video games

Indie Game ‘Best Month Ever!’ Navigates Single Motherhood

Indie Game ‘Best Month Ever!’ Navigates Single Motherhood

Indie game Best Month Ever! challenges players to navigate single motherhood – including illness and low wages – in a ruthless capitalistic and patriarchal society.

How Moebius’ Psychedelic Fantasy / Surrealist Art Influenced Video Games

How Moebius’ Psychedelic Fantasy / Surrealist Art Influenced Video Games

French artist Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, inspired his peers and mass media. In video games especially, his psychedelic fantasy/surrealist art may live on forever.

On Point and Click Adventure Games with Creator Joel Staaf Hästö

Through the Looking-Glass of Black Mirror’s ‘Bandersnatch’

Through the Looking-Glass of Black Mirror’s ‘Bandersnatch’

Netflix's interactive movie, Bandersnatch, doesn't really offer choices, but it does offer something else: a warning.

How Does One Condense the World of Video Games into a Mere 64 Objects?

How Does One Condense the World of Video Games into a Mere 64 Objects?

The staff at the World Video Game Hall of Fame have, with great care, winnowed down objects in the medium that they feel best represents the important developments in the history of the video game.

Masks, of Course, Can Be the Subtlest of Traps — as Seen in ‘Ready Player One’

Combating the Trap of Nostalgia in a Look at the Super Nintendo

Combating the Trap of Nostalgia in a Look at the Super Nintendo

Dominic Arsenault's Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware cuts through the nostalgia so sharply that it comes off as dismissive, hostile even, at least to someone used to reading the flowery prose of fan literature.

Academic Gamers: Your Assistance with ‘Gaming Representation’ Please

Academic Gamers: Your Assistance with ‘Gaming Representation’ Please

You might care about the concepts raised in Gaming Representation, but you probably won’t be able to understand them.

While You Stare into ‘Mass Effect’ RPG It Stares Back into You

While You Stare into ‘Mass Effect’ RPG It Stares Back into You

As you interrogate your companions and enemies i to understand their worlds, Mass Effect has been questioning you. What kind of player are you?

Community and Collaboration in ‘Battle for Wesnoth’

Community and Collaboration in ‘Battle for Wesnoth’

The one part of gaming that can lay claim to true, untarnished ‘freeness’ is the open-source world, where other incentives besides profit drive creativity.
‘Westworld’ Ponders the Lives of NPCs

‘Westworld’ Ponders the Lives of NPCs

Westworld seems less interested in examining traditional protagonists than interrogating the behaviors and abuses of a fictional world's props, its non-player characters.

‘Undertale’ and Immanuel Kant: Ethics in Video Games