Kill Screen Staff

Academic, artist and Kill Screen contributor Pippin Barr has posted a new game on his site. Called Trolley Problem, it’s based on the ethics conundrum in which you have to decide which people are killed and which are spared by an out-of-control trolley. If you’re not familiar with the problem, this

The New York Times has a lovely infographic detailing the 317 Apple patents in which the late Steve Jobs had a hand-from the iPod to the glass staircases in Apple Stores. Only nine Microsoft patents carry the name of Bill Gates, a co-founder of the company who was its chief executive for more than t

THIS SONG. Think if Kenny Loggins wrote a song about Pac-Man. Now, take that hypothetical song and make it better. At last, you kinda-sorta have a conception of the song “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner and Garcia from 1984.   They say this song is supposed to be a parody, but a parody of what, exactly? P

In a story straight out of the dungeons of John Hodgman’s More Information Than You Require, the powers-that-be are finally putting the house of Williams Lyttle, the legendary British “Mole Man,” up for sale. In his lifetime, Lyttle dug labyrinthine tunnels under his London home (see the above image

And not in that jokey, “I’m-not-sure-I-could-live-without-it” type of way. There’s a new study that suggests we have the same feelings for our iPhones as we do for our partners. This comes at the heels of a recent study to see if the old adage of “technology is addicting” was actually true. As we hi

London designer Lee Wei Chen has created what he calls an “Amusement Washing Machine,” which is exactly what is sounds like. The idea spawned when the studying designer was no longer happy with just shooting alien invaders. He wanted to utilize his ‘wasted but enjoyable time’ and make it more produc

So we’re partnering with Capcom to launch the first ever Fright Club based on their zombie titles such as Dead Rising 2 Off the Record, Resident Evil : Operation Raccoon City, and Resident Evil Revelations. There will be drink specials from Sailor Jerry’s rum and of course, performances by Picturepl

We’re fans of the ethereal tones of Ms. Annie Clark that stir our passions. But apparently, something else lights her fire. She has a point. (Thx J.P.!) -Jamin Warren

The New York Times has a piece on the dozen or so serious writers who honed their chops not through writing short fiction or practicing journalism, but by playing Ambermush, an online, text-based RPG from the 90’s that lasted until 2009. Consider the case of Jim Butcher, the author of the Dresden Fi

Just in time for Halloween, you can now buy Stack the Bones a new game that’s well, like Jenga, but with bone-shaped blocks. For some reason, the game reminds us of this 1848 political cartoon featuring Zachary Taylor, but then again, some of us were history majors for two years. Anyway, like we sai

Wired reports on a unique experiment that was meant to discover the impact different approaches to introducing a toy might have on the children’s attitude and pursuit of that toy. The first group was given the toy by an adult who acted as if she had just discovered it, and encouraged to find out exa

D.C. duo Bluebrain releases its new album Listen to the Light today. It takes the form of an iPhone app but it’s really a location-aware album composed for NYC’s Central Park. Check out the behind-the-scenes video here with Dischord’s Ian MacKaye and AOL’s Steve Case.  We recently interviewed Bluebr

The above video is the trailer for the game Glitch, a new, free MMO that, by the looks of this trailer and press release, boasts (a) overwhelming cuteness (the press release brags that what makes the game different from everything else is that they have “egg plants”), and (b) the ramifications of in

The New York Times has a new review of Neal Stephenson’s new novel Reamde as written by Tom Bissell, a writer who knows his way around a word or two. It’s tempting to repost the entire thing, but here is the general thesis of the review:  There are times when you wonder if Reamde is the smartest dum

Because we don’t live in The Lawnmower Man (yet), Parissa has released an ad questioning the unladylike practice of leg shaving. Ladies, your razor thinks you’re nothing but a bunch of polys. Reclaim your curvaceous femininity by sticking hot wax on your legs and then quickly ripping it off. That bu

Imagine if this weren’t 2011 and things like this just didn’t show up on the internet. Your life would be approximately 10% worse. [via]

Television is sixty years old. Think about that for a moment. In all likelihood, if you are reading this, you were not alive then. Hell, you probably weren’t even alive when the band Television started up. LIFE’s just posted some archival photographs of people watching TV, and they’re riveting. Ther

There’s a new game being tested called Speed to Learn, made with the express purpose of boosting high school education. It was created by Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, and it’s seriously on some Star Trek shit: At an education summit in New York, Bushnell described the program as “an arcade-

Maybe! The military has been adapting their technology to fit the skills that videogames have taught us: (Military drone) controllers themselves are videogame controllers. They’re just like the ones that you would have with an X-Box or a Playstation. And the reason the military does this is twofold.

Logging into an online gaming service like PSN or Xbox Live can sometimes have the unfortunate side effect of feeling an awful lot like looking graffiti in a high school bathroom stall. Or like opening a door and accidentally finding yourself at an Odd Future concert. Why is that? Well, because all