Emoji diversity is coming, and not a second too soon
See yourself in your phone.
The semiotics of controller design
Circle, Square, Triangle, and X.
A videogame about exploring the afterlife puts peoples’ lives in your hands
Humans have been obsessed with the concept of the afterlife for millennia. Ancient scripture and papyrus dating back as far as 3000 B.C. describes our ensouled body’s decay as opening an aperture to another realm, where our conscience can reside for ever after. The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks were
The impossible architecture of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Konami came close to making Piranesi’s imaginary prisons real.
Sneak into DeityNet to trade secrets with cyberpunkers
DeityNet is an Alt.BBS community. DeityNet is a Messaging program. It is only for the greatest cyberpunks, Demosceners, and Crack Gangs in the Deios Operating System. If you do not belong to one of those categories then you should stay out. Do not participate. Go away. This is the warning that I mus
Treachery in Beatdown City wants to make a more diverse videogame world
Treachery in Beatdown City looks to change representations of people of color.
Forensic crime dramas go to 19th-century Paris
This just in: apparently there’s more to forensic science than the 3D visualization on CSI.
PlayStation Underground as existential crisis
When nostalgia inverts on itself.
Newsgames, and the quiet quest to be worthwhile
There’s more to newsgames than stupid quizzes.
Tomb Raider and the riot-grrrl feminism of the ’90s
The conflicted birth and legacy of Lara Croft.
Let the inky dread of Renoir wash over you in its first trailer
Renoir is a bleak, brooding puzzle-platformer from the recently formed Czech studio, Soulbound Games. No, the name is not a reference to the French impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, nor his lush, saturated style. Nor is it a reference to his son, Jean Renoir, whose film La Règle du jeu t
homo synthetica talks human struggle with a sci-fi story
Insubordination in progress.
The virtual Batcave looks good-maybe even too good
When Batman: The Animated Series first aired on Fox, the only way for me to explore the Gotham City it displayed on my TV was with my imagination. Minutes after each episode ended, I’d run outside with a cardboard shield covered in aluminum foil and a bat insignia I’d cut from black and yellow const
FLOMM! is the videogame modern artists wish they could’ve made
The war between modern artists and traditionalists gets a videogame.
An unusual Grand Rapids coffeeshop gets a videogame tribute
There’s a building that has sat at the west end of Grand Rapids, Michigan for over a century. It used to be a bank but has since been transformed into a coffee shop called The Bitter End. It sells loose leaf teas, Ghirardelli mochas, and something called a “bulletproof Tibetan coffee.” Its menu is t
Dragon Age’s post-racial (high) fantasy
How Inquisition takes the politics out of race.
MIT is designing furniture that’s smarter than we are
The new project at MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab is a miniature chair that constructs itself.
Torrent culture realized as a terrifying cinematic mashup
“Omnipresent telecommunications surveillance gains a global face.”
Westport Independent’s latest trailer hints at the corruptability of media
“By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.” –Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf The Westport Independent, a censorship simulator about the power of press, recently got a new trailer that crackles with the corruptio
Sunless Sea is Heart of Darkness as written by H.P. Lovecraft
A chronicle of tragedies on the high seas.
Playing The Quiet Year, a tabletop game about building communities
Where contempt is a mechanic.
Playlist: An interactive walk through the woods
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. WAY TO GO (BROWSER) BY VINCENT MORISSET For all but the most ardent naturopaths, there are very few walks through the wood that bear repeating. You came. You saw. You conquered, without dyin
The virtual tour of Christian Grey’s penthouse is the best version of Fifty Shades of Grey
Better to be whipped by architecture than Jamie Dornan.
Meet Brian, the creator of some of the internet’s funniest, weirdest nightmares
“It felt like I was ripping out all of the emotion that these digital tools could provide.”
The Darkside Division fulfills all your X-Files supernatural detective fantasies
A detective game where each case is a “micro-adventure” investigating supernatural crimes.