In February ’04, when Jim Munroe and I were interviewed for an eye story on this website, Toronto cartoonist Marc Ngui caricatured us for the cover. He made Jim a spot-on reproduction of a video-game skin. Me, he drew in a nimble cross-hatching, a Crumb-style likeness so effective […]
I’ve never been so nervous or star struck as when I was recently graced with the supreme honor of speaking to the one and only Allen Smithee. This was no ordinary film director. Prior to the interview, I was racked with stressful indecision. Would I ask him about […]
If he feels vindicated, he doesn’t show it. As Marc Laidlaw waits for his co-workers to finish a talk, we sit down at a table in San Francisco’s cavernous Moscone Center and talk about Half-Life 2 (Valve, 2004). Its 1998 predecessor is legendary for pushing the form both […]
For a few weeks, Carma spent most of her free time trying to leave a room. There were massive chains barring the inside of the door, and the apartment’s windows wouldn’t open even if she wanted to risk climbing out. The monotony of the sallow walls was broken […]
In a brief flashback to the hip Queen Street West I remember from the ’80s, I chanced upon a cult-hit videogame there. I was killing time and wandered into Microplay and asked the counter guy if any interesting games had come down the pike lately. “Yeah,” he said, […]
It might have been the buckets of beer or just the balmy San Francisco night that had me feeling so upbeat after the Game Developers Choice Awards and the Independent Games Festival but even in sober retrospect it was pretty remarkable. On a basic level, it was simply […]
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The Cultural Gutter 