Housing is both a practical necessity—humans have to live somewhere—and a statement of values. Relationships to housing vary by country; whereas some place an emphasis on ownership, others accept long-term renting. In this respect, housing policy mixes practical, political, and (yes) moral considera
Boredom is usually considered to be the death of a game. You play, you get bored, you switch off. Popular thought demands that videogames be engaging at all times, whether through direct action or intellectual thrill. It matters less as to how it’s achieved as long as boredom is avoided. But Patholo
You’re a kid in a dust-ridden bookstore. The bookshelves rise high, nearly touching the ceiling, with ladders that slide the perimeter. Buried in the back of the store is the oldest of bookshelves. The color’s faded from the bindings of the books that sit within it, the text made hard to read by the
When Dennis “Thresh” Fong was growing up, there was no such thing as a ‘professional gamer’. He was sixteen when he started playing DOOM (1993), but wasn’t competing for anything other than the thrill of victory. Aside from hustling chumps at the local arcade, nobody was making money by playing game
Somewhere in Microsoft’s New York offices right now, an artificial intelligence is busy repeatedly trying and failing to climb a hill in Minecraft (2011), as if a modern day reenactment of the Sisyphus myth. This AI is being watched by a team of five computer scientists, and its many deaths are bein
