Play’s Republic

 A textbook published by gaming company Capcom, dedicated to teaching children (through use of comics) about the ins and outs of video gaming culture, industry, history, and the creative process, distributed to primary schools and libraries all over Japan?
Why can’t WE have something like that?
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/05/11/capcom-releases-japanese-textbook-about-video-games/

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This is far from new, but I just thought I’d bring it to peoples’ attention anyway.
VG Cats, an online comic by Scott Ramsoomair, did an amusing little comic on the upcoming god (?)-game Spore. Likely to be prophetic, because, well, this is just about how much freedom Will Wright’s newest simulation will probably GIVE […]

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Thinking back on the videos we watched last week, I tried to think of other elements in our culture which have the same characteristics of playing with boundaries and expectations. I don’t think we have as many now, because of the fact that our expectations now assume that such things will happen. Now […]

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Manifesto Games presents: The Shiva. Help the rabbi solve the mystery of a congregant’s death while his family observes Shiva.  For Windows XP.

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One of the “races” from which players may choose is the Tauren.  The Tauren are a minotaur-like species that are allied politically with the Horde (here is where the determinist poetics of the Alliance versus Horde construct seems woefully inappropriate).  The interesting thing about the Tauren is that they are essentially a distillation of centuries of superficial […]

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This afternoon, in Blizzard’s extensive notes about recent refinements to the game, I read the following sentence:
Tranquil Mechanical Yetis are no longer unique.
In spite of the fact that the meaning, at first, is unfathomable, the sentence is precise:  I take “unique” to denote a well-defined threshold of recurrence.  In this updated virtual world, the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti […]

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Two days ago, I had a brief and somewhat difficult to follow conversation with a pink-haired Gnome on the steps of the bank in Stormwind. The Gnome, a mage in his 20’s, was offering simple enchants for free: Bracers, cloaks, and the like, +5 health. In between his interaction with four different […]

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One of my ideas about MMORPG is that the MMO part is fine, but the RPG part is problematic. Specifically, the G. I think that to call these digital experiences “games” is to misunderstand them fundamentally. Games are fields with definite borders: One is either “in play” or “out of play.” […]

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This WSJ article trades on the novelty of establishing traditional relationships through non-traditional venues. Emphasis is on the incongruence of online existence and “real-world” existence:
The next time she logged on to play, Ms. Bard began having her character flirt with Mr. Zenonian’s. Though she had an actual boyfriend, she saw the in-game flirtation as […]

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