Offworld

Video link. From James and Peter Serafinowicz.

Russell Davies presentation on "pretending" and "barely games" from the Playful conference is a wonderful exploration of the importance of pretending to fun and games, a subject often missing when we talk about why and how games work. But it's not just a matter of dressing up...

As Alice at Wonderlandblog points out, it's rare to see official merch as good as these Bioshock 2 EVE Hypos -- you usually have to find some fetishistic fan art. But this is an actual in-store tchotchke, and it's a corker.

Adam 'Atomic' Saltman's one-button action-opus Canabalt (covered earlier in a previous column) will likely go down as 2009's biggest viral surprise -- to no less even than Saltsman himself, who admitted at this year's Austin GDC Indie Games Fest to squandering and then scrambling to capitalize on...

A reader writes, "Passengers riding Walt Disney World's updated Space Mountain attraction will be able to play video games as they wait in line...

Jim sez, "In a fit of creativity, my wife dressed our son and daughter as the Mario Brothers...

Eric made this smashing papercraft "Big Head" costume for Hallowe'en this year, based on the Big Head mode from classic video games. Head (Flickr)

Chris sez, "I made a thing! This thing did not exist before I decided to make it. John Young called out to me from his universe, 'Make me a Ban Hammer!' So after a little 3D modeling and research, I conjured into existence the worlds only real Ban Hammer...

Were it any other week I might be lamenting the lack of high profile retail releases, but as it happens, both the release of a demo for Valve's upcoming Left 4 Dead 2 and one other game have been eating up nearly all my spare time (and a good deal of non-spare-time as well), that game...

Kevin Haw writes in to tell us about World of Warcraft and Philosophy, a new collection of essays and stories: Plato, Socrates, Nietzsche, Adam Smith... Sure, they were all great thinkers, but how long would they have lasted in Ulduar...

San Francisco's recent Alternative Press Expo was the last place I expected to turn up videogames, but it took less than a few minutes of circulating amongst the self-published sprawl until I stumbled on my first controller...

Though it's nearly impossible to find a tidy way to sum the work of LucasArts adventure vet and Double Fine head Tim Schafer -- with a catalog that ranges from de los Muertos noir to deep-psyche introspec-/explora-tion and now to a heavy metal heaven/hell (depending on your attitudes toward the...

These vintage Sega console commemorative Zippos are swell, though possibly not ~$100 worth of swell. セガハードメモリアルジッポーライター (via Wonderland) Previously:Hundr

Meet Koh and Yurie. They're a happily married young Japanese couple who moved from Tokyo to San Francisco a year ago due to a job transfer. In early September, while on a business trip back home, Koh bought a new game cartridge for his Nintendo DS...