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At home in the Carmel Valley, I enjoy a view of the steep ridge that holds the flood plain that the Carmel River (only truly a fast-flowing river in springtime) has cut into the rock. At points the shale is so friable you can dig into it with your bare fingers. The geologic past is not always easily readable in this valley; layers of sandstone, soft shale, sandstone, decomposed granite, and big stream rounded boulders in conglomerate residues piled helter-skelter […]

Continue Reading about The Tree House of the August Moon: Play and Solace in the Carmel Valley Published on:
August 15, 2012

As the Olympic Games conclude, I can’t help but remember my years as a star athlete . . . just kidding. People who condition their bodies and minds for extreme competition will forever surpass my skill and understanding. However, I appreciate their urge to better themselves through feats of athleticism. And I, like many of my fellow non-Olympians, strive for personal improvement in my own way.
 I never succeeded at organized sports. Two seasons of middle-school basketball netted me (pardon the […]

Continue Reading about Physical Fitness: Play or Punishment? Published on:
August 13, 2012

Video games constantly evolve. Early on, graphics involved simple dots and now, they provide highly realistic, movie-quality images. Music originally consisted of bleeps and buzzes, while soundtracks now contain fully-orchestrated symphonies. My favorite evolution involves modifications to video game controllers, which began with simple joysticks, then morphed into complex control pads, and currently require nothing more than the player’s own movements. In my experience, no game displays this evolution more completely than Capcom’s Steel Battalion.
In 2002, video game console controllers […]

Continue Reading about Steel Battalion and the Evolution of Video Game Controllers Published on:
August 9, 2012

Do you know Winnie the Pooh? When you were very small, someone dear to you may have read the adventures of Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood as you drifted off to sleep. Perhaps you were given a Pooh Bear to cuddle. You may have learned to read with Winnie, sipped from a Winnie the Pooh mug, played a Winnie the Pooh video game, or watched a Winnie the Pooh movie.
 I thought I knew almost everything about Winnie […]

Continue Reading about Winnie the Pooh—Forever Young Published on:
August 7, 2012

The opening of NFL training camp put me in mind of an encounter in a different field. On a routine doctor visit, I was answering the usual questions. “Do you smoke?” the doctor asked.  I said, “no.” “Never did?” she persisted. “Nope,” I replied. “And never will?” she asked meaningfully, leaning forward. A little weary of the interrogation I said, “well, Doc, I’ve been trying to start, but I’m having no success.” Not a smile; not even a twitch. Next […]

Continue Reading about Knocked Cold and Loving It Published on:
August 6, 2012

Fairy tales and other stories of magic lack a single author, and often writers, directors, and video game designers play with classic versions. Two recent video games, The Path and Alice: Madness Returns, deliver noteworthy heroines to a few traditional tales.
For centuries, various versions of Little Red Cap or Little Red Riding Hood presented a heroine as a device or symbol to spin a cautionary tale. A clever twist came from game developer Tale of Tales’ short horror game, The […]

Continue Reading about Happily Ever After For These Video Game Heroines? Published on:
August 3, 2012

I can’t pretend to care much about genteel Victorian pastimes. Bar skittles? Not a fan. Shove halfpenny? The game won’t get me going. Quoits? Shuffleboard? Zzzzzzzzzz…. But I will admit to amazement when watching Olympic badminton, resurrected from that bygone era, but startlingly athletic in its modern materialization. Engineers describe the shuttlecock, the feathered conical object that players bat about, as a “high-drag” projectile. It starts out fast when furiously swatted, but quickly slows and hangs excruciatingly—the hang time allowing […]

Continue Reading about Tanking the Game: Scheming and Disgrace at the Olympics Published on:
August 2, 2012

Psychologists tell us that by age four, children are very good at differentiating playing from fighting. But, what about those events that fall in the middle, play-fighting and rough-and-tumble play? Can fighting be playful?
Here we have an instinctive sense of the answer to the question—one that most of us boys honed by experience. We know the difference. The culture informally discouraged fisticuffs (but not verbal rough-and-tumble) for girls of course. And legal strictures discouraged it, too. For most of the 20th […]

Continue Reading about Is Boxing Play? Published on:
July 31, 2012

Sometimes we play to compete, to engage in what the play scholar Johan Huizinga termed agon, or competition. That is why we love athletic contests. And yet many other types of play don’t prioritize competition. Instead they reward the silly and the nonsensical. Recently, watching two of my sons tussling reminded me that tickling contests, humorous ripostes, pun-making….all look for the reward of a smile rather than the thrill of victory.
 Clever video game design often evokes laughter in players. Infocom […]

Continue Reading about The Smile that Wins: From Infocom to Portal Published on:
July 27, 2012