A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Also known as the control column, it is the principal control device in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a centre stick or side-stick. It has various switches to control functions of the aircraft controlled by the Pilot and First Officer of the flight.
Andrew Nicholas Oliver and Philip Edward Oliver, together known as the Oliver Twins, are British twin brothers and video game designers.
Video game art is a form of computer art employing video games as the artistic medium. Video game art often involves the use of patched or modified video games or the repurposing of existing games or game structures, however it relies on a broader range of artistic techniques and outcomes than artistic modification and it may also include painting, sculpture, appropriation, in-game intervention and performance, sampling, etc. It may also include the creation of art games either from scratch or by modifying existing games.
Eric Zimmerman is an American game designer and the co-founder and CEO of Gamelab, a computer game development company based in Manhattan. GameLab is known for the game Diner Dash. Each year Zimmerman hosts the Game Design Challenge at the Game Developers Conference. He is also the co-author of four books including Rules of Play with Katie Salen, which was published in November 2004. Eric Zimmerman has written at least 24 essays and whitepapers since 1996, mostly pertaining to game development from an academic standpoint. He's currently a founding faculty at the NYU Game Center.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) characters have been depicted in video games since the 1980s. Throughout the history of video games, LGBTQ characters have been almost nonexistent for a long time, reflecting the overall heteronormativity of the medium. While there has been a trend towards greater representation of LGBTQ people in video games, they are frequently identified as LGBTQ in secondary material, such as comics, rather than in the games themselves. Often, LGBTQ characters and themes, when they are included, are underrepresented, minimized, or watered down. Queer games and characters have also often found themselves being the subjects of cultural crossfires or moral panics. In 2018, Sam Greer of GamesRadar+ found only 179 games commercially released games with any LGBTQ representation, only 83 of which have queer characters who are playable characters, and only 8 of those games feature a main character who is pre-written as queer as opposed to them being queer as an option.
ABA Games is a Japanese video game developer, composed solely of game designer Kenta Cho. ABA Games' works, available as open source, are predominantly shoot 'em up games often inspired by classic games in the genre. Its games feature stylised retro graphics, innovative gameplay features and modes and feature random rather than scripted events. These creations have been acclaimed as some of the best independent games available, though some commentators, including Cho himself, feel they are too simple for commercial release.
IGB Eletrônica S.A., doing business as Gradiente, is a Brazilian consumer electronics company based in Manaus, and with offices in São Paulo. The company designs and markets many product lines, including video, audio, home theater, high end acoustics, office and mobile stereo, wireless, mobile/smart phones, and tablets for the Brazilian market.
Gaymer and gay gamer are umbrella terms used to refer to the group of people who are identified as homosexual and have an active interest in video games or tabletop games, also known as gamers. Bisexual, and transgender gamers are often categorized under this term.
Tracy Fullerton is an American game designer, educator and writer, best known for Walden, a game (2017). She is a Professor in the USC Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the Game Innovation Lab at USC.
Ian Bogost is an American academic and video game designer, most known for the game Cow Clicker. He holds a joint professorship at Washington University as director and professor of the Film and Media Studies program in Arts & Sciences and the McKelvey School of Engineering. He previously held a joint professorship in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and in Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Chair in Media Studies.
IndieCade is an international juried festival of independent games. Game types include video games, live-action games, and tabletop games. Independent game developers are selected to demo, screen, and promote their work at the annual IndieCade festival and showcase events. IndieCade also includes a conference track featuring classes, panels, workshops, and keynotes. Since 2020, the annual festival has taken place online under the name IndieCade Anywhere & Everywhere.
Every Day the Same Dream is a short, 2D art game by Paolo Pedercini. The player is put in the role of a man whose monotonous life is about to change. Developed for the Experimental Gameplay Project at Carnegie Mellon University in 2009, the game has been described as "a beautiful game with a very bleak outlook." Pedercini says it is "a short existential game about alienation and refusal of labor." It has been compared to Passage by Jason Rohrer and Don't Look Back by Terry Cavanagh in that it is "an interesting, potentially fascinating experience." The game is offered as freeware under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.5.
An art game is a work of interactive new media digital software art as well as a member of the "art game" subgenre of the serious video game. The term "art game" was first used academically in 2002 and it has come to be understood as describing a video game designed to emphasize art or whose structure is intended to produce some kind of reaction in its audience. Art games are interactive and the result of artistic intent by the party offering the piece for consideration. They also typically go out of their way to have a unique, unconventional look, often standing out for aesthetic beauty or complexity in design. The concept has been extended by some art theorists to the realm of modified ("modded") gaming when modifications have been made to existing non-art games to produce graphic results intended to be viewed as an artistic display, as opposed to modifications intended to change game play scenarios or for storytelling. Modified games created for artistic purposes are sometimes referred to as "video game art".
Sportsfriends is a party video game created by the Danish independent developer collective Die Gute Fabrik. It consists of four games: Johann Sebastian Joust, Super Pole Riders, BaraBariBall, and Hokra. It was released for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Mac, and Linux. The game was funded through Kickstarter and received over US$150,000 from backers.
Phone Story is a satirical mobile video game conceived by Yes Lab activist Michael Pineschi and designed by Paolo Pedercini for Molleindustria with the stated aim of demonstrating what the developers refer to as "the dark side of your favorite smart phone." The game consists of four minigames which require the player to complete activities such as forcing children in the Third World to mine coltan and preventing suicides at a Foxconn factory.
A Hacker Manifesto is a critical manifesto written by McKenzie Wark, which criticizes the commodification of information in the age of digital culture and globalization. It was published in the United States in 2004.
Adam Saltsman, also known as Adam Atomic, is an American indie video game designer best known for creating the endless runner Canabalt. He is a founder of Semi Secret Software and Finji video game studios.
Mattie Brice is an independent video game designer, critic, educator, and industry activist. Her games and writing focus on diversity initiatives in the games industry, discussing the perspective of marginalized minority voices to publications like Paste, Kotaku, and The Border House. Her games are freeware and do not require programming to create.
Cobra Club is a 2015 video game by independent developer Robert Yang. Players navigate a fictitious mobile application as a nude character standing before a mirror to take and send dick pics as customisable photos of their character's penis. These images, shared initially with other automated users of the platform, are revealed at the end of the game to have been uploaded without the player's awareness to an online page on blogging website Tumblr. Inspired by critiques of mass surveillance and the privacy issues of dating apps, Yang developed Cobra Club to provide players with a "safer space" to simulate taking dick pics and make the player aware of the data and privacy implications of those practices in real life.
The New York Times Simulator is a 2024 satirical news game created by Molleindustria, the alias of Italian game designer Paolo Pedercini. The user plays as the editor of The New York Times, and must draw readership while keeping various interest groups happy. The game criticizes media coverage of the Israel–Hamas war and editorial bias towards certain groups while drawing on themes relating to Noam Chomsky's theory of manufactured consent.
