Essay
Get a Grip
The definition of gambling reaches far beyond gaudy slot machine. Here’s why the infamous claw game of carnivals and childhood birthday parties is a symbol of our times, grasping at gifts behind an invisible wall.
Essay
Essay
The Great Punk Experiment
Games are supposedly becoming easier to make, but as our resident punk finds out, not as easy as screaming into a microphone. Can we make a working game? Barring that, a meaningful one?
Essay
Rise of the Superhumans
Today the most dedicated videogame players hack the computers to do the work for them. We take an inside look at the world of tool-assisted speedruns, where Mario and Mega Man defy even more logic.
Essay
Unlevel Design
How does the other half play? Our one-time casino correspondent rides the bus to Niagara Falls and tries to get used to losing, being lost, and loathing games.
Essay
Kicking Ice
That folk game about covert Ice packing and assault finally gets its due. Now we can all forget it was a real game.
Essay
It’s Disappointing to Go Alone
The critically championed Journey can be taken together or solo. Either way, it’s arguably an interpersonal desert, due to creative decisions that leave little to the imagination. Here’s why.
Essay
I Can Haz You?
If dog is man’s best friend, what are cats? Humans have grappled with the creatures since the beginning; and as videogames show, we are still circling each other warily.
Essay
One Small Step
NASA ended its moon program. Can it bring the rest of us into space with videogames?
Essay
To Infinity and Beyond
Do we need to rethink our priorities? How games secretly take our minds to the endless places that math and science cannot.
Essay
The Planetarium at Play
An indie gaming collective from a basement in Queens recently took over New York’s Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History. How does a DIY reinvention hold up against everyone’s favorite field-trip destination?
Essay
The Unauthorized and Incomplete Story of the IGF Pirate Kart
What happens when you combine more than 100 renegade game developers, 300 off-the-cuff games they made, and a mock failed submission to the Independent Games Festival? Filipe Salgado brings us into the sporadic and rebellious world of the 2012 IGF Pirate Kart to talk with some of the minds behind th
Essay
Shining in the Darkness
Jason Johnson looks into the world of audio games—videogames designed for the visually impaired—and finds a medium racing to catch up with modern times. If the zombie first-person shooter Swamp is any indication, games for the blind may herald an unforeseen future for videogames and technology.