Tag: Games

The Labor of Play

Games like Wordle and CALL OF DUTY equally stem from capital's attempt to conquer leisure time. Is there a better way to play?

“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 ...

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 ...