Interloper is an idiosyncratic stab at an esport
Taking control, one power source at a time.
A Q&A with Amy and Ryan Green, creators of That Dragon, Cancer
“In day to day life, you don’t really get the chance to say, “See me, understand what has changed me.”
Rioux’s latest EP realized as an irridescent glitch world
Getting inside a musician’s mind is relatively easy work these days. Whereas the 20th century was mostly restricted to whatever questions Rolling Stone proffered their subjects, now we have the miracle of multimedia practically opening up their skulls as if a hungry spoon scalping a ripe kiwi fruit.
The dark ways stealth games work on your mind
Thief, stealth, and the psychology of the forbidden.
The terror of surrealist films stripped down to a traumatizing bone
Frank wakes up covered in blood and I may never sleep again. Game developer Daniil Ermakov, also known as Da Neel, combines the horrors of cult surrealist directors David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky and produces a mish-mash of terror and humor in the face of human trauma. A Box Full of Joy is a s
Home is Where One Starts… reflects on the power of memory
Relive a day in the life of a young girl who grew up in the rural South.
Mortal Kombat meets Nigerian politics in devastating satirical short
Nigeria, Africa’s largest exporter of oil, has recently been suffering from a severe oil shortage. The country’s fuel marketers and distributors have spent much of May on strike over government subsidies that have gone unpaid. In response to the strike, black market fuel prices have soared beyond th
The Ludic Rashomon
A game world made up of many stories of different weight.
Step aside Nancy Drew: Jenny LeClue is the next evolution in teen girl detectives
A teen girl detective story mirrors the dark whimsy of Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
The director of the greatest cult sci-fi cybersex film wants to make another
There are few interactions more intense than sex. And I mean good sex. Not the kind of sex where you’re lying on your back just taking it. Being a supine host for an unaccomplished zealot is no fun. But when you want to taste and inhale your partner, and they return that same lust, what forms is a c
No Man’s Sky and the technology that created 18 quintillion planets
Procedural generation strikes a balance between randomness and order.
Turns out that playing real-life soccer as you would a videogame leads to hilarity
Soccer is a popular sport—by some measures, the World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the world. Soccer videogames, particularly the FIFA franchise, are also quite popular. In all likelihood, the Venn diagram for fans of the sport and fans of the videogame resembles a circle more closely t
Everything changes in Life Is Strange’s third episode
A tale of two butterflies.
An interactive theatre show brings out the capitalist monsters in most of us
Very few people get out of bed and plan to run a horrible sweatshop, but here they are, a collection of young, presumably liberal adults, doing just that. They are participants in Zoe Svendsen’s interactive play, World Factory, at London’s Young Vic Theatre. Audience members form teams. They sit in
Influence a revolution from the perspective of a housekeeper
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Sunset (Mac, Windows, Linux) BY TALE OF TALES Most games give you a list of chores to do, only they call them missions, and claim you’re saving the world by doing its housekeeping. Yet, no m
What Remains of Edith Finch weaves stories from the madness of the family home
If these walls could talk…
The indescribable weirdness of Splatoon
You’ve played Splatoon before, but you’ve never played Splatoon before.
Now you can turn everything on your computer into a Super Mario level
When I say it can turn “anything” into a Mario level, I mean anything.
The School: an essay concerning Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
“We got this new game,” he said in biology class, “where you just get to wander around and skate.”
Jamie xx’s solo album is made of polygons and dance music
Feeling starved for layered electronic beats and primary-colored shapes? Well, you’re in luck. In Colour, the debut album by Jamie xx, is here to fill that rectangle-shaped void in your heart. Like the music of his other project, The xx, Jamie’s solo work is low-key and beautifully simple, but In Co
One of the most WTF local multiplayer games isn’t so weird after all
Videogames are weird as heck, man.
Darwin’s evolutionary theories get a modern art makeover
Evolution, one might argue, was the original interactive technology. Randomness, through interaction with stimuli, is organized into with an underlying sense of logic. Then it all happens again. This is the underlying idea behind Daniel Rozin’s exhibit “Descent With Modification,” which is running a
Not a Hero makes confetti from the tatters of modern democracy
The pixels and chiptunes of Not a Hero mask a game of brutal cynicism.
MoMA.org celebrates two decades of existence with a gift to future art historians
Always having their heads in the past has meant that archivists and museum organizers are generalized as old curmudgeons who can’t see the future through the coat of dinosaur dust on their glasses. But the MoMA continues to earn the modernity label embedded in its name, as an emblem of what a museum
Think Mad Max is just about cars? Think again
The tactility of mad max’s human element.