An orang-utan playing with the interactive digital projector at the Melbourne Zoo.
Microsoft Research Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces at the University of Melbourne
An experiment providing interactive games for orang-utans is showing the potential for digital technology to enrich the lives of zoo animals.
League of Legends screenshot.
They may offer a cloak of anonymity, but you can peep behind the veil and learn a little about who’s at the controls.
Few foresaw the stunning commercial success enjoyed by Hipster Whale’s Crossy Road.
Alper Çuğun/Flickr
Australian game developers compete on a global level, but some governments are more supportive of their local industry.
Just Go for it: programming a computer to play an ancient game.
Donar Reiskoffer/Wikimedia Commons
While it’s impressive, developing a computer to win at Go is not a big step toward the type of artificial intelligence used by the thinking machines we see in the movies.
A drawing from Lewis Carroll’s manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, written between 1862-64.
© The British Library Board
Alice has always trail-blazed through new and uncharted territory, and this is no less true of her ventures into the 21st century.
All’s well … then one day you walk out the front door and into a freshly-nuked hellscape.
Midhras
Do you run wild in Fallout, or vicariously hunt zombies in The Walking Dead? Three philosophers investigate the enduring appeal of the post-apocalypse.
artubr
How did we go from videogames played in bedrooms to watching live in front of an audience of millions?
Fans cheer during The International Dota 2 Championships in Seattle, Washington earlier this month.
Jason Redmond/Reuters
The US$17 million prize pool at The International Dota 2 Championships shows how much the industry has grown over the past decade.
Dire predictions on the future of children’s brains are shocking, not least because of how flimsy the evidence is to support these views.
zeitfaenger.at/Flickr
Baseless claims about the damage done to kids’ development create needless panic. And they distract from legitimate, evidence-based concerns with which parents need to engage.
Video games are no longer the domain of the young alone.
Chip Griffin/Flickr
Video games aren’t only for kids. A new report shows that older Australians are embracing games, for a variety of reasons.
Women are far more likely to receive negative or threatening comments while gaming.
awee_19/Flickr
Some of the harassment women face while playing video games could be due to bully tactics employed by lower status men.
Escape From Woomera is renowned as one of the forebears of “serious games” – what chance would it stand under new government funding guidelines?
By Escape from Woomera development team, via Wikimedia Commons
This exclusion of games from artistic funding in this year’s budget follows the cancellation of the Interactive Media Fund in last year’s budget. Where to now for the Australian videogame industry?
‘I hate to say this but he, uh, it’s behind you.’
EA Games
What gives horror-themed computer games their kick, and why do so many of us like it?
Does this look like a typical gamer to you?
Steven Andrew/Flickr
Our study found that those people - including women - who are most interested in sex play the most violent games.
Video games have some clever ways of motivating players, and these methods can be used to get kids interested in learning.
From www.shutterstock.com
There may be a chemical secret to getting kids interested in learning – and it’s one that’s created and produced by our own bodies rather than in a lab.
Everything old is new again: ZX Spectrum Vega.
Retro Computers
If early videogames are really that good, they’ll still hold up today – right?
What’s this doing to my brain?
Man playing video games via Ten03/www.shutterstock.com
After a new study found no link between the hours a person spends gaming and their cognitive abilities, we look at the evidence.
One narrowly defined study isn’t enough to prove that people who play video games are less sexist.
JD Hancock/Flickr
Academic papers are often cherry picked to support our prevailing views. We need to be careful to acknowledge the complexities of many issues explored by science.
The real game gets filtered by the imaginary.
OlegDoroshin / Shutterstock.com
Football games are now watched through a haze of statistics, generated by betting, fantasy football and video games.
Trigger happy?
Magnus Fröderberg/norden.org
Parents could certainly do more to be aware of what their children are playing. But threatening letters are unlikely to help.