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

Best Games of 2013

How do you compare Grand Theft Auto V with Papers, Please? Or Assassin’s Creed IV with Gone Home? These are the kinds of questions that have defined 2013. In the year after small studio games dominated the conversation, we’ve not entered the Indie Promised Land. Instead, we found ourselves in a strange landscape, of new consoles no one cares about, of endless debates, of thoughtful AAA games and ephemeral indies. We spent several annoying months hearing people ask, “Is this even a game?” This is all good news. The binaries – indie vs AAA, formalist vs zinester, LOL vs Dota