Teddy Papes

If you are a videogame nerd you will love Well Played. And When I say nerd, I don’t mean everybody who plays videogame players, but those who enjoy exploring the esoteric realm of videogame study (ludologists and narratologists, you know who you are).  A description of the journal from their website

Sheldon J Pacotti, writer of Deus Ex, has released a videogame creation tool called Game Blocks. John Walker at Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Described as “a free library of visual programming ‘blocks’ for first-time game developers,” Game Blocks is the result of something Pacotti built for an interactive w

An enhanced version of Baldur’s Gate has just been released for iOS. I haven’t downloaded it yet — that much game on a mobile device and always at my disposal is dangerous. I risk slinking off to the bathroom at work or turning my productive commute into an unproductive one. Very soon I will get it,

A new iOS game was created with the purpose of both educating and raising money for HIV prevention. The game is called THRED and is born from a partnership between Coca-Cola and RED, the latter being a company which tries to reduce the prevalence of HIV in the style of the “pink” movement to fight b

There are those moments in games that burn themselves into your memory. How could you forget the beauty and horror of the “Waltz of the Flowers” moment in Bioshock. The battle with Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid and its absurd destruction of the fourth wall always makes me laugh: “You like Castel

The most iconic and appealing character in the upcoming Bioshock Infinite almost never was. Ken Levine recounts the difficult development process with Eurogamer, with a few hilarious tidbits: “A million times during the course of the game, because it was so hard to get right, there were people who s

David Beckham, of bending fame, has departed our beloved world of soccer for the more glorious world of football — by which I mean he is going to back Europe. As much as fans will be wondering where his next tenure will be, Beckham is surely anxious over his decision. What happens if he goes to PSG?

Sick of Guild Wars 2 yet? Tired of MMO after MMO which just rehashes the same old thing? Maybe it’s time the mold was broken. Erik Kain’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail MMO may do the trick. Here are a few selections from he laid out in exquisite detail earlier this year: Knight (class) Knights are

Videogame developers may be soon be out of a job: Back in March, Ars wrote about PhD student Michael Cook and his artificial intelligence machine called Angelina. Angelina was special because she was creating games from scratch with little help from her human counterparts. By dividing the concept of

Well it’s happening. Before the Oculus Rift even left development, a startup is exploring all the advantages of the device’s VR abilities. Specifically, its capability for adult entertainment.  At Sinful Robot, we are currently developing the world’s first series of fully-immersive erotic encounters

Walk of Faith invokes the classic problem posed to those of faith whereby they are challenged to have their god alter their situation, usually one of mortal peril. (See: all of the Bible, or Matthew 4:3). This is not much of game. It uses our expectation of interaction and accomplishment in games to

I found out about Samus from Super Smash Bros. erroneously reffering to her as “he”. If I had been a little older and had seen the release of Super Metroid, I might have been able to appreciate her presence, or at least get her gender right (after so many years of calling her the wrong pronoun, I st

In a fit of excitement and foolish ambition I declared to the Kill Screen office that I would beat Super Hexagon. Our resident editor, who shares my love of Dark Souls, asked me which game I thought was harder. When I stumbled in my comparison, our publisher, whom we have been slowly indoctrinating

The sword has a special allure. Who hasn’t imagined being an expert duelist or grabbed a friend and sparred with a couple of sticks?  Videogames are often the manifestations of our fantasies, an attempt to fulfill our dreams in a virtual version of a reality we wished we were capable of. They allow

So what do you do if you’re Capcom and somebody makes a Mega Man–Street Fighter homage? You could: A) Do what other big companies do and leverage lawsuits to squash the release and dissemination of the game.  or B) Release the game for the creator. Generate a ton of buzz (positive instead of the neg

There are the kind of games like Call of Duty, which do little to spark serious contemplation about morality or violence. This is the norm. Text games, however, may have a little more insight than your standard AAA fare.  Take 2007’s Rendition, whose title would not exist without the war on terror.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is filled with death, no matter how carefully you plan or hard you try. Sometimes you make mistakes and other times it’s simply out of your control. XCOM‘s Facebook pages immortalizes the fallen. One of the achievements of the game is the pang of guilt when one of your soldiers d

Ever wonder what kind of internal insight your favorite NES games reveal? John Peck at McSweeney’s will tell you: Metroid: You have killed a mosquito with hairspray. Duck Tales: You have spelled out “BOOBS” with Alpha-Bits. Contra: You have wet the bed exactly twice: once as a child, once as an adul

In an interview with Wired, Ken Levine explained the box art of Bioshock Infinite as a means of courting the untapped segments of the market. Specifically: “We went and did a tour… around to a bunch of, like, frathouses and places like that. People who were gamers. Not people who read IGN. And [we]

I am 33.23 seconds into Hexagonest. It’s far and away my best performace in Super Hexagon. I’m spinning in circles and line are flying at me from every direction. I’m tapping furiously and nothing seems like it can contain me. I am playing like an absolute hero. I wish somebody was watching because

Dark Souls 2 has been announced. I thought I would have been giddy with excitement, but I’m not. I love Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. They are some of the best games ever made, but playing one is an ordeal. I would hyperbolically equate it to climbing Mount Everest: worth it in every respect and a p

A lot has been said about games ability to grab our attention. For some they can be a little too effective in this regard (ahem). But if you have a disability, or learning issues, it may be the only medium that you can really plug into, as it were. A step-father made a videogame with some educationa

2012 is almost over and while the “best of” videogame lists are soon to come a reflection on the general trends of the medium are in order. Michael Abbot: The games of 2012 suggest that designers are discovering and exploiting more channels of communication with players. In the past, these efforts h

I missed this Edge gem from a while back. It has blurbs from 18 developers about why they make games. Some are a little romantic, but I can’t help but to get excited about games when I read them. Here is one from Ken Levine: I make videogames because it’s difficult. We’re still figuring out how they