Games
Resting State
My friends don’t play Civilization with me anymore because they know if they do, I will turn on my livestream. We’ll sit down and we won’t get up again for 13 hours – that is, until someone is eventually declared “Glorious God-Conqueror of the known world.” We’ll neglect sleep, food and maybe even the bathroom to keep the game continuing. These long, unbroken game sessions are pretty common for gamers. It’s common for Zoya Street, too, as he outlines in his book Delay: Paying Attention to Energy Mechanics. Marathon gaming bouts are something Street finds to be an indulgence, one
Let’s Play at the Movies
“I feel like a kid running away from his first molestation at Boy Scout camp.” That did it. I cringe back into my theater seat, feeling a patina of filth gather on the back of my throat. It’s done. It’s over. It was a nice try, but Let’s Plays have just lost what good will they could muster with the cinephile crowd. [pullquote]When we commit ourselves to showing this one narrow slice of Let’s Plays made of molestation jokes and volunteer sales pitches […] we’re doing a disservice to a lot of creative people behind many, many screens.[/pullquote] It’s been
Notes on Luftrausers
The following is a reprint from Unwinnable Weekly Issue Two. If you enjoy what you read, please consider purchasing the issue or subscribing for the year. 1. In 2010, game critic and developer Tim Rogers wrote a review of the PlayStation 2 beat-em-up title God Hand. “God Hand is like being a professional chainsaw-wielding glacier demolisher at a party where the penguins are going to need a lot of ice cubes,” Rogers writes in the first paragraph. “Though God Hand is usually like poking holes in a watermelon with a chopstick for the best reasons… [it] is sometimes like using a pizza cutter to
Let’s Talk about Mental Health
There’s been increasing talk about mental health among the gaming community lately. And I’m not talking about people outside the community blaming violent videogames for all the bad things that happen in the world. Rather, I’m referring to actual discussions among gamers about how things like depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses affect their daily lives. As the conversation grows and the topic becomes less of a taboo, more people are revealing that they have experienced mental health issues during at least one point in their lives. All of this is culminating into something I’ve been saying all along: almost
Dinner Gear
“I need to tell you something” says David, pulling me aside as I move to leave the bar. “A way by force.” “What?” I ask. “A way by force,” he repeats, spoken with a hint of the dry bark of the iconic character he voices in one of gaming’s most popular series. “It’s our family motto. We’re probably related, so I want you to know it.” In the dim, boozy light of this comedy club basement, I half-imagine seeing an eye patch-shaped shadow strewn across half his face. He is, after all, David Hayter – the voice of Solid Snake,
Hulk Loves Fabio
During the delirious early morning hours of our second Kickstarter telethon, Stu Horvath, speaking to no one in particular, announced, “The funny thing about Wizards & Warriors II: Iron Sword is that Fabio is on the cover.” Everyone on the stream – Unwinnable editor-at-large Charles Moran, Unwinnable contributor Matt Duhamel and game designers Teddy Diefenbach and Nina Freeman – suddenly had a joke to make. One joke was particularly portentous: someone compared Fabio’s barbarian girdle to a wrestling belt. It was the birth of a Twine game. Teddy quickly created an open design doc and a rough plot followed suit. What
Killing the Worm
It happened beneath a castle. Dozens of miles underground, sheltered from the wintry wastes of the forgotten surface, in the world of Arx Fatalis. Sprinting past humanoid rats stabbing at me with rusted knives, I make my way through dark tunnels encrusted with car-sized Venus flytraps and hanging cocoons pregnant with God-knows-what. I light a torch, checking my paper map to note that I’ve entered a maze of narrow tunnels, pitch with darkness and inebriating in déjà vu. Ahead of me, a shaft narrows and turns from black to red. A slick wallpaper of human organs cakes the entrance, wet