We’re hardwired to love finding patterns, solving puzzles, mastering challenges. Business, education, health, marketing and other fields tap into these drives via game elements to help us hit goals or change behavior.
Eye tracking devices sound a lot more like expensive pieces of scientific research equipment than joysticks – yet if the latest announcements about the latest Assassin’s Creed game are anything to go by…
Buttons open to the waist, skin gleaming with sweat, hair tousled, intriguing flashes of curves … men on the covers of classic romance novels, or “bodice rippers”, are objectified in many of the same ways…
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is a common refrain. But usually it is not followed by the words “because your neighbours may kill you”. However, this is precisely the scenario faced by some female…
The latest instalment of wildly popular videogame Call of Duty, Advanced Warfare, shows the narratives of today’s games can reveal the motives behind real-world politics. Over the past decade, fictional…
The UK’s video games industry body Tiga has called for the products to be treated like other creative industries such as television or film, rather than mere “software”. There is a good argument for this…
Computers have shaken up how we create and listen to music, and there is more radical transformation to come. The potential for digital music to be interactive is leading to new ways to experience and…
Whether playing video games has negative effects is something that has been debated for 30 years, in much the same way that rock and roll, television, and even the novel faced much the same criticisms…
This year’s GameCity festival in Nottingham will include the announcement of the UK National Videogames Arcade which will open in the city in 2015. The arcade will be a centre for gaming culture and a…
Science fiction author William Gibson said: “virtual reality is like mainlining television.” Virtual reality is no longer limited to the wealthy few who can afford it. It is also becoming more common in…
Does the name Felix Kjellberg sound familiar? How about PewDiePie? … Still nothing? Clearly you’re not one of the 31 million subscribers to YouTube’s most successful channel, PewDiePie, starring 24-year-old…
You likely couldn’t outswim Alicia Coutts or Ian Thorpe, or lift half of what Damon Kelly or Seen Lee can, but I bet you could beat them at a videogame. Welcome to e-sports, the future of competitions…
Books adapted for the screen regularly rack up critical acclaim – think of Life of Pi, Argo, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Twilight. But it’s hard to think of equivalent…
In the world of video games few companies have as long or vivid a history as Nintendo, which turns 125 years old this week. Founded in 1889 as a producer of toys and playing-cards, the company is quite…
Three weeks ago, well-known feminist gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her San Francisco home due to an ongoing tirade of abuse and threats. Members of a vocal minority of online trolls…
As the UK’s largest gaming festival, Insomnia, wrapped up its latest event on August 25, I watched a short piece of BBC Breakfast news reporting from the festival. The reporter and some of the interviewees…
Are video games societal microcosms wherein deviant behaviour flourishes and spills into “real life”? Or are they just harmless fun in which nobody really gets hurt? This endless debate usually concerns…