Category Archives: Video Games

Destiny and Writing

Posted on 09/15/2014 by kunzelman

1. Destiny is a hodgepodge of a lot of different mechanical and conceptual elements that sometimes cohere but mostly fall apart, together, spectacularly. It’s hard to point to Destiny‘s strong points at this moment, but it is quite easy to point to … Continue reading →

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New Game: Napoleon Loves Waterslides

Posted on 09/12/2014 by kunzelman

Today I was watching Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (currently on Netflix), and I thought it was incredibly funny that there’s an entire subplot of the movie which is, fundamentally, “Napoleon’s Adventures in San Dimas.” So I made a game about it. … Continue reading →

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Ten Minutes in Gamer Culture

Posted on 09/04/2014 by kunzelman

[Content warning: This post contains slurs of all sorts quoted from a match of Call of Duty that I played. They are shocking and awful.] I start hearing him in my first match of the evening. I’m playing Ghosts, I get the … Continue reading →

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Paul Virilio on the origins of interactivity

Posted on 09/03/2014 by kunzelman

INTERACTIVITY was actually born in the nineteenth century — with the telegraph, certainly, but also and especially with clinical electricity, which involved planting electrodes on the faces of the human guinea pigs used in such ‘medical art’ as practised by … Continue reading →

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A conversation about concerns in videogame journalism

Posted on 09/02/2014 by kunzelman

This is a Storify I made of a conversation I had with a #gamersgate advocate. There’s a lot to parse about the “controversy” that has been going on, but the short timeline of facts is this: Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend makes … Continue reading →

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The Beauty of Team Fortress 2

Posted on 08/28/2014 by kunzelman
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Raphael Sfeir’s “Other Side”

Posted on 08/26/2014 by kunzelman

Other Side starts with two beings floating away from the player character, and after they’ve ascended, the player walks until she finds a set of stones. The stones light up, deliver tones, but very little else. The player wanders until she … Continue reading →

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Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, and deliberate action

Posted on 08/26/2014 by kunzelman

A few days ago Cara Ellison wrote a wonderful piece about Tomb Raider and the difference between the earlier and later games in the series. My experience with Tomb Raider as a kid was limited to buying it in a bargain bin and having … Continue reading →

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On Alastor and Ifrit

Posted on 07/29/2014 by kunzelman

1. A while back Oscar Strik wrote an article titled “An Ode To Objects” where he explained that the most wonderful items in games are ones that are clearly part of the game world itself. Essentially, if you can “plug … Continue reading →

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On Timesplitters

Posted on 07/14/2014 by kunzelman

This article was voted on and supported by my Patreon page. Timesplitters 2 was the most significant game of my teenage gameplaying years. It is comprised of several micronarratives taking place throughout human history, and the core of the game involves the … Continue reading →

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