war
What Happens When You Can Do Nothing in a War Zone?
Alan Kwan's new game, Scent, offers you a role not as a soldier, but as a lone dog wandering a desolate war zone. You are simply a witness without power.
war
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Just what the Trojan War needed: a huge, explosive gun
The Trojan War is a comedy and a tragedy, a series of deaths that history will remember by its errors rather its feats. When they teach the Trojan War, they talk about a beautiful woman whose face was enough for an armada to be launched and a large wooden horse that defeated an impregnable city. Whe
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My experience as a virtual war photographer in Battlefield 1
Heterotopias is a series of visual investigations into virtual spaces performed by writer and artist Gareth Damian Martin. /// What makes a battlefield different from any other place? Our towns, cities, fields, and parks are all potential battlefields, with lines of sight, choke-points, defensible t
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Killbox, a videogame about the true horror of drone warfare
Killbox is a game about drone warfare; about the experience of killing, of dying, and of the yawning expanse between the people doing those two things. It’s also a collaboration between US-based activist Joseph DeLappe and Scotland-based game designers Malath Abbas, Tom Demajo and Albert Elwin—one t
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A videogame tribute to growing up around the Yugoslav Wars
Ivan Notaros appears in Issue 9 of Kill Screen’s print magazine. It launches on August 8th, but you can get 10 percent off before that date with the discount code RELAUNCH. /// Ivan Notaros is constantly flooded with new game ideas. It’s the result of endlessly tinkering with videogame physics and a
Feature
Valkyria Chronicles is a different kind of war story
We tell a lot of stories about war. The appeal is, in one sense, straightforward: war checks off nearly every box in the dramatist’s playbook, replete with high stakes, clear protagonists and antagonists, and themes of heroism and loss. But the pendulum swings the other way, as well: wars don’t just
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Long Gone Days imagines the world of war that’s coming for us
If a dystopian novel was written about the world that we live in right now, what would it look like? Chilean game maker Camila Gormaz wants to explore that in her upcoming game Long Gone Days. Unlike dead-Earth dystopias, where human society has overreached to such an extent that what remains of our
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The videogame that dared to question the War on Terror
If we can associate genres and aesthetics with film-makers (John Woo and action movies; Stanley Kubrick and deep focus) IO Interactive, especially in its prime between 2002 and 2007, was a game-maker defined by concerns about player agency. By constantly placing her in restrictive and alien environm
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The forgotten politics behind Contra’s name
Do a quick Google search of “contra.” Browsing the first few pages, you should see a saturation of links about the videogame—the now-primary version of the word—sprinkled with other definitions. Next in the deck is contra as preposition: “against, contrary, or opposed to,” suitingly enough. Then, a
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The makers of Hatred’s next cheap shot takes aim at ISIS
Destructive Creations does not support ISIS. There is no reason to believe anyone ever suspected otherwise, but the developers behind the quasi-genocidal civilian shooter provocation that is Hatred (2015) aren’t taking any risks. In a Steam post, they say their latest game, IS Defense, is their “per
Review
The inescapable echoes of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
It might have been the cruise missiles that triggered it. One of a string of upgrades nudged towards me by my commanding officer, charting the slow expansion of my carrier’s already formidable arsenal. It was the name— cruise missiles— that was so distant from science fiction, so connected to a side
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Metal Gear Solid V’s nuclear disarmament event begins
Nuclear deterrence has long been a subject of Metal Gear Solid games: the idea that if all sides of a conflict have weapons of mass destruction, then nobody will use them. But is that really peace? That’s what a special mission in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain hopes to address. A cutscene ass