Feature

Overwatch and the pleasure of transmedia narratives

Before Winston, a glasses-clad gorilla scientist, was leaping across maps to crush his enemies in the chaotic multiplayer battles of Overwatch, he was merely a young ape with big aspirations and an affinity for peanut butter. But you wouldn’t know that from merely playing the game. You’ll find no calculated, story-driven campaign in Blizzard’s competitive team-based multiplayer shooter. Overwatch’s character-driven narrative is instead trickled elsewhere: in genuinely endearing animated shorts, character-focused one-off webcomics, and short website-bound character biographies. The latter-most isn’t uncommon within videogames, the second less so, and the first is the most uncommon of them all, the three…

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Interactive web comic simulates what it’s like to have dementia

Towards the end of his life, my grandfather began carrying a notebook wherever he went, writing down every minute detail of his day as best he could. He wasn’t working on a memoir or gathering ideas for a novel, but simply trying to keep track of his memories. At this point, he was years-deep into a battle with Alzheimer’s, and the notebook was his attempt to maintain some semblance of dignity, preparing himself for the five or so minutes later when he will have forgotten whatever it was he had written down. It was a valiant effort, but to our…