History

The tricky legal problem of videogames depicting historical figures

Games that seek to represent significant historical phenomena are, by their very nature, reductive. Real-time gameplay is, Timebound’s multi-year push notifications notwithstanding, not on the table. Beyond the time imperative, creative works must also make narrative and dramatic choices. These cons

Soviet City will turn urban planning into terror control

City building games are rarely exercises in democracy. The player’s agency stems from her role as a central planner; she designs cities that hopefully please their residents, but this is not a consultative, bottom-up process. Considerate urban planning in the city-building game is an act of benevole

This Morse code game relives the 1914 Christmas truce

‘Tis the season for Christmas music to blare from every direction. They come from speakers, carolers, and buskers. They are played in stores and putative public spaces. As a side effect of this sonorous onslaught, ostensibly cheerful songs become backing tracks to breakups and calls announcing the s

Why Fallout 4’s 1950s satire falls flat

War may never change, but Kill Screen does. Back our Kickstarter to help support our print relaunch! Fallout 4 takes us back. Back to the beginning. Back before the bombs fell, and before the world of the Fallout series took on its mutated, feral, apocalyptic form. But what did that world look like?

Secret Hitler is mercifully not a joke

“Are you Hitler?” Note, dear reader, the use of quotation marks. Even though this is the internet, where people go to say such things, I do not believe that you are actually Hitler. Rather, that is an actual question that comes up with reasonable frequency in Max Temkin’s (co-creator of Cards Agains