Issue 08 - Killscreen

Los Santos

Space Travel (or, Falling Down)

How do we actually remember Los Santos?

A glowing alien child character projected into a darkened room

David O’Reilly

Moving Pictures

Film took a century to replicate the world. Have videogames done it already?

Watercolor of a telephone pole and shack in an empty desert

Virtual Reality

Breaking Immersion

The most overused word in videogames crawls into obsolescence.

Pastel illustration of Victorian houses and people on a hillside street

Virtual Reality

Think of the Children

On the frontlines of the Coming Backlash Against VR

A researcher in a blue lit lab wearing a tracked head-mounted display

BlueShark

Shark Bytes

Designing the battlestations of the future

A lit apartment block at night seen through binoculars

Eve: Valkyrie

Horizons

We’re being conditioned to think of virtual reality as “a new medium,” which it may someday be. In the meantime, developers are trying to transmute all that promise into playable experiences. Here are a few of the most exciting.

A simulated Middle Eastern street seen down the barrel of a weapon

Virtual Iraq

Battleground States

Inside the efforts to revolutionize PTSD therapy

larp

Seeing the Elephant

LARPers and war reenactors are used to constructing new worlds.

A red room with light pouring through a bright doorway

Frederik Pohl’s Gateway

Sleep No More

What happens if we can’t get out?

Black and white drawing of a person in an early head-mounted display

Sensorama

Beyond the Sword of Damocles

One of the signature inventions in early VR is collecting dust in an Orange County apartment.

Sepia patent drawing of a mechanical glove and goggles

Steven Millhauser

Long Live the Screen

The Victorian roots of virtual reality

David Cronenberg

The New Flesh

David Cronenberg mastered body horror. But virtual reality brings it crawling into the real world.