Rachel Helps

Ethiopian children teach themselves to hack

Do you remember the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) educational initiative for countries without public school systems? OLPC got tired of trying to teach children things, and decided to help them help themselves. OLPC left a box in a remote village with enough solar-powered tablets for each child. OLPC

Is low-polygon art the next pixel art?

Pixel art has been having a renaissance for the past few years. Its less popular cousin, low-polygon art, is still finding a niche; these designs by Tim Reynolds have me convinced that it’s a form worth pursuing.

Horror games are scarier than horror movies

If a horror move gets too scary, you can always close your eyes. You can close your eyes during a videogame too, but it will probably end with your character dead. On his blog Ruminatron 5000, Peter Shafer describes how much he didn’t want to play Silent Hill. Games like Silent Hill create an intens

Borderlands 2 reduces consumer culture into a game

Borderlands 2 is a shooter where you can collect loot and level up. It’s similar to many RPGs in that you can decide to find every single chest/loot holder or bypass some. Ethan Gatch on Medium Difficulty found that he couldn’t ignore loot. I was a loot fiend in the worst kind of way: grabbing usele

The sexist assumptions behind female game characters

Why does Mrs. Pac-Man need a bow, lipstick, and eye makeup to show that she’s a woman? Well, she’s the female version of a male character, so she has to be somehow different, right? And how else can we signify femininity, if not with lipstick and bows and breasts? Anjin Anhut at How Not to Suck at G