The Tech Community Needs to Grow Up
How one woman's tweets exposed the industry's boys club
Ten days ago, a programmer named Adria Richards was attending PyCon, the foremost conference for the popular computer language Python, when she heard the two gentlemen sitting behind her engaged in ungentlemanly conversation. They were talking about "forking," and "big dongles," and other crude and sexually explicit things. That made Richards uncomfortable. She turned around, snapped a photo of the guys, and tweeted it. READ MORE >>
MoMA Has Mistaken Video Games for Art
The museum is putting 'Pac-Man' alongside Picasso. That misses the point.
Earlier this month, the Museum of Modern Art debuted a new exhibition, “Applied Design,” which features the 14 video games recently acquired for a new branch of the museum's permanent collection. That the same hallowed halls reserved for Picasso now also displayed Pac-Man sparked yet another round of a now familiar debate: Are video games art? READ MORE >>
Sony's announcement last week of the upcoming release of its next-generation video game console, the PlayStation 4, went exactly as expected: The company's executives took the floor of Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom, talked about the new machine's extended RAM and redesigned controller, and left very few fans and reporters moved. READ MORE >>
It might have been my general awkwardness, or the soft unappealing plume on my upper lip, or my general distaste for humanity, but I’m pretty sure the reason I had no social life in junior high is Ron Gilbert. READ MORE >>
China Is Not the Gaming Industry's Next Great Frontier
The People's Republic may lift its ban on consoles. It wouldn't be the boon that many expect.
Last month, China Daily, the country’s main English-language paper, reported that the People’s Republic might lift its 13-year-old ban on video game consoles. READ MORE >>
Atari Is Not an Anomaly
The pioneering video game company is dead. Its successors are making the same mistakes.
For those of us born in the 1970s, last week’s news of Atari’s demise came as a sentimental shockwave. Atari was our first video game console. It introduced us to Space Invaders and Missile Command and Pitfall. More importantly, it taught us how to play electronically, forming our habits and blistering our thumbs. READ MORE >>
PETA vs. Pokémon: Does The Video Game Make Kids Cruel?
Artistic Judgment: How the Supreme Court Will Soon Decide How Much Access We Have to Art
Dmitri Shostakovich is currently on trial in the Supreme Court. So are Fritz Lang, Sergei Prokofiev, and Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking. For years, these artists’ works, and many others like them, were readily and freely available to American audiences. Now they’re tied up in legal limbo, and it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide what their fate—and the fate of the people who would like to experience them—will be. READ MORE >>
