Revving the Engine Mods & Mythology By Melissa King • November 24th, 2021 The Australian Writers’ Guild Award-winning and critically acclaimed The Forgotten City had humble beginnings as a Skyrim mod.
Feature Excerpt Roleplaying Freedom: Joel Rosenberg and White Fantasies of Oppression By Noah Berlatsky • November 23rd, 2021 Rosenberg’s depiction of liberation is less about those liberated and more about the moral awakening of the white liberator.
Feature Excerpt Rebels Without a Cause By Gerry Hart • November 19th, 2021 Watchdogs: Legion could have been a powerful or at least insightful piece of cultural commentary. It’s more like the Kylie Jenner Pepsi advert.
Exploits Feature Star Trek: Lower Decks By Van Dennis • November 1st, 2021 Just like we did in the 90s between Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, we’re once again arguing over which of the three currently airing Star Trek shows is the best.
Revving the Engine Connecting with Tetrominoes By Diego Nicolás Argüello • October 30th, 2021 Last year, Tetris Effect: Connected promised a way to come together even as we were suspended in our quarantine bubbles. It still delivers.
Feature Excerpt Pendragon and Anti-Fascist Medievalism By Ruth Cassidy • October 29th, 2021 “Camelot has, for the moment, fallen, but the dream of Camelot – of a sane Government by consensus, led by an Arthur and not a Mordred – must and will live on.”
Feature Story Reconsidering Rotoscoped Animation for its Second Century By Morgan Galen King • October 28th, 2021 Rotoscoping puts the human body in the spotlight, where the focus on the body and its relationship to the fictional world around it is ever-present.
Feature Excerpt A World Beyond: The Inadvertent Sci-Fi of Universal’s Original Mummy Sequels By Orrin Grey • October 27th, 2021 If you think about it, mummies are the original time travelers.
DISASTER PARADISE: at the Centre of the Miiverse By Gwil Jones • October 8th, 2021 Like so much of the Wii U, Miiverse’s emerald-green message boards have been taped off for years, a generic error message flatly reminding us of its indefinite closure and the start-up stampede replaced with lifeless replica dolls.
Exploits Feature “The Call of Cthulhu” By Orrin Grey • October 1st, 2021 There are a million ways to read “The Call of Cthulhu,” but this one sure is the prettiest.
Revving the Engine An Unreal Curriculum By Ben Sailer • September 20th, 2021 At Abertay University, students learn the skills to thrive in an industry that’s grown into an economic and educational force.
Exploits Feature Tomie By Yussef Cole • August 31st, 2021 She is the fantasy and the nightmare, all at once.
Revving the Engine Broken Helms, Shattered Shields By Sara Clemens • August 19th, 2021 Videogame Vikings are having a moment.
Feature Excerpt On Orientalism and Exoticism in Videogame Music By William Dowell • August 18th, 2021 The insidious way that Orientalism exists in videogame music.
Feature Excerpt The Mutated City By Zsolt David • August 17th, 2021 The world living in the husk of another.
Exploits Feature The Shadow of the Cat By Orrin Grey • August 1st, 2021 An old lady gets knocked off by her husband and servants in a relatively brutal opening, and the only witness is the cat. So far so good.
Feature Excerpt Ecstatic Truth in Games By Ben Rueter • July 28th, 2021 What nonfiction games offer if you can find them
Feature Excerpt Mother Loves You: Monstrous Parenthood in Amnesia: Rebirth By Emma Kostopolus • July 27th, 2021 There’s a deeper, more metatextual horror to Amnesia: Rebirth.
Feature Excerpt Podracing Towards an Absent Future By Samuel Kendall • July 26th, 2021 Because Star Wars isn’t really Star Wars anymore.
Exploits Feature Substack Dracula By Noah Springer • June 30th, 2021 The horror of Dracula, right in your inbox.
Feature Excerpt Dancing in Solitude By Clint Morrison Jr. • June 10th, 2021 Dance has a long history of media representation during and following “plague” years.
Revving the Engine The Occupation: Mind Your Deadline By Ben Sailer • June 8th, 2021 A righteous mission. An edge of danger. A David and Goliath dynamic.
Exploits Feature Variations By Autumn Wright • June 1st, 2021 What these recordings offer in their canonization of different variations is a juxtaposition that glimpses lives and careers.
Exploits Feature Queer Black Manhoods By Oluwatayo Adewole • May 3rd, 2021 Black men in the West are offered two models for existing and neither have room for queerness.
Eyeing Elsewhere What Happens Next? By Phillip Russell • April 6th, 2021 Phil’s thinking about the ending of things.
Exploits Feature What’s the Message of “The Ugly Duckling” Anyways? By Raven Wu • February 28th, 2021 “It matters little to be born in a duck-yard when one comes from a swan’s egg!”
Feature Excerpt Videogame Chamber Music By William Dowell • February 26th, 2021 “One Winged Angel” is plenty haunting to start but then you hear the string quartet version. Find out what goes into that.
Revving the Engine Enter the Void: Solar Ash By Sara Clemens • November 25th, 2020 Unwinnable chats with Alx Preston about the follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter.
Feature Excerpt Keep Calm with a Cup of Coffee By Katiee McKinstry • November 24th, 2020 Katiee McKinstry chats with developer Andrew Jeremy about the joys of chilling out in coffee shops.
Feature Excerpt Oishi: The Yakuza and the Koan By George Umbarger • November 24th, 2020 What’s the Yakuza series have to do with Zen Buddhism? More than you think!
Exploits Feature Feminine Flailing By Violet Adele Bloch • November 1st, 2020 It’s a representation of an archetypal feminine body, with little of the grace of that body’s tradition.
Exploits Feature Hades By Diego Nicolás Argüello • September 1st, 2020 “Even though the gods have the power to grant him infinite strength, they choose to wield Zagreus as yet another pawn…”
Finding Emotional Absurdity in Raptor Boyfriend: A High School Romance By Alyssa Wejebe • August 26th, 2020 “It started…we just took the image of a raptor – a velociraptor – and put him in a letterman jacket.”
The Heavy Pour Buddies By Sara Clemens • August 12th, 2020 Social distancing can be lonely. Animal Crossing makes it a little less so.
The Heavy Pour Journal of a Plague Spring By Sara Clemens • July 15th, 2020 The world’s on fire, might as well write.
Revving the Engine Revoider: Chipping Away By Stu Horvath • July 13th, 2020 “We want to encourage playfulness and evoke a sense of childlike wonder and curiosity…”
Exploits Feature Legendary By Yussef Cole • July 1st, 2020 “Legendary is a show that does a great job highlighting artists and creatives and queer folk with caring attention, rather than crass appropriation.”
Rookie of the Year The Sleepover By Matt Marrone • June 11th, 2020 A 4-year-old’s request makes the insanity of the world fade for a bit.
Revving the Engine Endling: Extinction is Forever By Stu Horvath • June 10th, 2020 “It’s definitely not a Disney movie.”