Almost twenty years ago, a game developer just getting its first real taste of success released an innovative and darkly beautiful game with a simple premise: click on monsters until they die. Collect the weapons and money they drop. Use this to improve yourself. Then, go on to kill more monsters un
In case you missed it: BIoshock Infinite was delayed until February 2013. Insomniac announced its new project, Outernauts. BioWare lost some subscribers from Star Wars: The Old Republic. Watch out, Call of Duty. Angry Birds just reached the one billion mark. Dead Space 3 will feature co-op. See you
video Microsoft recently unveiled some new technology that may bring you one step closer to having that holodeck you’ve always wanted: The MirageTable uses a 3D-video projector to beam images onto a sheet of curved white plastic placed in front of the user. At each end one of Microsoft’s Kinect dept
The debate about when art was “invented” is a daunting question for students trained in the method of historical geneology. But looking at some extremely ancient objects from pre-dynastic Egypt, Jerry Saltz poses an interesting possibility: maybe the conception that art was simply to be “observed” i
Continuing in the long line of creative applications of the Microsoft Kinect, researchers are developing a new medical application for the device: As part of an experiment at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, Sapiro and Papanikolopoulos set up a series of five Microsoft K
Tuesday in bullet-point form: Portal 2 sales topped 4 million. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is coming this June. Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is coming to Steam. Check out this new Assassin’s Creed 3 trailer. Starhawk is here. That’s all for now! See you on the morrow.
video Like any self-respecting Blizzard game, Diablo IIIhas a massive amount of lore traditionally left out of the primary gameplay experience. To get some of the backstory of how Tristram got embroiled in this whole mess with the devil, check out this wonderful short film from Titmouse, the animati
Why are playgrounds still so important in the digital age? We talk with some of New York’s leading playground architects and designers about their work and the past and future impact of public play on urban space.
A few weeks ago during a trip back home I went to visit my old high school. Revisiting a place that so singularly defined my identity for a moment in time, I suddenly felt strangely out of place. I scanned my surroundings restlessly until I could lock on to something old and familiar—the office of m
Here goes nothing: Steam will be adding remote installs. Microsoft is launching a new subscription service for the XBOX. Read the details here. Persona 4 will be coming out on the Vita this fall. Indie legend Notch may be in the next Total War game. Skullgirls is making its way to the PC. Rock Band
It was recently Food Week here at Kill Screen, and a large theme that was consistently raised was the question of taste. Simply put, can you ever truly arrive at an essentialist, universalist notion of taste, or is the notion of quality and experience always already culturally predetermined? NPR’s f
The Verge has an interesting piece up on a revolutionary new subscription-based service for the XBOX soon to be unveiled: Microsoft is planning to launch a $99 Xbox console package with a monthly subscription as early as next week, according to our sources. The software giant will offer the 4GB cons
You know the drill: Diablo III is going to allow intercontinental multiplayer, Blizzard announced. The company will also be taking a cut of the auction-house earnings. The next Call of Duty was officially announced. Details of Skyrim’s first DLC were announced. Check out this launch trailer for Mort
A new Facebook game is taking a stab at promoting healthy sexual behavior, The Huffington Post Gay Voices blog reports: A new Facebook game is taking a socially-conscious look at the sex lives of gay and bisexual men, promoting the idea that the more men you have sex with, the more frequently you s
A few weeks back, I wrote about how videogames are informing and changing our conception of history and the way we experience its most important tool: the archive. A more pressing question might be how the literal construction of history is beginning to change as more of our collective experience en
We here at Kill Screen obviously spend a lot of time making sure all things videogame-related that we discuss pass a necessary coolness factor (taste-makers that we are). But is coolness always the most important cultural standard to which we ought to repair? John Cassidy takes a look President Obam
Apparently these days movie theaters only use fifteen percent of their total capacity, according to this recent Vulture post. Given changing models in distribution and marketing for film and television, are movie theaters doomed to become a piece of collective cultural nostalgia like the arcade room
video Sophisticated game design software and virtual reality technology is increasingly being used to treat soldiers and trauma victims in innovative and successful ways. But a new study may suggest that much older, simpler games may prove just as therapeutic for an entirely different class of victi
video Regrettable orientalist jingoism aside, the “Angry Mob” feature in Command and Conquer: Generals was an interesting example of the struggle of computer programming to track civil strife in a way that realistically reflected social and political tension. A recent article in The Economist sugges
Self-tracking has a long history independent of the rising cultural presence of videogames. But if the corresponding rise in corporate and behavioral “gamification” has taught us anything, it’s that everybody secretly likes that graitifying feeling of filling bars up and scoring achievement points,
Mashable has an adorable slideshow up of baby clothing fit for any self-respecting geek. My favorite is this restyling of the Nintendo Gameboy available at Etsy. Batteries not included. [via Mashable]
There has been some argument recently about how appropriate it is to compare videogames to works of literature. Is a game something you can “skim” the same way you would a book? And if a game resembles a physical (albeit still primarily textual) space moreso than a literary world, what does it mean
