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Recently I had the pleasure of attending the 17th Annual D.I.C.E Awards at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Each year, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences celebrates the best interactive games and with its Pioneer Award honors a person whose “career-spanning work has helped shape and define the interactive entertainment industry.” This year the Academy added Eugene Jarvis to a distinguished list of previous honorees, including game designers such as David Crane (Pitfall!), Ed Logg […]

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February 20, 2014

On April 12, 2013, in a game against the rival Golden State Warriors, the L.A. Lakers star Kobe Bryant scored 47 points. Two nights later, trainers abruptly bundled him off to the ER with a snapped Achilles tendon, an injury that had ended many a career. Professional athletes who play dangerous games depend in part on a personal fable, the sense of a measure of invincibility. Recovering from surgery, Bryant confessed to anger and some bewilderment. “How the hell can this […]

Continue Reading about Finding an Identity on the Comeback Trail: Skiing During the Winter Olympics Published on:
February 19, 2014

Meet Big Loo, your new best friend. If you ever go to the moon, make sure you take Big Loo with you. With him along, you won’t need any other companion.
Advertised as a robot from the moon and perfect for lunar exploration, the 38-inch Big Loo functioned like a one-man, er, one-robot army. Louis Marx & Company, the largest toy maker in America at mid-20th century, introduced Big Loo in 1963. Operating on three D batteries, Loo flashed his red […]

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February 14, 2014

What’s your favorite toy? I had the chance to talk about some of my favorites from the National Toy Hall of Fame with Gerri Willis on The Willis Report not long ago. The Fox Business network brought me to New York City as part of the lead-in to holiday toy shopping and to remind their viewers about classic toys. The segment’s theme, “Best Toys Ever,” felt like a perfect fit since celebrating toys with enduring play value is what the […]

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February 3, 2014

If someone placed a lump of clay in front of you, what would you do? Would you immediately be drawn to pick it up and shape it into something? Would you pass it from hand to hand, simply enjoying the tactile qualities? Perhaps you wouldn’t be inclined to touch it at all, maybe you find the idea of sculpting something daunting. Whatever your choice, in that lump of clay lies an important and undeniable quality: possibility.
  Now consider how a […]

Continue Reading about Molding Minds Published on:
January 23, 2014

Novelists have collaborated with video game designers to create interactive fiction for decades. In 1984, author Douglas Adams and computer game developer Steve Meretzky paired-up to turn the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy series into an interactive fiction video game. Cyberdreams later worked with author Harlan Ellison to turn his short-story, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” into a point-and-click adventure game. Writer Tom Clancy created his own game studio, Red Storm Entertainment, and has produced popular series like […]

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January 14, 2014

What does it take to play a game? Historic outdoor games like Duck on a Rock only require found stones. Other traditional outdoor games such as lawn bowls, bocce, and croquet used wooden balls. Early table versions of these games employed smaller ivory or wood balls or clay marbles. All these games have one thing in common: each involves knocking something aside with something else.
These games go back centuries and draw their basics from competitive games of shooting marbles. Billiards, […]

Continue Reading about A Mere Bagatelle: From Marbles to Pinball and Beyond Published on:
January 13, 2014

Community is one of the most playful shows on television. The comedy about a study group at dysfunctional Greendale Community College not only features unconventional storytelling methods and an innovative visual style, but its characters actually play—all the time. And either its writers have been looking to The Strong for episode ideas, or the toys and games featured on the show are simply as iconic as our experts say they are. In honor of the show’s fifth-season premiere on January […]

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January 1, 2014

Holiday time is a good occasion to think about humor and play since it’s filled with reflection, rest, and relaxation with relatives and friends—a time to play again. Like vacation time, holidays let us back off a bit, lighten up, and try to laugh a lot more, for our own good. I firmly believe that the day we stop playing is the day we stop living.

Continue Reading about Born to Laugh: The Element of Humor in Play Published on:
December 27, 2013