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Loot and Libraries
What games and players can learn from System Shock 2, and why the most effective videogame story may be an incomplete one.
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Essay
Classic Calvino
When in doubt, look to Italo Calvino’s systematic writings about literature and the imagination. We use one of his essays to speculate on the creation of a gaming canon.
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Gunning With Scissors
How can we understand a world coded in language? William S. Burroughs had some violent ideas in the form of handguns, scissors, and word games.
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Why Food Isn’t the Point
What can contemporary performance art tell us about Cooking Mama? Kyle Chayka on the unlkely link between cooking videogames and fine art.
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On Answers Withheld
Who is Andrew W. K., and why have we convinced ourselves to chase a mystery? Drew Millard argues our self-deception may be our best way to stay engaged today.
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The Edible History of Games
In common parlance, tastes change. But this is no mere truism; when technology moves with the times, so does what we find palatable. We look at the history of videogames through the surprisingly familiar lens of food.
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Fitter, Happier
The simplest videogames today excel at one thing: the chase that we pursue endlessly and never finish. Yannick LeJacq looks at mobile hits Canabalt and Temple Run through the health and fitness lens.
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The Tao of Molydeux
Game designers around the world recently gathered to make Peter Molyneux’s unconscious fever dreams—the Twitter account of @petermolydeux—a reality. What we learned was that good jokes are not the same as good ideas.
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I’m Not Kidding This Game Is S**t
How can bad games accomplish more than good ones? On the awe-inspiring results of Cheetahman II and awfulness.
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The Legend of Donkey-Woman
When your game breaks all the time, will you give up or will you play along? We go looking for guts and glitches in the Wild West.
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We Changed the Ending
Yeah, we did!
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Hurt You So
A conceptual game about “real interaction” has players burning, electrocuting, and whipping each other. When they are finished, they may find Painstation was not the game they signed off on.