The semiotics of controller design
Circle, Square, Triangle, and X.
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The impossible architecture of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Konami came close to making Piranesi’s imaginary prisons real.
Treachery in Beatdown City wants to make a more diverse videogame world
Treachery in Beatdown City looks to change representations of people of color.
PlayStation Underground as existential crisis
When nostalgia inverts on itself.
Dragon Age’s post-racial (high) fantasy
How Inquisition takes the politics out of race.
Playing The Quiet Year, a tabletop game about building communities
Where contempt is a mechanic.
The science behind real-life invisibility cloaks
Technology gets closer and closer to magic every day.
Darkest Dungeon explores the psychological horror of the dungeon crawl
So: what are these videogame characters feeling?
Donut County turns Los Angeles sprawl into a delicious, pop-art fantasia
Ben Esposito talks about erasure and delight in his upcoming game.
Behind the Night in the Woods spinoff about our godless world
What do we do when we can’t rely on religion?
Tarkovsky, Halo skulls, and the badlands of virtual space
Into the void where designed spaces end.
Alone in a crowd in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Non-player characters helped the series double down on its sense of isolation.
Metroid Prime 2 and the potential of sequels
The wonders of Sanctuary Fortress.
The visor as cinematographer in Metroid Prime
That eccentric little control, actualized.
A history of the arcade and the arcade-goer
A taxonomy of flânerie.
What computing loses when it forgets its feminine history
Celebrating Barbie games on the same level as MegaMan ones.
There is only one way to play the Sims, and that is to cheat
Breaking out of a straitjacket economy.
Inside Lacerunner, the Victorian-era redux of the best tabletop game on the planet
Naomi Clark looks to make Netrunner a little less … cyberpunk.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask has only grown more important with time
Fifteen years later, the game is almost too real.
How To Escape
Exploring the potential of the screen, the page and the ceiling.
Videogames are creating lighting that moves through the world
Volumetric lighting will only increase in importance.
A closer look at Bioware’s progressive sexual politics
The roleplaying masters understand the importance of identity.
The unmistakable influence of Shintoism on videogame history
Japan’s naturalistic religion defines many of our shared experiences.
The strategy genre has finally embraced the apocalypse
This is the way Endless Legend ends: not with a bang but a whimper.
Elite: Dangerous’ cosmic vision falls somewhere between a rock and a marketplace
A sci-fi game that can’t imagine beyond the present.