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The Houseguest
The boys all lived together in one big house out in the suburbs. There were four of them who split the rent, plus a rotating cast of friends crashing on the couch at any one time. They had a YouTube channel together and their combination of laidback on-screen charisma and inventive video concepts — playing…
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Super Meko Land
The game was cursed, that much was obvious. Anyone who played it was found dead by a massive, sudden heart attack three days later — it didn’t take a genius to spot the causal connection. Anyway, the Pentagon had theorized the existence of fatal media for years. The problem for General Douglas Clarkson was that,…
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Night Shift
Barb hated the night shift. She figured that the only reason that management even kept the coffee shop open overnight was that it worked out to be cheaper to have an employee tidy up the place rather than hire dedicated cleaners. And while the front doors were locked from ten to five to minimize the…
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The Deep Word
You meet a lot of weird people working in a tattoo shop. Like, a while ago my artist Rosa told me about this guy who walked into her place on a Tuesday afternoon. He didn’t look anything like the usual Williamsburg studio clientele, which are usually either already heavily-tatted artists and musicians or else 20-somethings…
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Egregore
It started as a dumb joke. One of the users of the forum, 0xUNDEADBEEF, had gone to his local game store to get a copy of Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast, only to find that it was sold out. The clerk pointed to a huge guy in a long, black coat and a fleece…
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Eternity
Eddie rolls out of bed at 8 AM, powering on his computer then stumbling to the kitchen to make coffee and grab an energy bar. His machine takes ages to start up lately. It’s beginning to show its age, having been built a few years prior. He’d like to upgrade, but the price of graphics…
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Explaining All of the Fake Games From Wayne’s World on the SNES
Say it’s the 1990s and you’ve been hired to make a video game based on the 1992 smash hit Wayne’s World for the SNES. Well, it’s going to be a platformer, because it’s the 90s. But what’s the structure for the game? Maybe you just have Wayne and Garth traveling through areas inspired by the film,…
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The Influence of Hilma af Klint on Destiny 2
Visual design is important on two levels in video games. On one level, design conveys mood and atmosphere. On the other, it represents mechanics and interactions. Of course, these aren’t completely distinct — an ominous mood may encourage a player to advance through an area more carefully, for instance. Effective and memorable visual design in…
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The Web Game I’ve Been Playing Daily for Almost Two Decades
This piece originally appeared at Fanbyte in April 2022. It was in my senior year of high school that NationStates swept my friend group. A simple browser game where you make decisions that contribute to the political and social contours of a fictional country, it was a fun diversion for a few weeks until something else online…
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‘Crosscountry Canada’ Was My Oregon Trail
This piece originally appeared at Fanbyte in April 2022. When I first moved to the US in the late 2000s, I’d occasionally hear people talking about an old game they played in school called Oregon Trail. I had no idea what it was, because in Canada — or in Ontario, at least — nobody I knew…