Monthly Archives: September 2014

On Temper

Posted on 09/30/2014 by kunzelman

Temper is a game about having a demon inside of you that gets out whether you want it to or not. The only thing you can do is preempt it. You know it is coming. You belch it out. If you … Continue reading →

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Tim Cain on same-sex marriage in The Temple of Elemental Evil

Posted on 09/29/2014 by kunzelman

When we were putting together The Temple of Elemental Evil, we’d put together all kinds of ways you could get involved with nonplayer characters. We had a good-looking woman who a male character could get involved with. We also had a … Continue reading →

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Steve Gaynor on Violence from 2010

Posted on 09/26/2014 by kunzelman

Earlier today, Sparky Clarkson tweeted about this article from Steve Gaynor from a few years back. I re-read it and really latched onto this part: Violence in film, literature or on stage can either be meaningful or meaningless. When it … Continue reading →

Posted in Video Games | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

“amending the ways of nature”

Posted on 09/25/2014 by kunzelman

In expert epistemology, nature was messy. Technology was the great orderer. “The real calamity in a thunderstorm,” explained William Crookes, commenting on natural unharnessed electricity, “is not that the lightning may kill a man or a cow, or set barns … Continue reading →

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Steam Curation and a Group For Readers

Posted on 09/24/2014 by kunzelman

Steam Curation was released a few days ago. The gloss on it is pretty simple: groups can now create lists of recommended games in an effort to solve the “there are so many games on Steam” discoverability problem. With that … Continue reading →

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A war photographer goes to The Last of Us

Posted on 09/23/2014 by kunzelman

By the time I finished this assignment, watching the carnage had became easier. – “A War Photographer Embeds Himself Inside A Video Game“

Posted in Art, Video Games | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Agent Smith’s Reversal

Posted on 09/22/2014 by kunzelman

I watched The Matrix Reloaded and I came away confused. In The Matrix, Agent Smith is this weird nihilist–he wants to scrub the matrix of free humans so he doesn’t have to be embodied any longer. When he complains about the sweat and … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

A Moment in Kitsch Nihilism

Posted on 09/19/2014 by kunzelman

Pop nihilism is a real, active cultural force. We can see it so clearly in Eugene Thacker’s rise to prominence around In The Dust of this Planet. We can see it in the GIF walls of Rust Cohle’s brutal Ligotti-inflected … Continue reading →

Posted in Theory | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

On Lyotard and Thebaud’s “Just Gaming”

Posted on 09/17/2014 by kunzelman

[I originally wrote this post in February 2014 and never published it for some reason. A lot of it, especially at the beginning, is written for a specific time and moment. Forgive me.] As you may know, I am writing … Continue reading →

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The Matrix and the Nihilistic Impulse

Posted on 09/16/2014 by kunzelman

1. I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops … Continue reading →

Posted in General Features | Tagged , , | 6 Comments