Thoughts and Prayers: The Game is a political satire game that does exactly nothing, which is what it’s supposed to do. Brought to us by GOP Arcade, a newsgame development studio co-founded by Brian Moore, Chris Baker and Michael Lacher, Thoughts and Prayers: The Game was released in 2016 following the Orlando shooting that left […]
By Henrique Antero Henrique Antero is a Brazilian writer who would probably have a hard time distinguishing between a bug and a message from the gods. He is trying to string words into coherent sentences—but rarely on his Twitter, where you can reach him @erniquoa. I’ve always had a major problem making up my mind, […]
By LeeRoy Lewin This latest guest post comes to us from game developer LeeRoy Lewin. Lewin is a member of Washington-based dev collective VEXTRO and a regular contributor to JRPGs Are Dead. You can play his poem-game, Into the Mouth of Silence, on itch.io, and follow him at @wasnotwhynot. When difficulty in videogames is considered, it’s usually in terms […]
“All it takes is just a little change of perspective and you begin to see a whole new world.” -Bob Ross, The Joy of Painting The much-reported Twitch stream marathon of legendary PBS show, The Joy of Painting, introduced the perm, dulcet tones and painting expertise of Bob Ross to a new and perhaps unlikely […]
by Brendan Vance [TW: The following post contains explicit discussion of colonialist state brutality and racist violence.] http://www.brendanvance.com/misc/take5.mp3
[… Shareware games (c. 1990) Scratchware (2000) Indie games (c. 2002) Notgames (2010) Queer games (c. 2012) Altgames (2014) ??? (20XX) …]
It’s been awhile, but I’m pleased to present to you episode 6 of the Sufficiently Human Podcast! In this episode, we have with us special guest Austin Walker, a PhD candidate in Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario and formidable freelance games critic. Using the Steam Holiday Auction as a springboard, Walker joins […]
“In a world in which the subject has become a stranger to its [sic] labor, we use experience to incite awareness of the alienation in which one lives.” -Lygia Clark, Nostalgia of the Body: “We Refuse…”, 1965 First, I know that nothing here will last. Lygia Clark, an artist whose work might have fallen into […]
I don’t want to say I’m writing a design manifesto, because games already have so many as to render the purpose of writing yet another manifesto meaningless. But if I were to impart any wisdom I’ve developed in my experience designing games, it’s this: Fuck the player. I know how that sounds. It might take […]
Let’s talk, for a minute, about journalistic ethics. They’ve been invoked a lot this week, mostly in order to justify a lot of bloviating, misogynistic nonsense. But I’d like to seriously talk about ethics for a minute, how they’re being used and what they can mean for both games reporting and criticism. I want to […]