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Finals Fantasy creates game design lesson plans anyone can use

As tablets continue to move into schools and games like Minecraft (2011) are repurposed to educate, the idea of gamification, or using games to teach students about the world, has been gaining popularity as of late. However, as an increasingly diverse artistic medium of its own, others are developing new ways for students to learn about games themselves. Described as a series of “speculative projects for game art students,” Finals Fantasy has gathered together a small group of notable artists, educators, and critics to challenge and expand how game design is taught. (Oh, and so you know, Kill Screen founder Jamin Warren…

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Go Sunset a Watchman

This past summer saw, within a month of each other, the arrival of two of the year’s most unwanted works: Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and Tale of Tale’s Sunset. No one asked for, and no one is celebrating, Watchman’s publication. Leaving aside the troubling context surrounding the “discovery” of the book’s manuscript and the alleged role Lee’s caretaker had in its release, there is always an uncomfortable silence after the shattering of an idol. That’s despite the deconsecration of Atticus Finch being especially timely in the context of, say, the swell of the Black Lives Matter movement. In…

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Influence a revolution from the perspective of a housekeeper

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Sunset (Mac, Windows, Linux)  BY TALE OF TALES  Most games give you a list of chores to do, only they call them missions, and claim you’re saving the world by doing its housekeeping. Yet, no matter how much these games coat your chores in the hero’s journey narrative, it still comes down to “do this” and “talk to that NPC.” Tale of Tales’ Sunset turns this trope on its head, casting you as a literal housekeeper, while the revolution outside your window waxes and…