World of Tweetcraft?
The emergence of MMO gaming and virtual reality, especially the largest artificial worlds such as Azeroth in World of Warcraft, gave us a new way of socializing with people from around the globe. Twitter is one of the...
Botting, Plotting and Multiboxing
A short entry on people botting, people plotting, bots multiboxing, and virtual goods adverts in games. Includes a MOVIE!
Virtually Yours! The Meteoric Rise of Virtual Game Goods
In the space of just over a decade, virtual game goods have gone from being a black market cottage industry to an extremely successful business model for gaming and social networking virtual goods industries. This evolution, caused by player...
Advantages of having a ‘Second Life’ – a short essay on how MMO Games may change the World
What are MMO games? Massively Multiplayer Online games are a fresh genre to the gaming industry, as all of them require a strong and stable Internet connection. This particular branch of gaming is becoming more and more popular due...
Harvest your crops, feed your dog, serve the dishes… socialize!
Let me get this straight. I don't have a pet. I never felt like growing pumkins. My cooking skills are below average. Does that make me socially "incompatible" with the millions of people playing Pet Society, Farmville, Cafe World...
I Fly with my Little Spy! New Stealth Techno-Toys.
The recent debate about the proposed use of military-style surveillance drones in the United Kingdom, and further afield, has fuelled fears and given rise to concern over the continual erosion of the individual’s right to privacy and safety. ...
Eskil Steenberg’s Labour of Love
In a media landscape dominated by online collaboration, DIY content and crowdsourcing, it may seem like the notion of the Renaissance artist-savant really does belong to an age long since passed. The idea that an artist must have a...
What Real Time Strategy game must I play?
So you like Real Time Strategy games and want to find new games previously unknown to you, but potentially worth playing?
Gaming: The interpassive interplay between user and environment
The interplay between the user and the game is tended to be thought as of being an active and interactive one. But how accurate is this conception? Through the work of Slavoj Žižek I will argue that there are deeper...
Pecking in the Picnic
Yesterday was the last day of the PICNIC event, and even though the "main course" was only acessible to conference ticket owners, there were still plenty of activities to be... Book Launch “Digital Material”
Our appreciated colleagues, the Department of New Media and Digital Culture of Utrecht University to be exact, have their 10th anniversary May 15. And you are cordially invited! On this day UU’s New media folks want to reflect on...
Convergence of Social Networks and Games
A PICNIC Special this year was called ‘Games go Social’ which was about the future of gaming and social networks. An upcoming trend as both industries are evolving is that both can learn a lot from each other and...
When virtual life mixes with real life
Sherry Turkle talks in ‘Video Games and Computer Holding Power’ (1984) about Jimmy, a fourteen year old. Jimmy isn’t gaming (with the game Space Invaders) and thinking of winning and losing. He wants to see how long he can...
In the midst of the serene world of ɥɔʇılƃ
HT Gold will be playable at HAIP Festival in Ljubljana in November (on the commodore, of course). Radio Dada will also be shown and I will give a glitch performance there. Be aware that the framerate of a Commodore...
Xbox Live as a social network site?
While my own Xbox 360 is still being repaired, a hapless victim of the dreaded ‘Red Ring of Death’, gamers everywhere are using the console’s social network programme called Xbox Live. Rightly so, I might add. Microsoft’s Xbox was...
Little Big Planet Not So Web 2.0?
During the First Look event, held last saturday in Amsterdam, Sony Computer Entertainment’s Bernard Groeneveld presented Little Big Planet, already presented in this post. Sony presented this “Make-your-own”-game as the gaming industry’s answer to Web 2.0 applications like Youtube.
Console Gaming 2.0 – Little Big Planet
Though ‘Web 2.0’ is primarily an affair concerning ‘teh intawebs’, the videogame market will strike back soon with ‘Little Big Planet’, developed for The Playstation 3 by Media Molecule. Although the game is not yet available in stores it...
The faces of gaming
Besides playing games, one of the greatest pleasures would be watching other people's expressions while playing games. When people are playing games they totally forget to how look...