Issue 06: Change

The Change Issue

GAMES IN TRANSITION: SOFT POWER AND SOFT TARGETS, BIOFEEDBACK ON THE COUCH, THE GERIATRIC ARCADE, AND ONE HUNGARIAN GAME STILL UNFINISHED AFTER 22 YEARS.

Editor's Letter: Change

Kill Screen’s editor marks a year of upheaval at the magazine, and a medium that has never once stopped changing shape.

A cartoon Bowser standing astride a small green island, arms outstretched, against a pale blue sky.

The Colossus of Code

How games are finding their post-colonial soft touch.

A pink line drawing tracing a bullet’s winding path past a rifle, a gurney, a hand and a necktie.

Shoot to Will

JFK: Reloaded lets us recreate one of America’s greatest tragedies. It’s not as bad as you think.

Illustrated portraits of seven Games for Change Latin America participants in green and ochre.

Jogo Bonito

Can videogames solve Latin America’s woes? A savvy group of game lovers thinks so.

A blue Pac-Man style maze shaped like a human head on black, with a red meter reading NERVOUS.

Extreme Measures

If making videogames turns into a science, where does that leave the art?

A Skyrim-style warrior with an axe, ringed by inventory icons for keys, potions, hearts and swords.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

A 12-step process for gaming addicts.

Bearded, Bald, and Buttoned Up

How do you make games for Nana and Papoose? We asked some of the best game designers to create for the new geriatric age.

A Skyrim character in gilded armor standing in a 1960s turquoise kitchen, sword raised.

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.

Never Change

Ralph Baer, the father of modern videogames, has a lot on his mind.

A spray of hundreds of loose coins scattering across a white field.

I’m Your Pusher

A guide to liberating some change from the claw machine’s twisted sister.

A muted painting of a lone arcade cabinet standing in an empty field of scrub grass.

No Quarters Given

Arcades are a memory of our youth and nostalgic nod to our future. One writer takes the long road from New Hampshire to central Florida and beyond.

A green arcade crane machine reading KICK’N CATCH behind a distributor’s window in Chicago.

Gone Baby Gone

Recycled for parts and left to sit, one arcade distributor’s old cabinets recall the shining past of coin-op gaming.

Pale blue statistical curves rising and falling across white, annotated with small cyan labels.

Calling Ahab

Social games call their power users “white whales.” Maybe we should call them chronic gamblers instead.

Limited Partnership

A 20-year director of film and television finds frustration and possibility in the game industry.

A line portrait of Rich Stearns in glasses against an olive field of drawn arcade cabinets.

Brother’s Keeper

As the 31-year-old president of Parker Brothers, Rich Stearns was sitting on top of the world with the hit Frogger. Just three years later, he was selling china. What happened?

A quill pen and an NES controller tangled in loping black script on a flat green field.

Versus Mode

A poet’s toolkit points to a deeper understanding of play.

A dark grid of pixel-art character portraits and screenshots from the Hungarian game Newcomer.

Forever Young

Ultimate Newcomer started development in Hungary just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s still not finished. We go inside one of videogame’s greatest, untold tragedies.

A symmetrical figure in pink, yellow and teal diamonds with a single eye at its centre.

Reality Effects

A lesson on the myth of virtual reality from ancient Rome.