Essay
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
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.
Essay
With apps, games, multimedia, multitasking, and online functionality galore, Sony’s newly released PlayStation Vita wants to be everything to everyone. Ryan Kuo argues that it is definitely one thing for one person: the hardcore gamer, whatever that looks like.
Essay
What Would Drake Do if he were a famous fake basketball player and not just a sad rapper? Drew Millard gets inside his head and finds out (surprise: Drake is not happy).
Essay
We talk to Rogers Redding, the man responsible for balancing the rules of NCAA football. What can one of our most beloved—but complicated and particular—sports tell us about the pursuit of meaning through limitations, success and defeat?
Essay
Sports videogames suffer from an identity crisis: they are games about games. To kick off our first week of sports articles, A.E. Benenson writes on the eternal confusion, and why “cheating” in MLB: The Show is good sportsmanship.
Essay
Nintendo’s cheerful take on Monopoly found an untimely release in America last December. Jason Johnson digs into the financial game and finds himself overpowered by Mushroom Kingdom denizens who seem blessed by advantages he can’t see, but feels tearing a hole in his savings.
Essay
Is the game industry a well-oiled, profoundly risk-averse machine with a stranglehold on creative talent, or is crowdfunding about to destroy publishing as we know it? Jamin Warren takes a look at the unprecedented success of Tim Schafer’s Kickstarter project Double Fine Adventure and sees a potenti
Essay
What’s in a name? The word “gamer” is used to connote men and women who enjoy videogames, and it contains the perilous highs and lowest lows of human experience. Jason Johnson argues that it’s time to leave the term behind.
Essay
How are sports created in our own image? When the global game of soccer is digitally transformed into an international hit in FIFA, the ball finds itself caught between disparate communities, economies, and goals. James Dilks charts its journey from the western coast of Africa to the cables of the F
Essay
When boundaries were pushed at this year’s Nordic Game Jam, it was in all senses: technological, creative, and personal. Thomas Rousse followed the two-day development of Awkward Tarzan Grinding Game and found its tangle of dongles and vines anything but.
Essay
?Between War Horse and Bronies, pop culture is currently obsessed with two things: horses and iPhones. Drew Millard dives into My Horse, an iPhone game about horses, and comes up for air—with a thesis of the new generation between his teeth.