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Games, play, and culture with Jamin Warren
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What Bowser and Sonic are doing in a Disney movie
Disney’s upcoming film Wreck-It Ralph has a lot of trademarked characters in it. In his interview with Total Film, producer Clark Spencer gives a behind-the-scenes look at the process of getting the necessary permissions. Rich [Moore, director] and I went to E3, and pitched the movie to all the dif
A beautiful exploration of Choose Your Own Adventure story paths
While we’re on the subject: Graphic designer Christian Swinehart has created a remarkable website about Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books, or “game books.” His graphical representations of the branching storylines are beautiful in their own right, and teach lessons about how “branched” a storyl
What is the difference between Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3?
If you’re like me, I’m sorry. But also, if you’re like me, you played hours and hours Diablo 3, and you’re a little bit skeptical about buying another endless point-to-massacre fantasy game mere weeks afterwards. Kotaku has written up a frighteningly comprehensive – in that inimitable Kotaku way – g
Choose your own adventure, from the comfort of your browser
Remember Choose Your Own Adventure novels? They were great. But flipping to the exact right page was hard to do without spoiling some other part of the story. Thanks to hyperlinked texts, these stories no longer suffer from that problem. If you’ve ever thought of writing a choose-your-own-adventure
What if the angry birds are evil?
Cultural relativism teaches us that no group of people have unique access to the truth, that the validity of beliefs and customs are limited to the civilization from which they spring. Oh gamers, we have been bad cultural relativists indeed! Where is the empathy, I ask you, for the piggy, slaughter
Inside the BioWare writers’ studio
BioWare, creators of the beloved Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, is known perhaps more than anything for the quality of its writing. The Border House interviewed BioWare writer Ann Lemay. We work in an open-floor office, each in four-desk units with semi-clear dividers that afford some privacy, b
What should it mean to be a gamer?
All too often, the word “gamer” seems to describe a personality in its entirety. One’s gaming identity is somehow divorced from all the other aspects of one’s personality. Adam Ruch at Kotaku AU fights against this assumption. By being a gamer, I do not stop being a man, a university lecturer, a med
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