Project Milo
Limited Partnership
A 20-year director of film and television finds frustration and possibility in the game industry.
Kill Screen Staff
zynga
Calling Ahab
Social games call their power users “white whales.” Maybe we should call them chronic gamblers instead.
Western Automatic Music
Gone Baby Gone
Recycled for parts and left to sit, one arcade distributor’s old cabinets recall the shining past of coin-op gaming.
Skyrim
Your Mom Plays Skyrim
A son turned his mother’s Skyrim sessions into a Twitter feed, and her questions about thistles, stolen goods and 5,000 gold houses became the plainest argument for play there is.
Online Gamers Anonymous
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
A 12-step process for gaming addicts.
Coin Pushers
I’m Your Pusher
A guide to liberating some change from the claw machine’s twisted sister.
Essay
Track Shots
Our favorite Trials Evolution user-created levels have some unexpected themes in common.
Dialogues
On Endings
Should we play games as though they have a beginning and an end? Two writers debate the limits of their subject, and the limitations of writing about games.
Essay
I’m Not Kidding This Game Is S**t
How can bad games accomplish more than good ones? On the awe-inspiring results of Cheetahman II and awfulness.
Essay
We Changed the Ending
Yeah, we did!
News
Computers of the future may flag us by how hard we mash our keyboards.
If you haven’t played Dear Esther, you should. It’s an experiment in story-telling, a ghost story if you will. But you can’t run. Literally. There’s no button for it, so I ended up mashing the forward key very hard as I sauntered. As it turns out, researchers are looking to those intereactions with
News
Global Gaming Project: In which Polish kids kick around a stuffed sack named "Sophia".
Video Our march to find the world’s best games continues! The world is full of seemingly arbitrary rules. Why do we take off our shoes for security screening in the airport? Why can’t we use our hands in soccer? And why can’t I walk left in Super Mario Bros.? There’s a game from Poland called “Zosk