Pixel Punks

 Last week I put together an exhibition of indie/DIY games together with all-around amazing people Caitlin Boyle, Tim Sherman, and Tenley Schmida (aka Crushed Screen Collective). Pixel Punks showcases rough around the edge, confrontational, homemade games in the context of an historical punk venue in Pittsburgh, PA. It’s in part inspired by new arcade …

Images of Monetization

Around 2010 I noticed the emergence of an iconography tied to the buzzword monetization. Zynga and the Appstore were blowing up and a new parasitical industry began to promise shortcuts to commercial success. Their offers involve selling users, proposing bizantine revenue sharing systems, manufacturing ratings and other sketchy marketing services. One visual trope was dominating …

Molleindustria’s Highlights from 2013

2013 has been not only a great year for independent games but possibly the first year in which many excellent independent titles have been recognized by mainstream gamers and press. Mature and meaningful works like Kentucky Route Zero, Papers please, the Stanley Parable and Gone Home are in many “Games of the Year” lists along …

Experimental Game Design – Alternative Interfaces

Selected students’ works from my experimental game design class at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Art. A hands-on game design course focused on innovative and expressive forms of gameplay. In this installment of Experimental Game Design the emphasis is placed on the interface: inputs beyond mouse/keyboard/joystick/touch, outputs beyond screen/speakers, playing contexts beyond the suburban living room …

Molleindustria Manifesto (2003)

Ten years ago, in December 2003, I launched this website along with three small games: Tamatipico, originally released in Spring 2003, Tuboflex and the Orgasm Simulator. Molleindustria was meant to be a short-term tactical project in line with the alternative media experiments happening in Italy at the same time (pirate TV street and Indymedia above …

Allied Media Conference Games Lineup

Next week I’ll be in Detroit at the Allied Media Conference. The conference track “Imagining Better Futures Through Play” looks dense and exciting, with a strong focus around DIY gamemaking and inclusivity. You still have 5 days to back our indiegogo campaign, the proceeds will cover travel and lodging costs for the presenters Here are …

Videogames of the oppressed vs oppressive games

This is my second post on Empyre, a longstanding discussion list for artists, programmers, and curators of new media art. The theme of the month is “Videogames and Art: Incite/Insight”. You can check the March archive here. Here I talk about Molleindustria in relation to the context in which it started (almost 10 years ago) …

Radical Game Makers: We Want You!

The Allied Media Conference is a yearly gathering of independent and activist media makers from all over North America. We gather in Detroit to share strategies on how to create sustainable social change through media. This year’s conference is June 20-23 and I’m honored to be one of the coordinators of the game-oriented track along …

An old school game for a brave new sport

Don’t expect a political punchline: there’s none. Arcade Bike Polo was created for Fuck This Jam, a friendly game making competition organized by Vlambeer‘s Rami Ismail & Panoramical creator Fernando Ramallo. Gameplay and graphics were completed by the end of the week-long jam but I decided to take some extra time to add sound, menus …

Fucking polygons, fucking pixels: On procedural representations of sex

Arse Elekronika (not to be confused with the similarly sounding, slightly more established new media art festival in Linz) is the most important conference investigating the intersection of sex and technology. The past six editions revolved around themes like porn as innovation driver, sexuality in science fiction or body enhancements. This year the emphasis was …

Indiecade 2012: my highlights

Like in all good conferences, at Indiecade most of the fun happens outside and around the programmed events. The lectures, the exhibitions, and the goofy award ceremonies are only frames for a multitude of fluid interactions around dinner tables, in the waiting lines for beer, during improvised logistical negotiations, after tense game sessions. That’s the …

Gatekeeper and the rise of the Total Apple Consumer

Somewhere in UK, a dialog box pops up on the screen of a Mac computer. The user contacts me asking for an explanation I can’t quite provide. The same file (a downloadable version of Phone Story) works perfectly on my machine, also a Mac. It turns out the “file damaged” message is produced by Gatekeeper, …