Entitled, Insatiable Whiners. Yea, I'm Looking at You Gamers

Gamers, that most thankless sub-culture of righteous, misanthropic critics. We are never pleased, often discontented, and consistently better informed (or so we like to think) than our video game loving counterparts in every other part of the industry proper. Who could love

Vampires Just Want To Have Fun: The Adventures Of Shuggy

Some games try too hard. In an effort to please the widest audience and provide the roundest experience, developers cram copious amounts of (often underdeveloped) mechanics into a single project, making for a bloated, unfocused game. It is with this

Nightmare Mode Video: Headshots

Welcome to Headshots, where Nightmare Mode writers commit their faces to video to answer weekly questions. This week: “What’s your favorite guilty pleasure game?” In which our writers make excuses for playing embarrassing games. Video after the jump.

3 fictional universes that should go MMO

It’s really easy to imagine a well-established fictional world as an MMO. Any imaginative world beyond our own has factions, races, neat archetypes and cities that could be strung together into another WoW clone. As much as we all would like to see innovation beyond that, here’s my top three “why by Odin’s raven does this not exist?” contenders for fictional universes that haven’t already been made into MMO’s. Expect the “verse” suffix attached inccorectly to many words and plenty of foolish optimism.

Soundscapes – The Future of Virtual Surround

This is part three of a three part series, earlier we looked at the future of sound and music. Understanding the subtleties of how the brain perceives sound, and the real world concerns, such as what speakers or headphones you’re

Living with a Prosthetic Avatar

Around six months ago I enrolled in a theology class known as “The Problem of God”. Although my professor was a Pastor and my college a Catholic institution, the issues we tackled were bravely secular and refreshingly open-minded. My professor

Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut is a Watershed Moment in Videogame Narrative

(Note: Just to be clear, there are some light spoilers regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3. If you haven’t played through it, I recommend going through and experiencing the “disappointing” ending before Tuesday so you can know what all

The Road Fast Travelled: How Fast Travel Can Affect an Open-World

‘Somewhere ages and ages hence  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by And that has made all the difference.’ Robert Frost – The Road Less Travelled Since the dawn of enlightened

After Pressing Start: How Rocksmith Reinvented the Syllabus

We all know what a syllabus is, right? The syllabus is the content of that first class you started to attend. It’s probably all you are going to do during the first week of school (so feel free to extend your vacations): to read over the summary of topics some council of elders decided the class should cover. This is the day you’ll find out when the tests are, what the teacher thinks about the students’ presence and the book he will force students to read.

Sadly, many teachers are satisfied by merely reading the syllabus. It’s a pity, for anyone can read the syllabus on their own. No use wasting the teacher’s time with that. What students need, however, is a taste. They need to glimpse the potential that class is going to bring if they apply themselves. This is particularly important given the scarcity of information available about a new class. During my time in college, we had the course’s name, a two-line description and that was it.

Well, fuck that! Let’s have Rocksmith show them how it’s done!

Campfire: Invading the Valley of Defilement in Demon's Souls

When we play games we assume we’ll be the ones saving the day, that we’ll be the hero. We hardly ever have to wonder if what we’re doing is actually wrong. When does the justice we dish out end and