DOOM (1993) is known for its hellish bravura and the legacy that followed. On the surface, we tend to think of big pink demon muscles, gnashing jaws, and bloodied grimaces. It’s a stern-faced brute that would be quicker to punch you in the mouth than hold a conversation. Somehow, that aura surrounds
God is dead. He had a good run. He quietly passed away on Saturday afternoon, surrounded by close friends, family, and Twitter followers. God died as he lived: sending out not-at-all cryptic missives to his 2.29 million followers. He will be remembered as the leader of a major theistic cult, albeit
In 2011, Elder Scrolls took players to the overtly Scandinavian nation of Skyrim. This week, Fire Emblem Fates will welcome Western players to the heavily Japanese Hoshido. And now we know that, on April 14th, 2016, Africa will finally get it’s due when Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan opens up its C
In partnership with NEW INC, we are excited to announce a series of workshops to accompany our upcoming Versions conference. Versions workshops offer participants a chance to learn best practices from the pros, get hands-on and investigate the practical side of creating compelling experiences for VR
To play Devil Daggers is to die again and again. Anguish is constant. It’s never clear what the player has done to be locked in this eternal struggle. Every playthrough opens with a darkened room except for a single source of light, a floating blade. Touching it is apparently a damning offense, and
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. The Great Palermo (PC, Mac) WE ARE MÜESLI The two artists at videogame studio We are Müesli made a recent trip to Palermo, Sicily and, while there, turned the city into an “interactive ballad.
If I started this article at the end it probably wouldn’t make much sense. There’s a reason most writers put words and events in chronological order to tell a story. Some stories, however, are best told out of order. Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) works this way as it
Philip K. Dick may be decades-dead but the extraordinary visions that lined the pages of his fictions are more alive than ever. There is perhaps no better proof of this than Californium—a videogame that weaves Dick’s influential stories with his own drug-fueled delusions into a multi-dimensional tri
Making breakfast is easy. If I can regularly manage to pour myself a bowl of cereal in a half-asleep stupor after I wake up then it’s a testament to just how little brain power breakfast usually requires. However, breakfast isn’t quite as easy as it seems in The Breakfast Club, a product of the 2016
The Kickstarter for a videogame called Lancelot’s Hangover has gone live today. As a parody of the King Arthur myth of the utmost sophistication—including drunks and rapping bears—it demands a rigorous examination of Arthurian literary history. That means it’s time for a crash course in Arthurian li
The Internet needs more jazz hands. That’s what Stinkdigital’s hands.wtf is for—if it has any real purpose, that is. “We created for no good reason at all,” the creative agency says. But here it is: two hands—Killer Mike and El-P are the credited hand models—floating in digital space. Type in a 3-le
The past can be an unclear place—definable through facts, yet easily clouded by emotion. Whether from nostalgia, personal interest, or error, humans have a pronounced ability to mis-remember or poorly represent their own history. In a sense, this defines us: as a populace, we live with the potential
There are two types of stories we tend to tell in the Fall: scary stories, and stories aimed at winning awards. Night in the Woods wants to be both. First announced with a Kickstarter campaign on October 22, 2013, Night in the Woods was pitched as a clever sidescroller twist on the adventure game, w
Whether you like his work or not, Tarantino has a grip over the collective imagination many creators can only live out in their dreams. Take this year’s The Hateful Eight for instance. So much attention has been given to the mere possibility of a new Tarantino project that the film’s first script wa
The first note of suspicion arises in two boxes sat next to each other on a desk. The label on these boxes is blurred beyond detail by the low-resolution—it’s possible to make out that it depicts a cylindrical instrument, white and red in color. I told myself it must be batteries for the nearby hand
How are presidents selected? — How much time do you have? A stylized sketch of how presidents are selected might go something like this: Candidates choose to run for one of two parties, raise money, compete in a series of caucuses and primaries to win delegates, and the candidate with the most deleg
This article is part of a series called Shut Up, Videogames, in which critic Ed Smith invites games old and new to pipe down, or otherwise. In this edition, he looks at the genre defying third-person action-adventure, The Order: 1886. It’s no masterpiece—it’s the story of immortal knights fighting w
The digital footprint is supposed to be an ominous concept. It’s supposed to be a reminder of all the digital breadcrumbs digital Hansels and Gretels leave in their wakes. But in practice, the digital footprint is too squishy a concept to truly resonate. How do you quantify all the little pieces of
Steven Poole put it beautifully in his book Trigger Happy (2000): “the jewel in the crown of what videogames can offer is the aesthetic emotion of wonder… such videogames at their best build awe-inspiring spaces from immaterial light. They are cathedrals of fire.” Cathedrals of fire. Sit on that for
San Francisco’s residents can’t escape the blossoming tech start-up culture, no matter how hard they try. It’s a strange place where it’s not out of the ordinary to hear of another “techie” (an affectionate term San Franciscans use for the influx of tech workers) pitching their app to an unassuming
Yesterday, Kanye West debuted his new album, The Life of Pablo, at Madison Square Garden. The “listening event” is a long-standing power-move in the most entrenched corners of the record industry—a complementary-wine-and-shrimp sort of affair, where people stand around and maybe take notes on a reco
Clint Siu went to a lakeside bench in the middle of the Swedish woods almost every day for two months, writing ideas and designing puzzles. It was June 2015 and Siu had moved to Stugan, the Swedish non-profit accelerator that started last year, to work on _PRISM, a zen-like minimalistic game in whic
I can’t trust my eyeballs right now. Just typing this black font onto this white space is steeped in something my body recognizes as danger. I think I see snakes wrestling across the gaps between the words. No, it’s worse than that. Oh god. You might laugh, or you might be outright confused right no
In some ways, you can think of a community as a machine—some members grow food products to be turned into meals, which then feed the members responsible for producing raw materials, so they can serve others that may hone those materials into goods that represent economic viability. With more members
When you think about it, kissing is pretty weird—all those sloshing fluids and semi-controllable fleshy bits. The point, I am told, is not to think about kissing. Good luck with that. You are not—I repeat: ARE NOT—going to go through life without thinking about kissing. It’s just not going to happen
