Pewdiepie is a symptom of the internet’s Pandora’s box: social media

For as long as I can remember, over the course of fifteen years of online gaming one thing has been certain – encountering gamers online has always involved having to wear your thick skin and endure a potential barrage of misery. I can remember as far back as Counter-Strike 1.6 where it wasn’t uncommon to […]

Mainstream developers can and should learn from modders

I have a little story for you. Cast your mind back to the early 2000’s, back to Half Life, Unreal Tournament, to Quake 3 Arena. Aside from being great games, they drew the wide-eyed gaze of new and old modders alike. All of these games enjoyed a thriving, popular modding community and for all the […]

Immersive Simulators: Our Greatest Gaming Asset is Cruelly Undervalued

This suit I’m wearing is an awkward fit. After peeling the suit jacket off the cold body of an FBI agent, I gingerley squeeze myself into it knowing full well it’s a size too small. In the next room is a notorious south American crime lord and he lives in luxurious americana; the leaves here […]

Duke Revisited: How can we refresh an outdated image?

Perspective is a funny old thing. If you follow any modern discussion about the classic 90’s shooter Duke Nukem 3D, it almost always circulates around how out-of-date and embarrassingly sexist he seems now in in retrospect. Back in the 90’s trashy Howard Stern toilet humour was wildly popular – It gave rise to cultural icons […]

Shallow: Defining the future of innovation in games

In the late 90’s, id software’s incredible work on titles like Doom and Quake paved the way for greater graphical fidelity in PC gaming and with it brought a culture of competitive, incremental improvement with each title. With the genius of John Cormack at their helm (a man who to this day has an almost […]

Reclaiming “walking simulators”

If I was going to characterize the comments section of any website on the internet in a picture, the work of Otto Dix seems to slot right into my minds eye.