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David Kushner’s new book explores the origins of the infamous videogame, which began as a straitlaced driving simulation: “By casting the player as the cop, they realized, they had cut out the fun. Some dismissed it as Sims Driving Instructor. “When an unruly gamer tried to drive his police car on the sidewalk or through […]

The strange story of Martin Amis’s lost book, Invasion of the Space Invaders, which offered tips on how to play video games like PacMan: “He is almost as enthusiastic about PacMan, although you get the sense that he sees it (in contrast to Space Invaders) as a fundamentally unserious endeavor. ‘Those cute little PacMen with […]

A trip to John Madden’s man cave, and whether sports video games can ever be described as “art”: “Clearly, the way sports games are played, and the way Madden in particular is played, is ripe for some massive paradigm shift. Why doesn’t the quarterback position feel as visceral and pinpointy as firing a rifle in […]

(Fiction) My son, Douglas, loves to play with toy guns. He is thirteen. He loves video games in which people get killed. He loves violence on TV, especially if it’s funny. How did this happen? The way everything does, of course. One thing follows another, naturally. Naturally, he looks like me: shorter than average, with […]

Here is an interesting thought: Of the two most literarily compelling video games I played this year, one (Sword & Sworcery) incorporates maybe four pages of text total and the other (Surviving High School) is intended for the driver’s-ed crowd. Exactly how damning is it that both games feature characters that play more fascinatingly against […]

Tom Bissell was an acclaimed, prize-winning young writer. Then he started playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. For three years he has been cocaine addicted, sleep deprived and barely able to write a word. “There are times when I think GTA IV is the most colossal creative achievement of the last 25 years, times […]

Jamin Brophy-Warren, who publishes a video-game arts and culture magazine called Kill Screen, told me that there is something in the amplitude and dynamic of Mario’s jumps—just enough supernatural lift yet also just enough gravitational resistance—that makes the act of performing that jump, over and over, deeply satisfying. He also cited the archetypal quality of […]

The odd recording session in March was one very small contribution to what Apple Corps — the company still controlled by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison — hopes will be the most deeply immersive way ever of experiencing the music and the mythology of the Beatles. The […]

The face of the enemy flashed across a 20-foot screen. “That’s right,” Jason Rohrer announced. “It’s Roger Ebert.” There were a few boos, as several hundred people stirred in their seats. The film critic’s cherubic face stared at the audience. “Ebert said video games can’t be art,” Rohrer said. “He issued all of us a […]

Excerpt from “Game Change”: A candidate whose aides were prepared to block him from becoming president. A wife whose virtuous image was a mirage. A mistress with a video camera. Inside the John Edwards triangle, nothing was too crazy to be true. By John Heilemann and Mark Halperin