Help us cover the art of destruction in games by backing our Kickstarter! /// Here’s a really enjoyable thing you can do in Avalanche Studios’ Just Cause 3: fly a fighter plane over the rolling green hills, white sand beaches, and turquoise waters of Medici. Spot a military base and strafe it with c
What if you could mod a game as seamlessly as playing it the way it was written? In Nicky Case’s latest simulation tool, A Simulation in Emoji, just that promise is fulfilled. In the introduction for A Simulation in Emoji, Case writes, “there is *no* difference between playing and making, between re
If you think girl games matter, help us champion them in our magazine by backing our Kickstarter. /// For generations of women, Judy Blume’s novels are a potent symbol. To the women that read her books in the ‘70s and ‘80s they were symbols of rebellion, offering knowledge that was forbidden by adul
One of the charms of NASCAR, SB Nation word wizard Spencer Hall once argued, is that “You are watching for a non-fatal but spectacular crash.” Crashes are fun—and flammable—which is great up until the point you start to care about people. Therein lies the problem with racing. The distribution of int
Why are there huge brawny, hairy men? Why, oh why, are they acting so intimately (and hungrily) with disfigured pigs? And why are they so often seen screaming with heavy anguish into the sky? These are all valid questions about Cool 3D World that probably don’t have an answer. The one question that
A futuristic thought experiment, Roko’s basilisk, posits that at some point in the future there may be an artificial intelligence (AI) that will retroactively punish those who knew it could one day exist and still did not help to bring about its existence. While in practice this serves more as a log
After the release of Star Wars in May of 1977, the Kenner toy company could not make enough action figures to meet the demands of an eager consumer base. Even into the Christmas season, the company still had inadequate stock, so Kenner instead sold people an “Early Bird Certificate Package”—an empty
For all its lighthearted charm, RollerCoaster Tycoon has been oddly capable of indulging the morbid propensities of its players over the years. There’s not a player out there who isn’t guilty of picking up their tiny little park guests and dropping them in the Swan Boat lake, or trying to design a d
If you want more in depth interviews like these, support us on Kickstarter! // Few games have captured the public imagination like No Man’s Sky. Due out in June 2016, the game promises an entire universe to explore: some 18 quintillion planets, which would take some 600 billion hours for players to
When thinking about the black neighborhoods in Chicago‘s south and west side most people will probably see death statistics. This is what the media thrusts into the public’s face time and again. It’s hardly an isolated incident; while purported to be based in fact, these statistics are trumpeted aro
“Are you Hitler?” Note, dear reader, the use of quotation marks. Even though this is the internet, where people go to say such things, I do not believe that you are actually Hitler. Rather, that is an actual question that comes up with reasonable frequency in Max Temkin’s (co-creator of Cards Agains
One of the various things the digital age has changed forever is how parents show off their kids. Before, the most harm a baby picture could do was embarrass you in front of a date you brought home to meet your parents. But according to the WNYC podcast Note to Self, “the Pew Research Center found t
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. // The Mad Max franchise is unique. Not only does it depict a very different apocalypse than the zombie-ridden radioactive tragedies we’re used to, but it also stands as a distinctly seminal Australian film in an age where America dominates t
VR had me skeptical, but then again, I’m pretty much always skeptical of new gaming technology. Similarly, when Microsoft’s Kinect rolled around, so too did my eyeballs, right into the back of my skull. I can lazily holler at my Xbox to turn on? Big deal. With VR, I could scan my entire surroundings
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. // This past August, the latest version of Pac-Man reached #1 on the charts in Japan. This may not sound surprising. Until one considers that Pac-Man 256 is a touch-based mobile game made by a small independent studio from Melbourne, Australi
Remember Radio the Universe? It started popping up around the web in 2012, ran a successful Kickstarter at the end of that year, and has been surfacing here and there for the last three years with bits of art and minor updates. It was among the first wave of smaller games that seemed invested in tak
Western depictions of mental illness often tend toward the dramatic. Shows like House often showcase rare disorders or extreme versions of a diagnosis when they mention mental illness at all: the schizophrenic woman who sees fire where there isn’t any, a mute patient who is able to speak after one r
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Chesh (iOS) Damian Sommer It seems nothing is safe from the dubstep-happy clutches of remix culture, not even the ancient and tried game of chess. Damian Sommer’s new iOS game Chesh can be tho
It’s been a slow ride since Cardboard Computer’s moody tale of dark roads and mysterious strangers first debuted in early 2013, but we’re getting steadily closer to the end. Kentucky Route Zero: Act IV is nearing completion and while it has no exact release date yet, its developers have stated on Tw
Proteus creator Ed Key and artist Nicolai Troshinsky of Twisted Tree Games have only talked abstractly about their upcoming experimental narrative game Forest of Sleep before. But now, a few months after its initial announcement, the pair have cut into the specifics of what they mean when citing “em
It’s been a rough ride for Pluto ever since it was demoted in 2006 by the no-good scientists who deemed it unworthy of the proper “planet” classification. It lost its confidence, became altogether uninterested in life, and has been revolving in its own sorrow ever since. After the demotion, all of P
The Tower Inverted is a game in the same way that a leisurely stroll through the park can be a game: Who knows what you’ll find? Granted, the things you’ll find in The Tower Inverted aren’t a total surprise. To wit, here’s a far from comprehensive list: conical trees, low-slung huts, glowing globes,
Calling the design of the Hunger Games terrible is kind of missing the point, right? There’s no fairness intended, no logic, no rules. The “gamemakers” are industrial-scale butchers, striking a balance between mass execution and mass execution that’s fun to watch. They’re games only in the bread-and
When one thinks of the tombs plundered by videogame heroine Lara Croft, or even legendary adventure film archaeologist Indiana Jones, untold treasures and riches typically await them. During a 2004 excavation in China of first emperor of the Qin dynasty Qin Shi Huangdi’s self-constructed, terracotta
This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel. A month before the December 18 release of the seventh Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, fans can get their fix of light sabers, starfighters and wookies in a galaxy far, far away inside EA DICE’s online shooter game, Star Wars: Battlefront.
