Author Archive
When I first heard about the Battlestar Galactica board game I dismissed it as a shameless cash-in; might as well buy a Battlestar themed happy meal at McDonald’s (or, I suppose, a Starbuck themed coffee at Starbucks). I’m a big fan of the show. It was fresh and gutsy and the writing and acting were good enough [...]
Just a quick post today on a recent revelation I had about Monopoly. In one of my earliest posts I wrote about Monopoly as a Parasite-Zombie-Hydra-Vampire-Cannibal and ended that post with the claim that Monopoly is “a shitty game”. Well now I’m not so sure. I may owe a big apology to [...]
Apple markets its iPad as “The best way to experience the web, photos and video. Hands down.” But we can do all those things just fine on a laptop, so what’s the iPad’s real raison d’être? The answer, of course, is board games. The iPad seems custom designed to lie flat [...]
Imagine a utopia in which all human needs are met and all interpersonal problems solved. In such a world, what would we do to pass the time? Three things immediately spring to mind: 1) Sex 2) Art 3) Play Three things immediately spring to mind: 1) Sex 2) Art 3) Play In his 1978 book The Grasshopper Bernard Suits addresses this [...]
Last week I briefly described how games and play help explain Jacques Derrida’s post-structuralist theory. This week I would like to continue on that same topic and focus on just one of Derrida’s neologisms (or, I should say, neographisms, because Derrida valued the written word over the spoken word): différance. Derrida claims that différance is [...]
Last week I discussed how Saussurean structural analysis can be understood in terms of games, and how game strategy can be understood as structural analysis. This week I would like to introduce one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the twentieth century, Jacques Derrida, and suggest how his notoriously difficult theories can [...]
In his seminal, posthumously-published work, the Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure writes: “Of all the comparisons that might be imagined, the most fruitful is the one that might be drawn between the functioning of language and a game of chess. […] A game of chess is like an artificial realization of what language [...]
It’s easy to treat background music in games as...well, as mere background, but there are a few games in which the background music has transcended that function and added something really special to the game. The Fallout series is a perfect example of this.
For the last 6 weeks I’ve been posting about games I played as a child on our first family computer, the Mac Plus. Revisiting these games (using the Mini vMac emulator) has been full of tremendous joy, frustration and nostalgia. I’ve been struck by several things over the course of my adventures: 1) Just [...]
Of all the classic games I’ve featured in this series, 3 in Three is the one that holds up the best. It is hard to imagine how modern technology could improve this delightful little puzzle game one iota. Each puzzle is clever and satisfying; each little cut scene is snappy and smart. [...]
Grid Wars is a simulation of an arcade game from the future. You, a human, enter an alien bar, called Alphie’s, in search of a space drink. But a sign reads: “You must play before you drink, human.” The game you must play, against a wide assortment of aliens and robots, is [...]
The internet describes Quarterstaff: The Tomb of Setmoth (1988) as the “holy grail” of Infocom games. Infocom are the legendary creators of the Zork series of “interactive fiction” games (snooty-talk for text adventures), and Quarterstaff is a rare Mac-only release. I ordered it from a catalogue at the age of 8 based purely [...]
