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Category Archives: Articles

“New ideas must use old buildings”

The oth­er day I had din­ner at a radio-sta­­tion that was turned into a restau­rant. My favorite events venue in Ams­ter­dam used to be a print­ing press. And friends of mine are turn­ing a mas­sive sports hall into cre­ative work spaces. The uses build­ings were intend­ed for, and what they’re actu­al­ly used for, vary greatly. […]

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“The opposite of play isn’t work…”

RANJ cre­at­ed a game that makes work in flower farm­ing green­hous­es more fun. The game plugs into the data being gath­ered there already, allow­ing work­ers to train their skills at spot­ting sick plants. In addi­tion, they attempt­ed to increase social inter­ac­tion between Dutch and Pol­ish work­ers by ask­ing them to col­lec­tive­ly answer a quiz or […]

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Human desire in the cognitive city

As I write this I am on a train to Utrecht, the last leg of my jour­ney home from Berlin. I was there for Cog­ni­tive Cities, a con­fer­ence on urban com­put­ing, data visu­al­iza­tion and relat­ed sub­jects. It’s been a hell of a week­end — a few minor flaws aside, the con­fer­ence was great and I […]

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“Personality goes a long way”

Ear­li­er this year Dutch artist Tin­ke­bell stood tri­al togeth­er with the direc­tor of a gallery for the alleged tor­tur­ing of ani­mals. She’d cre­at­ed an art­work involv­ing a lit­tle under a hun­dred ham­sters in so-called ham­ster­balls. Accord­ing to her it was a com­men­tary on the many peo­ple on YouTube post­ing video’s of their pets in these […]

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Machines for getting lost

It turns out Lone­ly Plan­et is not just in the busi­ness of help­ing you find your way, but also help­ing you get lost. I came across their exper­i­men­tal trav­el series when I was doing some con­cept devel­op­ment recent­ly for a her­itage site. A project I am work­ing on at the HKU’s DPI research group, which […]

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Drifting through the city with a few bocce balls

On a recent sun­ny Sun­day after­noon I took a walk while boulesing through Utrecht. Togeth­er with a group of friends I used a num­ber of streets and squares as a play­ing field. The water-lev­­el walk­ways along the Old Canal, the foun­tain behind the city hall, and the usu­al­ly qui­et Sev­en Alleys. Passers­by respond­ed with amusement […]

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Looking back on a serious symposium

Last week the KNAW (Roy­al Dutch Acad­e­my of Sci­ence) orga­nized a sym­po­sium on seri­ous games. Some­thing we’re deal­ing with a lot right now, so we checked it out. Here’s some thoughts on what was talked about: David Shaf­fer was the first speak­er. He made an inter­est­ing point: In order to learn by play­ing, the player […]

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Cheating by the rules in Pirateball and Illuminati

One of the design­ers of the game Pirate­ball describes it as “extreme­ly stu­pid”. I recent­ly ran it at a games fes­ti­val and dis­cov­ered that it’s also craft­ed quite clev­er­ly. Pirate base­ball To poten­tial play­ers I always say that it’s base­ball as pirates play it. Then you get an idea. That’s the first trick: the name […]

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You don’t put a game in a computer; my first column for Bashers

Here’s the first col­umn I’ve writ­ten for Bash­ers, the pre­mier source of games jour­nal­ism in the Nether­lands. I’m plan­ning to devote sub­se­quent columns to dis­cus­sions of oth­er per­va­sive games. Many thanks to Niels ‘t Hooft for indulging me. Do you know a game called Cru­el 2 B Kind? It works like this: the goal is […]

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