A Russian novel, a floating rock, and the world of Overland
The long influence of Roadside Picnic.
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Where does Minecraft end?
A quest to the edge of an endless world.
Finding your way as a queer LARPer
The Wayfinder Experience supports fluid notions of gender and identity.
It’s hard not to love The Hole Story, a game made by teenage girls
From summer camp to game convention.
A new book uncovers the tumultuous past of Monopoly
In the process, author Mary Pilon becomes an agent of history herself.
Scale against humanity in Xenoblade Chronicles
Size matters.
Vanishing Points
The Jedi Exile and bare life in Knights of the Old Republic II
Remembering the obscure PlayStation game that just wanted you to play
Where most games encourage play with open worlds, Boku no Natsuyasumi promotes it through careful structure.
The gamer-core nihilism of Earl Sweatshirt
An insufferable shit grows up.
In praise of the digital-era obscurity of the Mountain Goats
One version of the beloved band’s new album comes out this week.
How the internet is creating a new, global language of comedy
Comedy without borders.
Thumper metes out violence like you’ve never seen before
Also stars the most metal flying space beetle in videogames.
Death, difficulty, and Disney’s Aladdin
Some art is endured; other art is conquered.
Sesame Street knows the way to a kid’s brain is through their funny bone
Educating children with a smile.
How memes emerge from games
The fertile shared space between humor and play.
What it means to skin a yeti (or not) in Far Cry 4
The fierce tiger vs. the noble elephant, forever.
Memories of a Broken Dimension is here to destroy everything
XRA’s brutal, brutalist glitch experiment is more unsettling by the day.
Playing loud in quiet spaces
Arcades are moving out of America’s deteriorating shopping malls and into its libraries.
Ming Mecca, the jazz instrument for videogame improvisation
The glitch as a building block.
The next great video game system may be Twitter
Bots are playing with us and each other.
Can virtual reality make us more empathetic?
Scientists are learning that changing bodies changes minds.
A video game convention for the LGBT community widens its scope
GX3 proclaims that “everyone games.”
The glorious return of Xenoblade Chronicles, which is as good a JRPG as any
The re-rebirth of the game that will not die.
20XX, or, the limits of esports
Super Smash Bros. players have envisioned the death of the game.
Chappie is a terrible, terrible, important movie
Perhaps the most unintelligent film about artificial intelligence ever made.