Category: Life

Another Look

Fantasies of Fatherhood

By Yussef Cole • March 13th, 2020

In Death Stranding, players get a chance to parent less a child than the idea of one.

Forms in Light

The Genius of Beauclair Palace

By Justin Reeve • March 11th, 2020

Justin dives into why, exactly, this Witcher 3 structure commands such a presence.

Self Insert

When Fanon Eclipses Canon

By Amanda Hudgins • March 10th, 2020

How a Canadian TV show from the ’90s lives on in alternative universe fanfiction.

Collision Detection

Could the Decline of Violent Football Videogames Have Predicted the Future of Player Safety?

By Ben Sailer • March 10th, 2020

Football videogames in the early to mid-1990s reveled in over-the-top physical violence. Could the disappearance of that tendency be connected to changing public perception around the safety of the sport?

Feature Excerpt

Picking Fruit in Hyrule: Playing Breath of the Wild Like It’s Animal Crossing

By Alyssa Wejebe • February 21st, 2020

If you’re sick of emptying your pockets to Tom Nook and microtransactions, another Nintendo mainstay may be exactly what you’re looking for.

Collision Detection

What I Think About When I Think About Grandia

By Ben Sailer • February 10th, 2020

What can we learn about social activism from an aging 32-bit-era role-playing game? According to one writer who probably needs to get more sleep, maybe more than one might think.

This Mortal Coyle

Jesse Faden from Control

By Deirdre Coyle • February 7th, 2020

Deirdre desperately wants to be friends with Jesse Faden, someone similarly comfortable with the surreal and unexplainable.

Self-Insert

Dead Dove Do Not Eat

By Amanda Hudgins • February 6th, 2020

Let this be your warning.

Revving the Engine

Dead Static Drive: A Dark and Winding Road

By Stu Horvath • February 5th, 2020

“I didn’t ever feel like I sought out horror so much as people brought it to me.”

The McMaster Files

Ghosts in the Machine

By Jason McMaster • February 4th, 2020

What happens to our digital life when we die?

No Accounting for Taste

Socialism in One Solar System

By Adam Boffa • February 3rd, 2020

The Outer Worlds knows exactly what’s wrong with capitalism. So why doesn’t it talk about what might come next?

Feature Excerpt

Searching for Kirby(‘s) Air Ride, a Game that Does(n’t) Exist

By Don Everhart • January 28th, 2020

Nostalgic for a game that never existed, Don Everhart considers how he has carried a torch for the never-released Nintendo 64 version of Kirby’s Air Ride. Chasing an online game swap for the Gamecube game Kirby Air Ride may have been the next best thing.

Feature Excerpt

The New Age of Nollywood

By Oluwatayo Adewole • January 28th, 2020

A new generation of Nigerian filmmakers is finally putting quality over quantity.

The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star

By Amanda Hudgins • January 20th, 2020

There’s probably some academic who would be able to stay what stage of capitalism is a multi-part expose about the beauty industry that is actually a seven part ad for a makeup palette.

Musings