Games like Wordle and CALL OF DUTY equally stem from capital's attempt to conquer leisure time. Is there a better way to play?
Tag: Games
Quit Playing Games with My Heart
Robert first catches my eye from across the coffee shop. New to the neighborhood, I’m looking for a friendly face. But Robert—glaring back at me from over his mug ...
“Everyone Writes Stories”
In the old days, people used to talk about gaming the system. It meant manipulating the rules to produce a desired outcome. The term was popularized by software ...
We All Must Play “The Westing Game”
In the beginning was Sunset Towers. By which I mean, at the beginning of what I quickly came to think of as my reading life: whatever came before, whether read ...
If You Give an Adult a Coloring Book
What, exactly, makes a coloring book a coloring book for adults? Where are the lines that define this genre, and how can grown-ups make sure they are coloring securely (and maturely) inside them ...
Gamifying the Workplace
Anyone who has read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer no doubt remembers the fence-painting scene. Consigned as a punishment by his Aunt Polly to spend a Saturday whitewashing 30 yards of wooden fence ...
Ghost in the System
It’s fitting that a videogame about novels and their authorship manages to marry two media long thought to be polar opposites. Aaron Reed and Jacob Garbe’s The Ice-Bound Concordance, available for ...
How to Write about Videogames
I remember his blue-plastic hair, drawn back in a little bun that looked octagonal. I remember the pointy hat that crowned him in the eyes of other players: “Sorcerer’s petasos +1,” the “+1” ...
Behind the Dungeon Master’s Screen
From Dickens’s David Copperfield and Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus to Elena Ferrante’s Elena Greco, we are familiar with the fictional protagonist as novelist, or as novelist-to-be. Recently, 40 years ...