The Bar is Set High
Do you think someone can come up with 300 brand-new never-before-used gameplay ideas? In 300 days? Sean Howard is giving it a try!
Hopped Up on Speedrunning
Shortly after 2 pm on the afternoon of May 18th, 2005, Brandon Erickson stepped back from the Star Wars arcade cabinet he’d been playing continuously, with no deaths, extra credits, or nap breaks, for the past 54 hours, having failed to break the Twin Galaxies record of three […]
Tired of Saving You
There’s a panel in Secret Agent X-9 that fascinates me. In it, X-9 tells a woman and her father, “I’m tired of saving your lives.” The panel appears in the second half of Dashiell Hammett’s first Secret Agent X-9 storyline, “You’re the Top!” That’s right—Dashiell Hammett scripted a […]
The Well is Dry
How many times do you read a book? For myself, I read the vast majority of books only once — it’s a simple case of too many options, too little time. When I was a kid, I often re-read books over and over again. My options were limited, […]
The Better To Bite You With
When it come to romance novels, the trend today is for stories with teeth. And I mean teeth: long, white, sharp, and dangerous. Said teeth might belong to a werewolf, or a shapeshifting tiger, but most often, they’re the fangs of a vampire. Just what is the appeal […]
Gaming in a World of Grown-Ups
Every gamer thinks about gaming at work. Unless they review video games for a living, and then perhaps they dream about sitting in front of excel spreadsheets all day. The ridiculously absorbing MMORPG formula has players planning out their character’s next level or what equipment to buy, surfing […]
The Cultural Gutter 