‘Chrono Trigger’ and Coping with Pandemic Trauma through Video Games
Coping with the COVID-19 shutdown via a video game, where I have control over the apocalyptic outcome, was what I needed. Chrono Trigger delivered.
games feature
On Point and Click Adventure Games with Creator Joel Staaf Hästö
Point and click adventure games, says Kathy Rain and Whispers of a Machine creator Joel Staaf Hästö, hit a "sweet spot" between puzzles that exercise logical thinking and stories that stimulate emotions.
Gaming for Social Change with ‘Critical Role’ and ‘Dungeons & Dragons’
Fans have pledged $11M to a Dungeons & Dragons group because they champion safety and inclusion. Does this have larger, real-world implications?
‘The Witcher’ Game and Those Inescapable Nietzschean Blues
Who is man? Who is monster? Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomies are at play in the video game series, The Witcher, soon to be a Netflix series.
#PopMatters20: The Evolution of Game Criticism
The intersection of personality, ideology, and art criticism in games is a messy place. L.B. Jeffries reviews the genre's history of criticism for this installment of the #PopMatters20 series.
‘Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’ Twists Videogame Tropes
Kingdoms of Amalur takes all of the principles of videogames – agency, choice, exploration, conflict – and turns them into an expansive experience of testing the conventions, and even the technical framework, of videogame fiction itself.
Navigating the Hollywood Monsters of the ‘Resident Evil’ Videogame Franchise
From crawling to walking to running to the White House: dissecting 20 years of zombie evolution, courtesy of Resident Evil.
‘Undertale’ and Immanuel Kant: Ethics in Video Games
Undertale invokes (consciously or not) the ethics of Immanuel Kant, and in doing so, it ushers in a new era of video games as art.
In Defense of Board Games
Board games show us a path out of our addiction to the on-screen desert of gaming by making the real world a tactile oasis for entertainment. You're playing against people, not code, and you might even learn some history, biology, or economics while you're at it.