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"A sense of achievement without the capital ‘A’ is a better reward than anything Microsoft’s Funpoints can throw at you, and the very best Achievements are ones which reward actual achievement. When a player does something he or she know is awesome and the game agrees with them , it only makes the sense of achievement greater. Success in a game is better when you have an audience – in the absence of nearby friends, Achievements should be your audience."
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Strictly speaking, "The Best of *American* Journalism", but there's lots on here I'd like to read sometime.
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"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
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"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."
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An interesting series of concept images of what context-aware, mobile search and data-diving tools might look like. Some neat thinking around transparency and context.
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"I wanted to take portraits of people that would reveal a hidden part of their character. So I had them play videogames."
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"Why did Weight Watchers work so well? For a really fascinating reason: because it isn't a normal diet. It's something more. Something fun. It's an RPG." Of course. Fantastic deconstruction from Clive Thompson.
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Braid papercraft. Delightful.
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Eesh. Tetris in 500 bytes of Javscript and HTML. Yes, they're obfuscated and unpleasant, but wow, etcetera.