(Many thanks to Ray N. for letting me use his art of Pragmata’s Diana for this piece. It was too cute and funny not to share to balance out how miserable the material this article deals with is) Pragmata is a very good, intelligent, emotional and meaningful game. Unfortunately, you can’t talk about it without the most rancid culture wars…
I wrote this article for an arts publication – unfortunately, at the last moment they weren’t about to publish it for reasons, but the upshot of this is that I can publish it here! While it’s not specifically about video games, AI and Gen-AI in particular is going to have…
If you’re on a certain social media platform owned by a ketamine-addicted…
I was tempted to resist writing anything about the announcement of Ghost…
Wedged between the tasteful classicism of the Renaissance and the rationalism of the Enlightenment was the Baroque era. The unrestrained spectacle and excess of the Baroque is an art historical aberration, a strange and sudden plunge into decadence that encompassed the 17th century and beyond. Some of the style’s defining…
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Some news today on Microsoft acquisition journey towards a monopoly: The company announced that it has signed a “binding agreement” to continue to produce Call of Duty games for PlayStation. This comes off the back of much hang-wringing about the PlayStation being locked out of such a critical load of…
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“I’ve been writing a bunch of really awful short stories lately. I mean it. They’re absolutely ghastly… “I’ve been working on this stuff pretty much nonstop for over two years now, adding one unpalatable tale to another, making an entire collection of difficult, dangerous and really horrible fiction. Why can’t…
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Valve’s inconsistencies around what is and isn’t too offensive for its platform are at the point where it is so blatant that there are ulterior motives at play that it is incredibly offensive. Here’s a story of two different sets of games to illustrate. The first involves Hitler. Steam is…
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As anyone in PR or communications will tell you, the best time to make a catastrophic announcement is when everyone is busy looking elsewhere. You don’t want to hide it, but you want to push it through the news cycle at a time when you’ll only generate half as many…
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As a child, Murao Junpei is captivated when a male ballet soloist takes to the stage at his sister’s ballet recital. A passion awakened in him, Junpei asks his parents if he can start doing ballet. His father – a stunt coordinator for films – suggests he tries something “manlier”…
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Sports anime and manga are not uncommon in Japan. Football, basketball, volleyball, baseball, figure skating and even badminton have popular stories that aim to make the sport, as well as the characters and their narrative arcs, interesting to both fans of the sport and complete newcomers. Related reading: If you…
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Nagasaki in Japan has a unique characteristic among Japanese cities. It has always been the most open location to foreign culture and influence. Even when Japan closed itself off to the rest of the world, Nagasaki continued to be its connection to the outside. This meant that the city took…
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Slow Loop, an adaptation by Connect of the manga by Uchino Maiko, aired as part of the Winter 2022 anime season. Ostensibly, Slow Loop is the archetypal cute show about cute girls doing cute things – in this case fishing. Soft character designs, rounded linework, gentle but vibrant colours, the…
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When you read the title for this feature, which song do you think about? What memories are evoked by that song? How would you feel if you were asked to listen to it again? And, to hazard a guess, was that song from the late 90s or the early 00s?…
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