Games– digital games and boardgames and sports and childhood pastimes, the whole bunch– are all escapist activities. Even games with grim messages and furrow-browed insights into our real world provide release and respite from that world. Games are governed by fixed rules we can learn to understand, and this in itself is a liberating and entertaining [...]

According to Glitch’s website, I haven’t seen something like this before: After playing the game pretty intensely for about three weeks, I don’t know what to think of that statement. There’s a lot about Glitch that’s incredibly new and refreshing– stuff that will influence the way some more-traditional MMOs are made, I hope. There’s also [...]

I wrote this months ago, during our dry spell, only a few days after Portal 2 came out. Because we are lazy and slow, you finally get to see it… today! Wahoo! I’m going to do the English Major thing and talk about Portal 2’s story for a bit. Forgive me if I don’t dwell [...]

5) …a place I recognize Every floor in Tiny Tower is a perfect little scene, and every scene is something I recognize. The Asian Cuisine is a PF Chang’s. The Sub Shop is a Subway. The Video Rental is a Blockbuster. The Smoothie Shop is a Jamba Juice. The Mapple Store is an Apple Store. [...]

3) …a place of anonymity When I first began making my tower, I knew all the Bitizens in it. There were only about ten of them for quite a while, and they all looked pretty different from one another, and the BitBook thing– a tiny version of Facebook which the Bitizens chatter on for your [...]

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Aryeh D, a fellow Dartmouth student, on the topic of his particular expertise: competitive Minesweeper. Over the years, Minesweeper has birthed its own online competitive community– one very different from the competitive gaming communities we’re used to reading about on the internet today. It’s centered around a single [...]