Tag: video games

  • When does an immersive video game become an addictive one?

    This extract from Tim Wu’s Attention Merchants pg 192-193 makes clear how the immersive character of video games has been treated as addictive from the outset. It raises the question of where the former characteristic ends and the latter begins: In both markets Space Invaders was a sudden and unexpected success—nothing quite like it had […]

  • Ontological junctures

    In the last few days, I’ve been gripped by a feature of Doom for Nintendo Switch. There are classic levels hidden throughout the game, waiting to be discovered in unlikely locations in each of the maps. What I can’t get over is how they exist as junctures between two game worlds, inviting the player to step into […]

  • 3 dystopian visions of the future of gaming (and capitalism)

    In a near future America, the world is locked into an inglorious decline while the majority of its population is locked into an intoxicatingly expansive virtual world. Ecological crisis and economic ruin operate hand-in-hand to leave the 99% living in sprawling slums, consisting of endless stacks of trailer parks, around the periphery of the surviving […]

  • The King of Kong: a documentary about celebrity gamers

    And another documentary, via @Carwyn:

  • At what point do addictive games become sinister?

    Prior to christmas I found myself installing Candy Crush on my iPad. Less than a week later I forced myself to delete it, not least of all because of the dawning realisation that I was going to do something which I’d previously found absurd and pay for extra lives. Since then I’ve been thinking about […]