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The birth of Minecraft and the end of my childhood
Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world. Yet it won’t be appearing on a Nintendo device anytime soon. Why is that so painful?
Jon Irwin
Article
So I bought a Wii U. Now what?
Here are some suggestions.
Article
The Louis C.K. guide for the lazy game designer
We all love comedians like Louis C.K. As it turns out, the reasons why are more than the laughs. Comedians understand the center of creativity.
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Why do we embrace word games on touch-screens?
How did words knock off Mario and flying avians to become gaming’s heroes de rigeur? – – – Seems like everywhere you turn, a new word game is captivating an audience of new players, eager to show off their vocab skills or challenge their co-workers. Zynga’s Words With Friends got Alec Baldwin in tro
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Spoilerific is the latest attempt to fix the messiness of human nature
Spoilers are a strange kind of residue from our presently connected moment; the act itself (people telling other people stuff they don’t want to hear) has existed since language’s first utterance. But until recently this was insulated to in-person exchanges or long-distance missives, providing the r
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REVIEW: The brutality of war in all of its horror is on display in Fire Emblem: Awakening
Intelligent Systems new addition to the two-decades old franchise asks players how we cope with loss in life and in relationships.
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Food scientists unwittingly diagnose why sometimes we can’t stop playing
This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features a remarkable story on the junk food industry and its many secretive struggles for our mouths. Though the author, Michael Moss, kept his focus on obesity and nutrition, I couldn’t help but notice a few startling parallels with the many videogames I
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Does Vblank’s ROM City Rampage signal a shift away from Retro as a trendy aesthetic?
When we spoke to Brian Provinciano back in October 2011, he was nearing the end of work on his game Retro City Rampage, a parody of everything Eighties through the lens of a modern sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto (if that game came out for the NES). It was an ambitious project, especially for wha
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Kenji Eno’s final game expressed a poignant philosophy of the bizarre
The games community lost a brilliant man far too soon last week when Kenji Eno, 42, died of heart failure. The name likely won’t ring familiar for many, but his contribution to the medium reaches farther than a recognizable face. Known for the horror games D and its follow-up Enemy Zero, his team pu
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Sony’s PlayStation 4 and why numbers tell us nothing
Sony’s new Playstation has been outed. There was a lot of counting and pointing to large numbers. But do they mean anything at all?
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Beck’s new album is a book of sheet music and the best local multiplayer game ever
Near the end of February, a collective of local musicians will gather together at the Somerville Theatre near Boston, MA, to perform Beck’s new album, Song Reader. They won’t be covering his songs so much as performing them into existence. You can’t listen to Song Reader on your iPod or stereo. The
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Rock Band will stop updating their songlist in April. Where do music games go from here?
Last week saw an announcement posted to Rockband.com’s community forum by developer Aaron Trites, revealing that weekly updates of new tracks will finally end on April 2nd. For fans of Rock Band, the music game that introduced plastic drum kits to millions of homes across the globe, this is a bitter