Alexis Ong

Alexis Ong Jan 10, 2021. 6 minute read

Everyone Is Already Pretending Cyberpunk 2077 Never Happened

Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t the game many people wanted. In many other ways, however, it’s the game we deserve. Beyond the most obvious reasons why it exists (one rhymes with “honey”), an enormous questions remains: Why now? Why this particular retro-flavored amalgamation of grand theft cyberpunk? We’re talking about an endeavour that took nearly a decade of development…

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Alexis Ong Nov 18, 2020. 8 minute read

Fear of a Yellow Planet: Why We Need to Actually Understand Cyberpunk

This December, two things are bound to happen. First, CDPR will release Cyberpunk 2077 to its rabid fanbase of gamers amid concerns about labor practices at the notoriously crunchy studio. Second, we’ll see a lot of talk about race in the game, which, by virtue of its name, has become conflated with the…

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Alexis Ong Sep 18, 2020. 7 minute read

I Pretended to Pretend to Be a Star Trek Character Online

I crawled out of bed exactly 5:30 on Saturday morning, made a cup of coffee, and got ready to become Ambassador Lwaxana Troi — daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed. Lwaxana is undoubtedly the most flamboyant personality in Star Trek history: a…

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Alexis Ong Jun 9, 2020. 5 minute read

Digging Into the Secret Feng Shui of Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Back in May, Twitter user and daily Animal Crossing player @1c3b3rgmama appealed to New Horizons’ feng shui by placing four pop-eyed goldfish in the corners of her main room. Where she previously only caught one or two sturgeon a week, she started nabbing at least one a day. “At first I thought…

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Alexis Ong Jul 15, 2019. 8 minute read

A League of Their Own: Women’s Esports in Southeast Asia

In a 2017 interview with ESPN, Korean Overwatch League star Kim “Geguri” Se-Yeon described wanting to disguise her voice with a modulator so that male players would team up with her. This is just one example of the ongoing struggles faced by women in esports, in addition to far less…

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