On August 6, 2012, along with 3.2 million others, I breathlessly watched the Curiosity space rover touch down on Mars. Launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, and traveling a distance of more than 350 million miles, Curiosity landed in the Gale Crater less than two miles from its target. Within 14 minutes, NASA received the first signals of its survival. Designed to explore the planet for at least one Martian year (687 Earth days), Curiosity’s primary mission is to […]
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Bill Budge, Pinball Construction Set, and the Popularization of User-Customized Video Games
As a kid, I enjoyed racing my virtual dirt bike up 8-bit hill after 8-bit hill in designer Shigeru Miyamoto’s Excitebike (1984) for the Nintendo Entertainment System. What kept me riding was a design mode to create my own tracks. Designing a track on screen changed the way I saw video games. Suddenly, I wasn’t just playing; I was creating part of what I played. And a few well-placed speed bumps and mud puddles could trip up my computer opponent […]
Time for Lunch Boxes
Back-to-school shopping lists can include all sorts of practical gear—pencils, crayons, binders, and paper—as well as the backpack to tote them in. But none of those purchases bears the weight of conveying a school kid’s identity the way that a lunch box can.
Lunch boxes didn’t start out to be billboards for your personality. They were just practical ways to carry a midday meal. Looking back at the second half of the 1800s, adults used functional metal lunch boxes at the […]
The Cherished One: A Teddy Bear Tale
Among my childhood toys, I cherished none more than my teddy bear. According to the family story, when I was six months old, my mother and grandfather were shopping with me in a department store. As we walked past a display of teddy bears, my mother picked one up and showed it to me. “Look Megan,” my mother said sweetly. With as much fascination as a baby could muster, my wide-eyed awe let her know that I’d fallen under the […]
I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!
According to my mom, I cried when I finished devouring my first ice cream cone. I wailed for the duration of our bike ride home from the local ice cream shop. In response to this humbling story, I tell my mom, “Who doesn’t scream for an ice cream?” The frozen treat exemplifies advances in technology and explains food as a social commodity. Plus, eating ice cream is fun.
Chefs originally dished out ice cream, consisting of costly white sugar and exotic […]
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The Scoop on Ice Cream Makers
What could be more fun than playing with your food? How about playing to make your food? The ball-shaped Play & Freeze Ice Cream Maker recently acquired by the National Museum of Play at The Strong promotes itself as the entertaining way to produce homemade ice cream wherever you are—in a campground, aboard a boat, or on a picnic. However, if you’re visualizing using the Play & Freeze as the ball in a soccer or volleyball game that concludes with […]
Less is More in These Video Games
Designer Robert Morris once said that “simplicity of form is not necessarily simplicity of experience.” I found this especially pertinent to the simple, yet stunning game play of both PixelJunk Eden and NightSky.
In PixelJunk Eden, a player controls Grimp as he jumps and swings across plant life to activate seeds in the different gardens. Multi-media artist Baiyon’s (Tomohisa Kuramitsu) work inspired the game, and the visual aesthetics of the gardens remain relatively simple. The color-schemes of each present various shades […]
The Old Fishing (and Swimming) Hole
The late Thomas Kinkade said of his 2003 rendering The Old Fishing Hole, “Perhaps the best thing about childhood is what we make of it in our memories. I suppose that in the living there were good times and bad, but in the memory, it’s the good times that live on with a certain radiance.”
Growing up in farm country, my friends and I spent many a hot summer day around, or in, a nearby pond or the brook down back. […]
Nyad the Naiad: Finding Play at the Extreme End of Competition
The Greeks imagined three kinds of water nymphs: Oceanids inhabited seas, ponds, lakes, and springs; Nereids swam in the deep salt water particularly the Aegean; and Naiads made their homes in fresh water streams, and even in wells and fountains. That Diana Nyad, journalist, radio commentator, ranked professional squash player, and most notably, endurance swimmer, should have a name that sounds like a water nymph is a coincidence too rich not to mention. Nyad turns 63 in a few days, […]
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