The ability to track where you are looking on screen opens up new options for video game players and developers. But is eye-tracking technology a gimmick or a game changer for the gaming industry?
Video games are an easy scapegoat for youth crime rates, but the evidence just isn’t there.
GTA V, Videogame Photography
Victorian police are attributing a rise in car thefts to the “Grand Theft Auto Generation”. But blaming video games just distracts from bigger questions of inequality and societal detachment.
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
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.
Do you run wild in Fallout, or vicariously hunt zombies in The Walking Dead? Three philosophers investigate the enduring appeal of the post-apocalypse.
Dmitri Williams, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
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
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
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.