News
Just when I thought Zynga’s place in the game industry couldn’t get any weirder or more contentious, Mashable gave me this little gem: Martha Stewart is setting up house on Facebook. From now until mid-April, players of Facebook gameCastleVille will be able to interact with a virtual (and much young
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Video Sna-fu Grand Désordre Orchestre‘s new music video for their song “Dreamorama” first seems like it’s just making a kitschy reference to 8-bit nostalgia. But as the video (made by French filmmaker Pierre Manry) progresses, the arcade history it pulls out is impressively comprehensive—making refe
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A few years back, Ian Bogost began writing a 3-part series asking if one could ever build a “metaphysics videogame.” Part 2 was published shortly thereafter, leading with the promising question: “what kind of videogame” would such a philosophical inquiry make? Unfortunately we never saw the final po
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Designing for a franchise that has spanned much of PC-gaming’s history must be a daunting task, especially given the controversial reaction Blizzard was met with when they first unveiled Diablo III’s heavily World of Warcraft-inspired look. Just look at the shift from Diablo II’s final horned monste
Review
Once famously justified by Freud, pop culture’s fixation on human excrement is a strange phenomenon. Yannick LeJacq looks at Postal III and wonders why this has never transferred successfully to videogames.
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During an appearance on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” for the 20th anniversary of his play Angels in America, Tony Kushner let slip a detail of the “very specific sense” he had about what happened to Joe Pitt—one of the play’s central characters that disappears very ambiguously from the story’s end. Ne
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If the latest Call of Duty taught us anything besides the fact that big explosions are still almost as ridiculous as they are awesome, it’s that videogames can make you a ton of money. The United Kingdom recently followed a trend set by other game development-friendly nations like France, Canada, an
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Besides a ridiculous live-action movie spin-off (starring, of all people, Dennis Hopper), Mario’s transition from videogames to other areas of popular culture can sometimes seem few and far between. BuzzFeed has a list of 100 incredible pieces of fan art dedicated to the spunky Italian plumber, incl
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Videogames have gotten a lot of flack during their short life atop the pop culture totem pole for being terrible for the mental and physical well-being of their players. But amidst all these accusations, the question naturally arises of what you would do if you were attacked by an angry moose. The n
Essay
The definition of gambling reaches far beyond gaudy slot machine. Here’s why the infamous claw game of carnivals and childhood birthday parties is a symbol of our times, grasping at gifts behind an invisible wall.
News
Despite the recent successful defense of unmarred videogame distribution in Brown v. EMA, Congress is at it again: A new bill has been submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives that will require most video games to include a warning label that states: “WARNING: Exposure to violent video games h
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The use of videogames by the military has long be a subject of criticism and curiosity by journalists and those who view games solely as purveyors of entertainment. Now a new trend seems to be starting for application of games to soldiers’ lives: as a form of therapy for recovering veterans. The Chr