Rookie of the Year Rookie of the Year: The Scariest, Saddest Song of 2016 By Matt Marrone • November 5th, 2015 “What happens when you can’t even remember those favorite things that make you not feel so bad?” Matt Marrone on the horror of Daughter’s first track of 2016.
The Burnt Offering The Howls of the Damned By Stu Horvath • October 30th, 2015 Where are the songs that make us scream in terror?
A Ship of Broken Jedi By John Wm. Thompson • October 29th, 2015 “Every other character who can actually see the Force describes the player as a walking emptiness.” John Wm. Thompson on KOTOR2’s oddness and arguable success.
The World Ends With Youth By Rob Haines • October 29th, 2015 “The epitome of teenage isolation, Neku tried to understand other people, but his total lack of adult empathy makes them intrinsically unknowable, an unsolvable enigma.”
Paint-Eater: Urban Art in Digital Worlds By Heather Alexandra • October 29th, 2015 “We’ll be waving our controllers around, miming activity that we clearly don’t understand.” Heather Alexandra on gaming’s failure to understand street art.
Back to the Couch By Taylor Hidalgo • October 22nd, 2015 “A couch full of audience-participants, and an enduring sense that gaming was something I got to share with everyone, even though I was the only one ‘playing’.”
Rookie of the Year Rookie of the Year: I am Google Cardboard By Matt Marrone • October 22nd, 2015 “I am Google Cardboard. I come to this realization slowly.” Matt Marrone explores VR, horror, and childhood with a cardboard case and an expensive smartphone.
Tron Bonne and the Family Business By Brian Crimmins • October 22nd, 2015 The Misadventures of Tron Bonne shows us how we can reconcile our personal interests with an impersonal economic reality. It all starts by rejecting capitalism.
The Burnt Offering A Sense of Place By Stu Horvath • October 16th, 2015 How much can a place give you? How much can you take away?
Revving the Engine: Quest-Based Learning By Stu Horvath • October 15th, 2015 Stu interviews Dr. Cynthia Marcello, professor at SUNY Sullivan using quest based learning to teach Unreal Engine 4. Part of a series of profiles sponsored by Epic.
Fearing Fear Itself By Rob Rich • October 14th, 2015 “Jump scares and monsters are nothing compared to SOMA’s true horrors.” Rob Rich dives deep with Frictional Games’ newest horror title.
The Promise of Stargazing in Destiny By Matthew Kim • October 13th, 2015 “Destiny promised a universe beyond the sky; slowly it begins to deliver upon that promise.” Matthew Kim compares exploration between Bungie’s Halo and Destiny.
Marriage Doesn’t Change Anything – UW64 By Stu Horvath • October 9th, 2015 The funny thing about being married is that it isn’t all that different from not being married.
The Horror of Being Human By Kaitlin Tremblay • October 8th, 2015 “Both Resident Evil and Silent Hill represent the ultimate fear of losing whatever it is that makes us human.”
Salt Plays Itself By Jane Riley • October 6th, 2015 ‘In the span of two years, Salty Bet seems to have cultivated itself out of the mass commotion of anonymous wagering to a more leashed chaos and misanthropy.”
Rookie of the Year Rookie of the Year: Jesus Stalks By Matt Marrone • October 5th, 2015 “When I go to church, it’s not to worship. It’s to stalk musicians.” Matt Marrone finds a way to enjoy his favorite off-tour band live.
On the Lunacy of the Groom’s Cake – UW63 By Stu Horvath • October 2nd, 2015 Stu Horvath is excited to get married, but man, weddings are weird.
Gazing into the Beyond By Corey Milne • October 1st, 2015 “The easiest way to describe The Beyond is as a series of random acts of senseless violence…bears more than a passing similarity to many videogames.”
Letters from the Rapture By Reid McCarter and Jed Pressgrove • September 29th, 2015 “Do you think the failure to engage with Rapture as a work regarding spirituality is borne of fear? Or intellectual laziness?”
Mad Max’s Split Ambitions By James Murff • September 28th, 2015 “Mad Max isn’t just one game. It’s two. And it can’t decide which it wants to be.” James Murff reveals Mad Max’s split design choices.
The Burnt Offering The End of the Campaign By Stu Horvath • September 25th, 2015 Stu Horvath reflects on the end of his ten year D&D campaign.
Architecture of the Infinite By William Chyr • September 24th, 2015 “As it turns out, what I really wanted to be was a videogame architect. …the architecture in this game is exactly the kind I’ve always wanted to make.”
Blood & Ads & Oil By Harry Rabinowitz • September 23rd, 2015 “Let me be the first to tell you about Blood & Oil, a new series coming to ABC this September. It looks like shit.” Harry Rabinowitz on ads in LA vs. NYC.
Rookie of the Year Rookie of the Year: A Matter of Time By Matt Marrone • September 22nd, 2015 “Why am I floating above the city of Toronto?” Matt Marrone gets creative with a suite of CG geometric iOS photography additives.
The Burnt Offering Unleash the Tarrasque By Stu Horvath • September 18th, 2015 This weekend is my bachelor party. We’re going to the Poconos to play Dungeons & Dragons all weekend.
Cassilda’s Songs By Bill Coberly • September 17th, 2015 “…the keys of the piano, now transformed from their pedestrian black-and-white into a dozen nameless colors, spinning and dancing and laughing with me…”
Painting With Ghosts By Declan Taggart • September 15th, 2015 Séances, hauntings, a prince of Persia, a publisher, spirit mediums, audiences, mystery, uncertainty: Explore Declan Taggart’s Victorian Glasgow.
Four Dollars an Hour By Thos. West • September 14th, 2015 “…what he is afraid of is literally being made into a mechanical thing. The player notes that he has, in learning how to play the game, mechanized himself.”
The Burnt Offering None Up By Stu Horvath • September 11th, 2015 My gran, my mother’s mother, is dying. All I can think about are extra lives.
Revving the Engine: Outlaws By Stu Horvath • September 10th, 2015 “I want to re-write the way the VFX industry does things and use games tech to do it.” Sponsored by Unreal Engine 4.
An Open Field By Ansh Patel • September 8th, 2015 “Even if we had another chance, another life to live, we would make mistakes again. Maybe the same ones.” Ansh Patel discusses physical and virtual death.
Rookie of the Year Your Game Just Wants Some Space By Matt Marrone • September 7th, 2015 “We all know what it’s like to need a videogame. But what about when a videogame no longer needs you?” Matt Marrone on Fallout Shelter and the self-playing game
The Burnt Offering Shakespeare in Wrist Blades By Stu Horvath • September 4th, 2015 The people who are making the new Macbeth movie are the same people who are making the Assassin’s Creed movie. Yes, you read that right.
Animal Crossing is a Cracked Mirror By Steven Messner • September 3rd, 2015 “Cinders became more than a village. It was a canvas for Brittany and I to paint on together.” Steven Messner and his wife escape with Animal Crossing.
Daydreams of Lightning By Harry Rabinowitz • September 2nd, 2015 “I’m not really ‘thinking about’ XIII at all. It’s more like I’m daydreaming about it.” Harry Rabinowitz daydreams his own fantasy of XIII.
Senses All Turned Up: An Interview with Stephen Graham Jones By Stu Horvath • August 31st, 2015 “It’s not just being scary on the page, it’s being scary in a way that plugs into the psyche of the audience.” Stu interviews horror writer Stephen Graham Jones
The Burnt Offering The Dread of Knowing in Until Dawn By Stu Horvath • August 28th, 2015 In Until Dawn, it is fear of the known that will give you nightmares.
Thoughts on the Internet’s Teen Angst By David Wolinsky • August 27th, 2015 “‘You shouldn’t even exist’ is the new ‘you misplaced a comma.'” David Wolinsky on critique in the age of Twitter.
Rookie of the Year Rookie of the Year: Breaking Up With My Xbox By Matt Marrone • August 25th, 2015 “I have come to the end of an era – I am finished with the gaming consoles that inspired me to begin this column in the first place.” The Rookie of the Year begins a new chapter.