The ever-insightful Gus Mastrapa points to one of the central pleasures in videogames in a recent colum: Video Games Make Trespassers Out Of Us All We don’t realize it, but our everyday lives are full of limitations. Our daily rituals take place in a narrow channel walled by invisible barriers. When you take a...
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Minecraft has become a recent obsession. A sort of SimCity meets Lego meets Dungeons and Dragons, the emphasis is on building and exploration. And all the while you click away at the endless landscape of blocks, you have a feeling that the game is more important than just your latest game habit. This video...
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Fun and funny. What’s the difference, how can you tell and why does it matter? The connection seems to lie right below the surface, but remains as quick as a fish and twice as slippery when you try to grab it. In one of those unscripted moments in life where things comes together in...
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.There is an ongoing interest in the idea of games and architecture. Usually this means videogames. And usually this means how buildings are designed in games. When you want to think more about the concept of games and the concept of architecture, I think it helps to look at board games. I have taught...
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Last month I have the privileged to speak before an audience of 1,400 people at TEDx Boulder. My topic was, “What makes a place fun?” Whether or not I answered that question, you can decide for yourself: This question of fun is central to my dissertation research which, among other things, proposes to offer...
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Today etc press released Steffen Walz’s “Toward a Ludic Archtiecture” You can download the text or leap straight into purchasing a printed copy here: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/toward-ludic-architecture As I continue to work through my dissertation on “What makes a place fun?’, I am excited to see Steffen’s work in print. Not only does it help push forward...
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Below is the full text of a conference proposal I submitted to the upcoming DiGRA conference . Unfortunately, the proposal was rejected, at least in part for being confusing. Fair enough. But I am posting it here is the interest of gaining additional comments and feedback, either public or private. I think the epistemological underpinnings...
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London now sports what it's owners have described as the world's first walk-in cocktail. Don the sort of coverall you see in science labs and walk into a misty room. The room is the "bar" and the mist is gin and tonic. Presumably, chilling in this cocktail and breathing deeply long enough is equivalent...
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As a part of my, "What makes a place fun?" research, I have postulated the idea of the "fun house" as an actual home anchored in fun as much as much as some homes are designed to be beautiful. The question always is, "What is a fun house?" And while I am still working out...
Read more →(This is an excerpt from a longer argument building a description of fun and linking it to the much more explored subject of play.) On face value the question rings true. Some places do seem more fun than others and wondering "What makes a place fun?" is equivalent to asking: "Where is a fun place we...
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