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It’s nearing midnight, the witching hour, on October 31. The Hunter’s Moon is shining brightly through your curtains, providing the only light in an otherwise dark room. The house is silent, except for the occasional sound of an owl hooting outside your window. You feel like the only person alive in the world.
No, this isn’t the opening of a horror story, but is the best setting in which to play one of the greatest survival horror video games of all […]

Continue Reading about Video Game Horrors: Surviving Resident Evil Published on:
October 22, 2010

In my May 12 blog, I noted that the museum will soon be embarking on an important project—collecting play histories from all of you. These firsthand recollections and stories will help us bring new life to the objects in the Strong’s collection and will add a new dimension to the meaning of play for us all.
Back in my first blog, I mentioned that I had taken a course in American Folklore in college. That course prompted me to sit down […]

Continue Reading about Capturing your Past for our Future Published on:
October 21, 2010

Museums stabilize artifacts by storing them at proper temperatures and humidity and away from damaging light. Objects properly preserved—like an old doll or board game—will last, for all practical purposes, for perpetuity.
Video games present more of a challenge. They exist on inherently unstable media. Magnetic decay, or “bit rot,” destroys information on floppy disks, optical CD-ROMs, and even ROM game cartridges. Furthermore, games rely on hardware and operating software that often become obsolete. The shift to digital publication of games […]

Continue Reading about ICHEG’s Approach to Collecting and Preserving Video Games Published on:
October 13, 2010

When I was very young, I was given a small book called The Flying Sandbox. Briefly told, the sandbox becomes airborne as the result of a wish and magically soars aloft, giving Kerry and Chris a bird’s eye view of their friends and neighborhood. Even as a child, I knew that sandboxes couldn’t fly, but my imagination could and it did. It might not be great children’s literature, but The Flying Sandbox achieved what every good children’s book should: it […]

Continue Reading about The Flying Sandbox Published on:
October 12, 2010

Here’s a little story about how foreign travel is the kind of play that keeps you on your toes.

Many years ago, my wife and I traveled with friends to Venice, Florence, and Rome. The middle destination, Florence, has a thousand-year tradition of entertaining tourists and, to put it mildly, they’re pretty good at it. Sightseeing made us hungry and we chose one of Florence’s many fine restaurants for a meal, unaware that this restaurant had a different sort of tradition. […]

Continue Reading about Food, Fashion, Florence, and Fooling Around Published on:
October 5, 2010

In the 2006 New York Times article “The Cute Factor,” Natalie Angier investigated how cuteness affects society. She wrote “scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute.” Cute cues include roundness, floppy limbs, a side-to-side gait, vulnerability, and need, among others. After reading Angier’s article, I realized cute factors affect my game selections.

Sackboy from Geek Crafts

Mark Healey and Dave Smith’s Little Big Planet […]

Continue Reading about Video Games and the Cute Factor Published on:
September 29, 2010

Recently, as I competed in a group online challenge, a player presented me with the following puzzle:
Blank Picross Puzzle
 

I had no concept or instructions of how the puzzle worked, so I turned to my husband and asked if he had any idea. He exclaimed, “It’s Picross!”
Picross, short for picture crossword, is a Japanese logic puzzle game known also as a griddler or nonogram. Each puzzle contains a hidden picture revealed only after the player fills in squares based on […]

Continue Reading about Paper to Video: A Puzzling Game Published on:
September 17, 2010

Following the blog I wrote recently on video game preservation in Europe, readers sent me emails about a couple of other museums there. One is at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, which currently has a temporary exhibit on the history of video games. The other is the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games in Moscow. Let us know about your experiences with these or any other video game museums.

Continue Reading about More Video Game Museums in Europe Published on:
September 16, 2010

Part of a recent conversation with a friend focused on his concerns about which video games his daughter is currently interested in. Are these the right games at her age? Do they contain violent material that isn’t implied by the title? Will she be able to get online through the game console and chat with people she doesn’t know? As both a curator and a parent of young children, I share his concerns and have given them a great deal […]

Continue Reading about Age-Appropriate Play Published on:
September 3, 2010