The book will be published next month, but if you don't want to wait, Open Education has a detailed set of articles on some of its contents: Shoot-em Up Video Games - The Cause of Greater Anti-social Behaviors in Teens? Author Reveals "The ... My new column: Videogame PranksMarch 19, 2008 - by Ian Bogost Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on videogames that act like pranks and practical jokes. You can read the article over at Gamasutra. A couple things I learned from people after the piece was published. First, the title of "Syobon Action" (also "Shobon Action") a game I discuss in the piece, translates as "Dejected Action"). Second, check out Retro Sabotage, a site that weekly "sabotages" of classic games. My favorites are Pong 2.0 and Pac Man What Next?. ... GDC follow-up: text of my Education Summit keynoteMarch 16, 2008 - by Ian Bogost Following up on the earlier mention of my GDC Education Summit Keynote, I've posted the text of that talk up on my personal site. ... Indiecade Call for SubmissionsMarch 12, 2008 - by Ian Bogost Indiecade has announced the call for submissions for their show at Open Satellite festival in Seattle, which they are calling their "flagship festival." According to the call, "independent interactive media of all types" is eligible, including videogames, serious games, ARGs and more. Entrants will also be considered for year-round international showcase exhibitions. Enter here; Deadline is April 11 at midnight PDT. More info on the Seattle event after the jump. ... iPhone SDK - No Good for Games YetMarch 11, 2008 - by Ian Bogost Weren't you all excited about last week's announcement of the iPhone SDK? Didn't you think it would finally shut up grouchy people like me who are always complaining about the lack of open platforms? Yeah, me too. Until I downloaded it and tried to build some sample OpenGL code. Turns out the iPhone "Aspen" simulator can't run OpenGL. Which means you need to own an actual iPhone and tether it to your Mac to do development. Great way to sell more iPhones huh? Except you can't even do that, because then you'll also need the $99 iPhone Developer Membership to ... Nobody buys my book at TEDMarch 4, 2008 - by Ian Bogost News from Keith Boesky, who is attending the famous TED conference in Monterrey. According to Boesky: When I picked up Ian Bogost's new book "Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games" in the TED Bookstore, the counter person told me I was the first to buy it. Ironically, the back cover of the book reads " Videogames lack the cultural stature of 'legitimate' art forms because they are widely perceived to be trivial and meaningless." The statement is absolutely accurate, and that is why no one is reading the book! The issue lies in the media. Oof. It seems ... GDC 2008: Reinventing MMOs: A Metaplace AntemortemFebruary 22, 2008 - by Ian Bogost The session was titled "postmortem" but, since it is impossible to postmortem a product that is still in alpha, Raph Koster retitled the session accordingly. The theme for GDC this year is democratization of user content, he said. That's why we're here even though we're done yet. ... GDC 2008: My Education Summit KeynoteFebruary 19, 2008 - by Ian Bogost I'm going to cheat today and link to Game Career Guide's coverage of my keynote rather than blogging a session I attended. Where 'Love' Belongs: An Academic's Thoughts on Game Education ... Game Developers Conference 2008February 17, 2008 - by Ian Bogost I'll be at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. This year, I co-organized the Serious Games Summit with Ben Sawyer. It's smaller than previous years, but the schedule is densely packed with goodies. That runs Monday and Tuesday. I'll be giving a keynote Tuesday at the IGDA Academic Summit. Then, Jane McGonigal, Mia Consalvo, and I will be reprising the Game Studies Download, where we present the top research findings from 2007. I used to liveblog conferences all the time. As Jesper noted, it's always hard to do this at GDC. Rather than pretend that I'll accomplish ... Atari Valentines (reprise)February 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost I was on a transatlantic flight today, so our Valentines greetings will have to be a reprise of last year's, this time in celebration of the completion of the book Nick and I just finished on the Atari VCS. ... Persuasive Technology 2008 Submission Deadline LoomsDecember 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost PERSUASIVE 2008, the Third International Conference on Persuasive Technology, will be held June 4-6 2008 in Oulu Finland (a good time of year to find yourself that far north). The submission deadline for this conference is January 1, so you still have time to get your paper in if you act quickly. The full CFP can be found after the jump. I will be keynoting the conference, along with venerable colleagues B.J. Fogg (Stanford University) and Kristina Höök (Stockholm University). ... My Week at KotakuNovember 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost A week ago I took a short leave to go guest edit at Kotaku. I claimed that I'd update this site with links to my posts, but it proved impossible. All in all, I wrote 45 articles at Kotaku, some on topics of direct interest to WCG readers, others of more general interest. I haven't even tried to read all the comments on those threads though. I had a great time doing it and I'm really grateful that Brian Crecente extended the invitation. Full linked list of my Kotaku posts after the jump. ... Bogost at Kotaku this weekNovember 12, 2007 - by Ian Bogost I'm serving as a guest editor over at games uberblog Kotaku all week. I'll post links to my stuff over there every day or so sometime! next week maybe!, but in the meantime you can sift through the archives over there. My first posts should go up mid-morning Eastern time on Monday. ... Slamdance Game Festival shutters, festersOctober 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 ... Play Cultures Exhibition opensOctober 5, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Today our pals at Grand Text Auto open their exhibit at the Beall Center in Irvine. At the same time, the The Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad, Serbia, is opening the exhibition Play Cultures. The exhibit features work by WCG's own Gonzalo Frasca and Persuasive Games, as well as friends Molleindustria, Serious Games Interactive, and Tale of Tales, plus a number of other accomplished artists I haven't had the pleasure yet to meet. I wish I could have been there for the opening today. The exhibition runs until October 25. ... Book signing in Atlanta tomorrowSeptember 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost For my fellow Atlantans, I'll be doing a reading and book signing for Persuasive Games tomorrow (Sept 5) at the Barnes & Noble in Midtown, right by Georgia Tech (48 5th St. NW). Starts at 5:30pm, and refreshments will be served. ... Persuasive Games for CheapSeptember 3, 2007 - by Ian Bogost I'm sure some of you have been eager to get your hands on my new book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, but perhaps haven't wanted to shell out for the hardcover price. Well, now you're out of excuses. The Strand bookstore in New York City has the book in stock, and is selling it at the bargain price of $17.50, or 50% off retail list. You can buy it online here. (thanks to Mark) ... Dr. FrascaAugust 28, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Our long-lost editor Gonzalo reports that he successfully defended his dissertation yesterday at IT University Copenhagen. Pictures here. Not surprisingly, Gonzalo's thesis was on play and rhetoric, but he takes a quite different tack than I did in Persuasive Games, focusing on play instead of procedurality. It's a significant contribution, we'll have to wait for Gonzalo's word on when and in what form it will be available. Congrats Gonzalo! Now about your blogging duties... ... My Report on The Colbert ReportAugust 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost I've received a lot of questions about my recent appearance on The Colbert Report, and I tried to answer many of them in one place over on bogost.com. Apologies for this pointer-post, but if you're interested, you should click over there. ... Bogost on ColbertAugust 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Patrick Dugan outed me, so I figured I'd better fess up here too. I'll be a guest on The Colbert Report next Tuesday (August 7). We'll be talking about the new book and some of my studio's games. ... Come to a Book Party, August 1 in New YorkJuly 31, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Do you live in or around New York City? Do you like good conversation and free booze? Come to a book party Persuasive Games and Eyebeam are holding in Chelsea tomorrow evening. Even though it has been out for a few weeks, but this event is something of a launch event for my new book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Books will be available for purchase and signing. There will also be a panel discussion with me, Alex Galloway (author of Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture), McKenzie Wark (author of Gamer Theory), moderated by journalist Clive Thompson. The ... CFP: Joystick SoldiersJuly 18, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne send along a call for papers for what looks like an interesting new anthology: Joystick Soldiers: The military/war video game reader. Abstracts due September 17. The editors seek essays on military/war-themed video games which explore the multifaceted cultural, social, and economic linkages between video games and the military. The collection will feature scholarly work from a diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives, including: close textual readings of military-themed video games; critical histories of game production processes and marketing practices; and reception studies of video war gamers, fandom, and politically resistant game interventions. As ... Persuasive Games (the book) is Now AvailableJuly 9, 2007 - by Ian Bogost After several years of preparation, I'm excited to announce that my new book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames is now in print and shipping from your favorite bookseller, say Amazon.com for example. The book is about how videogames make arguments. I offer a theory of rhetoric for games, then I discuss a great many examples from commercial and non-commercial games, focusing on the areas of politics, advertising and learning. The book should be of interest and use for academics, designers, policy makers, marketers, educators, and general readers interested in the culture of videogames. You can read more about ... Dr. Nick MontfortJune 20, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Friend and collaborator Nick Montfort has defended his dissertation, Generating Narrative Variation in Interactive Fiction! Congrats Nick! The diss is about computational narration, specifically automating different narration styles in Interactive Fiction, which Nick knows a thing or two about. Nick posted a summary of his defense talk over on Grand Text Auto. ... Happy Bloomsday, New WebsiteJune 16, 2007 - by Ian Bogost This is totally off topic, but today is Bloomsday. In celebration, I offer Bloomsday on Twitter, which I made with friend and colleague Ian McCarthy. This comes from my new "official" website, which you might also want to check out. There are still a few bugs and wrinkles, but it's basically working. More on that later. ... Serious Games and AI in LondonJune 4, 2007 - by Ian Bogost There are only two days left for earlybird registration for the Apply Serious Games conference, to take place in London on June 27-28. The conference series includes the main Apply Serious Games event as well as a new event on AI for Serious Games (and other games too). Student and DiGRA member discounts are available. ... My new column: Why We Need More Boring GamesMay 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. ... Personal Democracy ForumMay 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost I'm at the Personal Democracy Forum Conference, perhaps almost the only speaker here talking about videogames, which should be interesting. Update (5/19): Games for Change director Suzanne Seggerman also presented on that organization's activities in the idea market. I'll admit that I'm too lazy this week to blog, but Jill Walker, sitting next to me, is liveblogging quite effectively. More at the PDF blog itself, and via Technorati. Technorati Tags: pdf2007 ... Sale at MIT PressMay 14, 2007 - by Ian Bogost For another two days, MIT Press is holding a spring sale, offering most of their books at 20% off list. The sale excludes textbooks and forthcoming books, but this might be a good time to pick up some of MIT's extensive New Media catalog... say maybe my book Unit Operations, or Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's First Person, or TL Taylor's Play Between Worlds, or Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages maybe even the big Handbook of Computer Game Studies, ... ... Register for the Games for Change ConferenceApril 29, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Registration has opened for the Fourth Annual Games for Change Festival, New York City, June 11-12, 2007. ... Living Game Worlds at Georgia TechMarch 29, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Today (Thursday, March 29) Georgia Tech is holding the third annual Living Game Worlds conference. This year's theme is "Playing with Reality" and we have keynote speakers Katie Salen and Tracy Fullerton, as well as many special guests including Cindy Poremba, Liz Losh, Sam Roberts, and more. I'll be participating in a panel on games and the news, as well as a discussion of Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The full schedule is here. If you're not joining us in person, you can watch the entire event's live webcast, either via the normal web, or in Second Life if you prefer. ... Persuasive Games in PlayboyMarch 28, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Playboy magazine devoted the Trend Watch portion of their page on games in the April issue on Games that give you something to think about as you twitch. Persuasive Games' Arcade Wire: Airport Security makes the list, as does Molleindustria's McDonald's Videogame, GameLab/UNICEF's Ayiti: Cost of Life, and Super Columbine Massacre RPG. This is probably the only way I could get into Playboy :) ... GDC 2007 PoetryMarch 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 ... Jobs and Fests in NYCMarch 3, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Two pieces of news from the city that never sleeps. First, Parsons the New School for Design is hiring for four new positions in the Communication Design and Technology Department: Henry Wolf Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Communication Design, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Design+Technology and Assistant/Associate Professor, Assistant/Associate Professor of Interaction and Game Design, and Assistant/Associate Professor of Motion Design. If you're interested, apply here. Second, Games for Change has announced a call for proposals for their fourth annual festival, June 11th - 12th in NYC. Act fast, proposals are due March 15. Details after the jump. ... Bogost's Game Developers Conference scheduleMarch 2, 2007 - by Ian Bogost GDC is next week, and for those of you attending I thought I'd share my speaking schedule for the event. Session: Persuasive Games: Introduction to Procedural Rhetoric Session: Designing Selene: Theory-based Game Design and Data Mining(I'm not actually speaking at this one, but Debbie Reese will cover a game about lunar geology we are working on at Georgia Tech and Wheeling Jesuit University) Session: The Game Studies Download: Top 10 Research Findings (with Mia Consalvo and Jane McGonigal) Roundtable: Game Criticism: Opportunities and Approaches (Day One and Day Two) Want to meet at GDC? Email me to get in touch. ... Persuasive Games (the book) is in the canFebruary 21, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Or in the box. Or whatever the right metaphor is for books. I just shipped off the index yesterday for my new book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, which means the project is out of my hands and in those of the printer. The book should be out late spring (the press's official date is July 1, but I'm hoping it will hit the street earlier), and I'm really excited about it. The book is much easier and less academic than my previous book, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, and I think it will appeal to ... Atari VCS ValentinesFebruary 14, 2007 - by Ian Bogost I'm somewhat obsessed with the Atari VCS (2600), both as a critic and an amateur programmer. Nick Montfort and I are currently writing a book on the VCS, the first in the new Platform Studies series we're series editing at MIT Press. I'm also teaching a graduate class this term on critiquing and programming the Atari VCS. Today in class, I demonstrated a number of basic playfield drawing techniques with valentines, so I thought I'd share them with our readers here as our official Valentine's Day greetings. They are very simple VCS programs that just draw a single screen, but ... Serious Games Interactive is hiringFebruary 7, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Serious Games Interactive, led by WCG friend Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, has announced several open jobs. The group created Global Conflicts: Palestine and is currently working on some new projects. Deadline is in a little over a week, and keep in mind that applicants will have to be willing to move to Copenhagen. More info after the jump. ... Slamdance recapJanuary 31, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Patrick Dugan has written a recap of the Slamdance festival, which you can now read over on Gamasutra. He covers the games that presented their work. Go read it, but here are a couple interesting tidbits: Ledonne ... was a bit annoyed at Baxter's lauding of Cloud as an ideal example of an indie game; he felt it implied that games should be oriented towards positive messages only. If the ESA had been called in the wake of the game's nomination and asked to cover Slamdance Inc. should any legal issues arise, it could have allowed a precedent to be ... Mobile Persuasion, this week at StanfordJanuary 29, 2007 - by Ian Bogost On Friday, Stanford University is hosting the Mobile Persuasion conference, which "will bring together over 200 innovators, researchers, and companies creating mobile technologies that change people’s beliefs and behaviors. Applications include health, commerce, activism, social networking, advertising, conservation, and mobile gaming. This full-day event will feature expert talks and panels on how mobile technology can change attitudes and behaviors." I'll be there speaking. It seems that the main conference is sold out, but you might still be able to get in if you contact BJ Fogg, the organizer. Click through for the full press release. ... Slamdance Game Competition Ends in DissolutionJanuary 26, 2007 - by Ian Bogost In the wake of the controversy, many of us have been waiting to learn of the outcome of the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemakers Competition. There are not yet full reports from those in attendance (although Patrick Dugan promises one early next week), but I do have some snippets of news from speaking with a few folks in attendance. The competition dissolved entirely, with no awards given out The panel discussion began with reproaches of Baxter, but evolved into a discussion of SCMRPG and the differences between games and film Peter Baxter took those in attendance to lunch and they discussed the ... IndieCade comments on Slamdance ControversyJanuary 23, 2007 - by Ian Bogost IndieCade, a new independent game festival that plans to have its first show in spring 2008, has posted a response to the Slamdance controversy. An excerpt: We believe that the role of a festival – especially an independent games festival — is to provide a place to screen and discuss juried games. For a festival to maintain its integrity it must implement a rigorous review process, appoint qualified jurors, and then it must trust those jurors and honor their decisions. We do not plan to court controversy, nor do we plan to avoid it. What we will do is make ... Serious Games Summit GDC Keynote + ScheduleJanuary 20, 2007 - by Ian Bogost The Serious Games Summit GDC 2007 schedule and first keynote have been announced. I'll be presenting a lecture called Persuasive Games: Introduction to Procedural Rhetoric. Other pics include Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern on next-gen conversational characters; Dave Gilbert on his rabbinical graphical adventure The Shivah; David Shaffer on learning and games; Santiago Siri on drama games; and Phin Barnes on exercise games. Notably, the first keynoter is Ichiro Otobe, Chief Strategist of Square Enix (yes, that Square Enix). The company recently founded SG Lab, a serious games oriented joint venture with a Japanese textbook publisher. ... Today: Hal Halpin answers questions about the ECAJanuary 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Today, GamePolitics is hosting a Q&A with Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) president Hal Halpin. For today only, you can leave questions in the comments, and Halpin will respond... looks like they are in the process of moving his answers out of the comments thread and into the main part of the post. I'll share below the question I posed, which I'll admit I find less hypothetical than I made it sound: ... Help us create the GDC Game Studies DownloadJanuary 17, 2007 - by Ian Bogost Last year, Jane McGonigal, Mia Consalvo, and I hosted the Game Studies Download at the Game Developers Conference. We attempted to assemble the top 10 research findings from the previous year and rapidly summarize them for what turned out to be a totally packed room of game developers. This year, we've been invited back to do it again. As Jane notes over on Avant Game, we could use your help! I'm just going to cite her for the details: Our goal is to communicate to professional game-makers the brilliant insights of academics who are studying games. We'll be summarizing the ... Pixel Art ContestDecember 27, 2006 - by Ian Bogost We're back from our short Xmas respite. Check out this contest for old skool pixel art skillz the Strasbourg-based mobile game studio Mighty Troglodytes are putting on. Each entry (deadline 15 Jan 07) requires an isometric character with a walk animation, background tiles, and a few other elements. Winners get a mobile phone and games, plus a chance to work with the studio. And fame forever of course. ... Have a playful 2007!!!!December 22, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca Once again, it's time for thanking you for being around. Personally, I'd like also to thank Ian for posting so much interesting stuff while I've been struggling to finish my dissertation (almost ready! One month to go!) This has been a great year for my studio, Powerful Robot Games. We got to make some really cool games and, as our last project for the year, we decided to create an animated postcard to share with our friends. We hope you enjoy it. Once again, happy holidays for everybody and a very playful 2007! And, yes, my Xmas wish came through. ... Live by the pen, die by the spamDecember 15, 2006 - by Ian Bogost Spam has been overpowering our server off and on for the past two weeks and bringing the site down occasionally. I've decided to disable comments until we can figure it out. A good excuse to link comments from your own blogs, if you got 'em. ... More jobs at Games for ChangeDecember 6, 2006 - by Ian Bogost Games for Change lets us know they have more job openings, this time for an Executive Director and Online Social Network Manager-Designer. Click through for the full ad. ... Announcing Platform StudiesDecember 4, 2006 - by Ian Bogost Ian Bogost & Nick Montfort are pleased to announce a new MIT Press series, Investigating the relationships between the hardware and software design of computing systems and the creative works produced on those systems. The first book in the series is forthcoming in 2008: Video Computer System: The Atari 2600 Platform by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost For more about computing platforms and their relationship to new media, the new approaches which we hope this series will foster, examples of platforms, and answers to questions about the series concept, see our site: http://platformstudies.com ... Persuasive Games among This Year's Hot Toys, for the green anywayNovember 23, 2006 - by Ian Bogost We've stopped posting press coverage here, for fear that it will just look like self-aggrandizement, but every now and then there's something worth sharing with our readers here. Here's such a one. I found out today that The Green Guide, which bills itself as a "green living source for today's conscious consumer," has listed Persuasive Games work on its list of This Year's Hot Toys. Now, you can't box 'em up and put them under the tree, but if you want a (100% recycled) giftbox with a CD in it, just let me know :) ... Very serious about trivial gamesNovember 22, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca Ok, this post is totally off-topic but I really wanted to share the good news. Cartoon Network just released new data about Big Fat Awesome House Party, the game that my company Powerful Robot developed for them. According to AWN, " to date, the game has attracted 6.6 million registered users". As it happens with most online stats, it always depends on how you count (I bet many people registered twice or more). But in any case, I must admit that I was really surprised by the success of this game. I just wanted to ask the Powerful Robot team ... Conference on Games for Crisis Response and ManagmentNovember 19, 2006 - by Ian Bogost The 4th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, Delft, the Netherlands, May 13-16 2007. Game-friendly. Submissions due January 15, 2007. ... Game Design and Development Job at RITNov | |||||||||
