Aleks Krotoski Friday 3 July 2009 11.00 BST
As you may have noticed from the dearth of posts on the gamesblog about odd academic issues, quirky indie games, obscure gaming culture and bizarre interactive ephemera, my contributions have recently been obscured by the impending submission of my PhD thesis. Well, my deadline is finally upon me, and I have until 14 August to finish the behemoth.
This week we hear from AudioBoo founder Mark Rock. AudioBoo is the latest new media trend to capture the attentions of the digerati – and celebrities – allowing users to record snippets of audio using your iPhone and send it out to the world via the internet.
Aleks Krotoski
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 June 2009 19.00 BST
Sex. Got your attention? OK, good. I’ll try again. Games. Still here? Excellent. Now that I’ve got your number, let’s try the two of them together: sex and games. Hello? Nothing? Where did you go? How strange. You’d think that sex-plus-games would equal a rush of eager gamers waving fists of cash, but according to Brenda Brathwaite, founder of the International Game Developers Association’s Sex in Games special interest group, the adult entertainment industry has never really had a look-in. They may have propelled other digital innovations, but when it comes to console-based hanky-panky, grown-up situations have been a turn-off.
The robots have taken over the asylum here in Guardian Towers, and joining Aleks Krotoski to fight the onslaught of Skynet, Metal Mickey and Wall-E are our fearless podcasters, Jemima Kiss and Bobbie Johnson – who is reporting from the Mecca of Mech, last weekend’s RoboGames android Olympics in San Francisco.
Aleks Krotoski
The Guardian, Thursday 11 June 2009
A throbbing head, weak knees and flashing lights: these are only three of the reasons I did not go to the second coming of E3, the Electronics Entertainment Expo, last week in Los Angeles. There are others. The west’s Tokyo Game Show is, as I have written on the Gamesblog in the past, an orgasm of the senses. Problem is, it’s actually someone else’s orgasm, and you’ve had nothing to do with it.
Aleks Krotoski
The Guardian, Thursday 28 May 2009
The sun is finally out and, confession time, the last place I want to be is inside playing a computer game. Yes, making such a statement under the heading Game Theory may seem treasonous, or at least the end of my tenure on these pages, but I assure you, I’m not letting the side down. I’m still playing – I’ve just taken my playthings outside.
Aleks Krotoski
The Guardian, Thursday 14 May 2009
The games industry lost a great figure last week, a man whose near two decades of service helped to define our modern gaming culture. Duke Nukem, the iconic frontman of the cherished series that bore his name, was laid to rest with the closure of 3D Realms – the development studio that bore him, raised him and pig-headedly refused to let him go.
Aleks Krotoski
The Guardian, Thursday 30 April 2009
Last weekend, the Department for Health released its latest TV ad in the Change4Life campaign. It features a clay modelled family coming to the realisation that the scientists are right: a sedentary lifestyle leads to health problems. “Throw down the remote! Chuck away the joystick! Stop eating greasy takeaways!” was the message. “Save our NHS from an epidemic of fatties!” was the subtext. And dutifully, the family did as they were told and started freakin’ on Dance Dance Revolution.
Aleks Krotoski
The Guardian, Thursday 19 March 2009
South by Southwest is not a computer games conference, or so I’ve been told. The annual festival in Austin, Texas, is supposed to be the folly of web geeks, that brand of brainiacs who make (or want to make) Facebook and Twitter, rather than the breed responsible for Halo or Grand Theft Auto. Yet, sitting in the Austin Convention Centre last weekend, I spotted Halo’s Master Chief wandering through the hallway. Later that afternoon, Six to Start, the alternate reality game-makers from Clerkenwell, London, won both the experimental category at the SXSWi awards and the best in show gong.
Aleks Krotoski
The Guardian, Thursday 16 April 2009
It is inevitable that at this stage in my PhD – the dreaded writing-up phase – I can see the blasted thing everywhere. I can’t eat, sleep or play without some tenuous and convoluted association with social networks, social psychology and online community interrupting the few moments I’m trying to clear my head of it. This ranges from creating mini-networks out of peas and spaghetti on my dinner plate to dreaming of correlations in my sleep. The worst is when it creeps into my fun time and turns every game I play into an exercise in theory.
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