Through the Looking-Glass of Black Mirror's 'Bandersnatch'
Netflix's interactive movie, Bandersnatch, doesn't really offer choices, but it does offer something else: a warning.
07 Jan 2019
Recent
How Does One Condense the World of Video Games into a Mere 64 Objects?
The staff at the World Video Game Hall of Fame have, with great care, winnowed down objects in the medium that they feel best represents the important developments in the history of the video game.
06 Nov 2018
Masks, of Course, Can Be the Subtlest of Traps -- as Seen in 'Ready Player One'
Online games make it easier than ever to design and test masks and to experience the hopes, fears, benefits, and harms of reinvention.
09 May 2018
Combating the Trap of Nostalgia in a Look at the Super Nintendo
Dominic Arsenault's Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware cuts through the nostalgia so sharply that it comes off as dismissive, hostile even, at least to someone used to reading the flowery prose of fan literature.
26 Mar 2018
Academic Gamers, Your Assistance with 'Gaming Representation', Please
You might care about the concepts raised in Gaming Representation, but you probably won't be able to understand them.
15 Jan 2018
In 'Mass Effect' While You Stare into the RPG, the RPG Stares Back into You
Just as you interrogate your companions and enemies in order to understand them and their worlds, the game reveals itself to have been questioning you. What kind of player are you? What kind of person?
09 Jan 2018
Community and Collaboration in 'Battle for Wesnoth'
The one part of gaming that can lay claim to true, untarnished ‘freeness’ is the open-source world, where other incentives besides profit drive creativity.
28 Dec 2016
'Westworld' Ponders the Lives of NPCs
Westworld seems less interested in examining traditional protagonists than interrogating the behaviors and abuses of a fictional world's props, its non-player characters.
05 Oct 2016
'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.
02 Jun 2016
Best of the Moving Pixels Podcast: What's the Point of Points?
Do games teach that success is something that is clearly quantifiable?
25 Apr 2016
'The 100 Greatest Console Video Games' Chooses Style Over Substance
This is an accessible boilerplate encyclopedia of vintage game history that eschews analysis for rudimentary information and attractive presentation.
16 Aug 2015
Moving Pixels Podcast: The Greatest Couples in Video Games
Valentine's Day may be over, but we're still celebrating the most significant relationships in video games.
16 Feb 2015
Why Don't Videogames Have Their Own Criterion Collection?
Though the video game industry bases itself on forward progression, the rich history of the medium is being underserved by the lack of preservation for older, essential games.
Miguel Penabella
Games
06 Jul 2014
'You' and the Minutia of Coding Vintage Video Games
Austin Grossman's You is kind of like one long advertisement for the sanctity of the video game and the coolness of working in the video games industry.
09 Jul 2013
A Space for the Boys: Considering the Gendered Quality of Arcade Culture
My own arcade was called the Gold Mine and featured a facade of a 19th century mine entrance as the portal to entry. Greeting one inside, though, were simply rows of machines spread across a rather filthy and threadbare carpet and a cacophony of bleeps and bloops. Most often there was nary a girl in sight.
19 Feb 2013
Paying Too Often for Sex in Video Games
In film, the salacious is something to see. In video games, however, the salacious needs to be something to do.
15 Oct 2012
Pop Ten
Mixed Media
PM Picks
- Follow Us
- SoundCloud
© 1999-2018 Popmatters.com. All rights reserved.
Popmatters is wholly independently owned and operated.