Cerebral Arcade

This year, the ACM Hypertext Conference is offering a Creative Track in an effort to bring in more artists, which I have graciously been asked to Chair. This year's conference theme is "missing link," which is perfect for how we see this exhbition.

I had planned to post a cute little post today about AI as a design problem. But honestly in the wake of the announcement that...

Finally, by my third GDC, I have reconciled my past experiences of being an outsider with the my current privileges. This year was a big step.

I’ve been a fan of the Super Smash Bros series since the first installment on Nintendo 64 in 1999. Back then, I loved the game’s framing metaphor of the characters of Nintendo's most popular games as inanimate toys brought to life by the Master Hand’s omnipotent selection.

Lately I’ve been wondering what I can contribute to the community and therefore wondering what role and persona will most effectively communicate that contribution. But performing yourself is harder than it sounds, and the conscious search for an online persona feels anything but genuine.

Agario is a game about consumption: both the aggressive, taking kind and the supportive, giving kind. Consumption is the power fantasy underlying the game's appeal...and I find it more satisfying than I'd like to admit. Moreover, I love the dynamics that have emerged around giving and sacrifice as communication.

When games reference other games, it’s almost always done in a flippant, shallow way, but allusions represent a greater possibility for ambiguity, multivalence, and expressive depth. Games deserve—and are increasingly ready to harness—that depth.

I wanted to be an engineer. But not if it meant giving up writing or design. But I was looking at it the wrong way: labels should be lenses, not boxes.