the above jill is by mischa unovitch.

david rosen is doing a series of “design tours” of games, the first of these being world of goo. (i don’t think i’ve mentioned world of goo yet. it has a premise that you’d think would lend to a series of abstract engineering challenges, but in fact every stage is a story, and the game never repeats its ideas.) rosen’s observations are smart and savvy, interrogating subtler design decisions - both technical and not - and illuminating how they contribute to the game’s holistic experience. rosen’s analysis is broad and, as derek yu put it, “feels like it is thinking about the game from both sides of the screen.” this is a real discussion of the nuances of design, something we sorely need.

whereas world of goo is a contemporary game, jmac’s arcade is a retrospective on early eighties arcade games by jason mcintosh, who organizes the public access gameshelf show that i’ve mentioned before. jmac’s arcade is insightful and personal, and completely unlike the majority of videos of older games on the internet, which are interested in those games only so far as they can be sacrificed for a few cheap laughs and five minutes of fame for the author. and as the experience of the arcade dwindles, we need to be recording this oral history of the experience of encountering and playing games in social spaces.

jmac hasn’t updated the project in over a year, but i am hoping he’ll read this and take it as incentive to get on it again.

also, new york times photography robbie cooper assembled this beautiful agony-style video of kids’ faces as they play videogames. slut, in response, recorded one of her own. (name the game!)