Category: Tumblr

A game is some­thing that we play. A videogame is a dig­i­tal play­space. This is the shape of games to come. To impose stricter def­i­n­i­tions will only serve to sti­fle cre­ativ­i­ty and unnec­es­sar­i­ly cel­e­brate past trends in favor of present and future pos­si­bil­i­ties— this is already happening.

Wombflash For­est

If these pro­posed def­i­n­i­tions are so broad as to include every­thing, and now every­thing is thus a game, then let’s play everything!

[…]

If we’re going to admit sys­tems of rank­ing into our games, to con­struct goals, their design should come from an inti­ma­cy with the mate­ri­als of the play­space as a freely-played space, mean­ing one explored through our own self-direct­ed (and con­stant­ly dis­solv­ing?) goals; these goals should invite us to play with process­es that direct us toward and help real­ize our vision of inner utopia.

You’re going to have peo­ple say­ing, “What, plants know when I’m chew­ing on them? I’m not going to chew them any­more. I’ve got noth­ing left to eat!
Any­way, I was forced to do away with democ­ra­cy rough­ly a thou­sand years ago because it was endan­ger­ing my empire.

I’ve been play­ing the same game of Civ­i­liza­tion II for almost 10 years. This is the result. : gaming

A fan­tas­tic report on a game of Civ­i­liza­tion II that has been run­ning for 10 years. I agree with Nico­las in that these kinds of reports are rare, and the con­cept of long play is an inter­est­ing one to explore further.

From Banksy’s Bang­ing Your Head Against a Brick Wall. A per­spec­tive I can to some extent relate to, although I have to say I con­sid­er myself sick­en­ing­ly well-behaved. As a mod­el for soci­ety how­ev­er, it falls flat, of course.

Alper point­ed me to this slight­ly retard­ed but at the same time engross­ing rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the com­put­er RPG: mis­sions and ene­mies are laid out on a grid. You fin­ish or defeat them by click­ing repeat­ed­ly (shades of Cow Click­er here). Then hov­er over the XP and mon­ey that appears to cash in. To get to the hard­er ones you need to lev­el up and pur­chase kit. There is no declar­a­tive lay­er what so ever but it still works. Strange.

This com­ing Novem­ber, you may be one of the mil­lions who will pur­chase Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Before you start fan­ta­siz­ing about a Los Ange­les under drone attack and the under­cov­er sol­diers who will save us all, you may want to think about the hor­ri­fy­ing his­to­ry of under­cov­er oper­a­tions and the actu­al­i­ty of drone wars today.
http://m.kotaku.com/5908216/the-trouble-with-call-of-dutys-scary-new-war-of-the-future

Refresh­ing analy­sis of the rise of pop­ulism in the Nether­lands, argu­ing that it is not the result of pol­i­tics bow­ing to grad­ual, nat­ur­al change in soci­ety (the grow­ing edu­ca­tion­al divide). But in stead, the result of the new right’s active cam­paign to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion. Which means that what is need­ed is active opin­ion shap­ing from oth­er polit­i­cal move­ments, not paci­fi­ca­tion of populism.