December 11, 2014
i. When Shigeru was twelve, he found a cave no one else had explored. The other boys avoided that part of the wood. Their base bordered the hillside near a soldier’s grave now used as a bookmark for civic grief but Shigeru went on deeper forays into the forest. He staged one man plays under […]
August 8, 2014
My son and I took it upon ourselves to play Minecraft the old fashioned way: with wooden blocks. I put the Minecraft Beta soundtrack on the gramophone and the room took on a new aspect, that of a subterranean domain perchance akin to Plato’s fabled cave. I immediately embarked upon an ambitious scale replica of The Tyn in Prague. My son, […]
August 7, 2014
The most ordinary locations in computer games often take on a life of their own. I’m thinking of the empty school in Silent Hill, rain on the windows in Gone Home, a back alley in The Secret of Monkey Island. There’s an insignificant window in the mansion of the first Resident Evil where text appeared to tell you that a dog could be heard […]
May 1, 2014
A friend and I played Dwarf Fortress over Easter. It’s a terrifyingly detailed game in which very simple graphics depict a complex Tolkien-esque world of unimaginable depth and geekiness. It looks so inaccessible I didn’t think we’d be able to install it. Dwarf Fortress is a reminder of what computers really are. They’re not shiny fashion accessories or creative workstations, […]
November 10, 2013
I spent all of last night exploring The Stanley Parable. If you haven’t played it, I’d recommend doing so before reading on. The Stanley Parable is a computer game that does something no other artistic medium could do so well. Early in the game, you are presented with two identical doorways. Before you can decide whether to […]
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