Games that seek to represent significant historical phenomena are, by their very nature, reductive. Real-time gameplay is, Timebound’s multi-year push notifications notwithstanding, not on the table. Beyond the time imperative, creative works must also make narrative and dramatic choices. These cons
City building games are rarely exercises in democracy. The player’s agency stems from her role as a central planner; she designs cities that hopefully please their residents, but this is not a consultative, bottom-up process. Considerate urban planning in the city-building game is an act of benevole
‘Tis the season for Christmas music to blare from every direction. They come from speakers, carolers, and buskers. They are played in stores and putative public spaces. As a side effect of this sonorous onslaught, ostensibly cheerful songs become backing tracks to breakups and calls announcing the s
War may never change, but Kill Screen does. Back our Kickstarter to help support our print relaunch! Fallout 4 takes us back. Back to the beginning. Back before the bombs fell, and before the world of the Fallout series took on its mutated, feral, apocalyptic form. But what did that world look like?
“Are you Hitler?” Note, dear reader, the use of quotation marks. Even though this is the internet, where people go to say such things, I do not believe that you are actually Hitler. Rather, that is an actual question that comes up with reasonable frequency in Max Temkin’s (co-creator of Cards Agains
The First World War is often referred to as The Great War, due to its immense scope, as it incited all the world’s national powers and resulted in a devastating death toll. Set within this war is the tabletop game The Grizzled, which makes no attempt to capture such scale, and instead hones in on a
I need more historical games in my life that aren’t pure strategy games or Assassin’s Creed, so when I heard of Somber, a game set during the political turmoil of mid-50s small-town Argentina, I was immediately interested. That’s primarily because Somber isn’t a game directly about war, which seems
History, in case you were wondering, covers a good chunk of time. Much of that time has been horrible, but there’s plenty of it. How, then, does one go about representing history? Should the focus be on the time or the suffering? The normal solution to this problem, as is evidenced by the history se
Believe it or not, Brooklyn existed before the days of beard wax, tasting menus, and lazy trendpiece shorthand. Brooklyn 1776, which launches for iOS next week, is about those earlier days. Much earlier. August 1776 was not a calm time in American history. George Washington (maybe you’ve heard of h
In city builder games, the player is god. No capitalization is called for here: She is looking on from on high, but she is not omnipotent; she must watch human forces desecrate her creations from the heavens above. Most games grant their players agency they would otherwise lack, but the risk of POV-
Even in board game form, games by Studio Oleomingus are simply mesmerizing. The team behind Somewhere, a surreal stealth game set in an alternate world version of colonial India, have started work on an unnamed historical project about running a Portugese colony in 17th century Goa. In a recent post
They say confession is good for the soul, so let’s start with this: I killed a human in three seconds. Before keeling over he had just enough time to say that he felt funny. You don’t say? He doesn’t say anything anymore, and so I sit alone with my conscience waiting for Seal Team 6 to monetize my m
You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. So it is in Moscow, where on the occasion of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s unveiling, the architect Rem Koolhaas told The Guardian “you can say so many things about the Soviet system that were bad, but in terms of public architecture it was g
Selfie sticks are extensions of a person’s power more than their arms. They are tools of conquest, a way for their owners to claim dominance over a larger swath of space in the name of better self-portraiture. If you frequently give in to the siren song of thinkpieces, you’ve seen this selfie shtick
Shakescraft hopes to reconstruct the playwright’s demolished home with videogames Can Minecraft help us restore Shakespeare demolished home? How Minecraft can help complete the most significant Shakespearean restoration project ever A Shakespearean restoration project turns to Minecraft to help r
There are things you want to see while locked in an elevator. And then there’s the sight of the neighboring skyscraper suddenly disappearing from the skyline. The elevators leading to 1 World Trade Center’s observatory offer both. This is not a malicious prank. As they ascend to the 102nd floor, the
