John Brindle Aug 7, 2018. 12 minute read
Playtesting the CIA’s training games
For the world's most powerful spy agency, there's an awful lot of paperwork.
READ MORE >John Brindle Apr 4, 2017. 6 minute read
Sexy Brutale is a bizarre, time-looping mystery game
Play as "Father Lafcadio Boone," a priest trapped in a cycle of weird, gothic casino death.
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 16, 2017. 8 minute read
Pokemon Go is a mass demon summoning that’s destroying our reality
Or: how Pokemon Go, Ingress, and other AR location-based games are changing the way we experience our world
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 14, 2017. 8 minute read
Making political videogames may not work. But we have to try
We don't need a "Gamer in Chief," but we do need games which explore the systems that control our lives
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 8, 2017. 4 minute read
Mirage: Arcane Warfare offers a few new twists on the multiplayer FPS
First-person stabber?
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 7, 2017. 6 minute read
This year’s Alt.Ctrl.GDC included a carpet-treadmill zombie crawling game, a ‘Fear Sphere,’ and more
Most of these games will be impossible to play at home, but they're nevertheless fascinating
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 3, 2017. 6 minute read
Job Simulator’s developers talk about making familiar spaces work in VR
How Job Simulator's creators got their world to work sorta-kinda how its players expected it to
READ MORE >John Brindle Dec 9, 2016. 9 minute read
What it’s like watching Dear Esther live, in a theater
The theater experience changes things-- a lot.
READ MORE >John Brindle Sep 20, 2016. 8 minute read
The joy of VR ‘desk’ games
Games where you manage a virtual workspace are growing fairly common in VR. Is a new genre emerging?
READ MORE >John Brindle Sep 14, 2016. 12 minute read
Battlefield 1 and Modern Memory
Battlefield 1 will be an action-stuffed, blockbuster-style war game... about a conflict that many people still feel very strongly about, and about deaths that many people still consider sacred.
READ MORE >John Brindle Apr 13, 2016. 10 minute read
How Democracy 3 is simulating African politics
How do you ethically simulate the most historically oppressed continent on the planet?
READ MORE >John Brindle Apr 5, 2016. 6 minute read
Frozen Synapse 2 preview
Frozen Synapse 2 take the tense simultaneous strategizing of the first Frozen Synapse game... and drops it straight into an entire simulated city full of warring factions.
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 21, 2016. 4 minute read
A look back at the original Diablo
David Brevik, father of Diablo, celebrates his brainchild's 20th birthday by finally laying to rest a very important question.
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 19, 2016. 4 minute read
Mirage: Arcane Warfare is the next game from Torn Banner
The developers behind Chivalry: Medieval Warfare have made a new 'stabbing simulator'- this time, with magic.
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 18, 2016. 3 minute read
Getting harassed in virtual reality is going to suck
If you already hate dealing with abusive players in online games, it's only going to get so much worse in VR, says Minority Media's Patrick Harris.
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 17, 2016. 3 minute read
The little-known story behind Ms. Pac-Man
Speaking at the Game Developers Conference yesterday, programmer Steve Golson shared the origins of Pac-Man's fashionable distaff counterpart.
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 16, 2016. 4 minute read
Indie developers sound off on the power of games — and an end to ‘game shaming’
Always one of the Game Developers Conference's most popular sessions, this year's Indie Soapbox -- in which a series of speakers deliver short, impassioned talks one right after another -- ran the gamut from That Dragon, Cancer to ending the phrase 'guilty pleasure.'
READ MORE >John Brindle Mar 9, 2016. 6 minute read
A deep dive into the FBI’s bizarre anti-extremism browser game
With heavy-handed metaphors and a reluctance to let players think for themselves, this game's teaching style is uncomfortably close to the extremism it's trying to fight.
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