Cheating, Bullshit, and Illocutionary Acts
This post is thick and theoretical, so take comfort from this cute gamer snek picture and then buckle up. In Harry Frankfurt's 1986 essay...
Don't Starve Together
The first time we played Don't Starve Together, we died on night one. The screen went pitch black, our characters muttered the quite...
Katamari Damacy and the celebratory apocalypse
How utterly delightful is Katamari Damacy? Between the trippy, absurdist premise and game mechanic, the bright, colorful objects waiting...
Graphic vs. Text-based open worlds
Jon Ingold, Creative Director of Inkle Studios, said something interesting in his 2013 GDC talk (well, he said lots of interesting...
The Stanley Parable
Davey Wredon's The Stanley Parable floored critics and players alike when it came out in 2011, originally as a mod for Half-Life 2. The...
Firewatch, Precarious Manhood, and Walking Simulators
I recently read an article by Jennifer K. Bosson and Joseph A. Vandello in Current Directions in Psychological Science, titled...
Only If
Every game has to figure out some way to deal with the memory problem. If the game is, in good ludological Mario tradition, expected to...
Survival Horror (Resident Evil 7)
I didn't play Resident Evil 7. I watched a YouTuber play it (ChristopherOdd, who was fantastic). I heard great things about the Resident...
Dear Esther
This image does no justice to how beautiful Dear Esther is. If the point of walking sims is to immerse you in a gorgeous environment...
Depression Quest
Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Schankler made a piece of interactive fiction in 2013 called Depression Quest. Let's put a pin in...