Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch and Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege were massively successful in their respective spheres during 2016, but they face comfortable stagnation in competitive play unless their developers set their sights on a different way to balance in 2017. These team-based, character-focused first-person shooters will have to broaden their horizons past the characters that make […]
Slicing Up Eyeballs: Abject in Gaming
Horror is a genre that, despite the fear it can induce, remains popular across mediums. From the scary stories of childhood, to the many films that get pumped out of Hollywood year on year, horror is nothing if not durable. It took until 1980, however, for the question of why it’s popular to be addressed […]
Loser City on the Web: Hennum Debuts at Paste, Russell at Raw Paw and Some Compliments
Us Loser City folk sometimes take trips outside the city limits, so this week we’re rounding up some of the places you might have seen Loser City citizens. The big news is that Shea Hennum made his debut over at Paste with a review of Scott McCloud’s new work The Sculptor, which Shea really didn’t like. […]
Mario Maximalism: Super Mario 3D World and What Mario Should Learn from Kanye West
A couple months ago, I bought a Wii U. It’s the first Nintendo home console I’ve owned since roughly 2006, when I ill-advisedly sold my Gamecube to, uh, I don’t remember, buy an Xbox or a pipe bomb or something. I’ve missed my Gamecube a bit ever since: there’s something uniquely delightful about a good […]
Going Farther Afield: Fourteen Thoughts on Bungies Past and Present
1. When I first play the final release of Destiny, I’m at a friend’s house. I take hold of his character and play a single multiplayer match that he already had queued up. After that, I want to go to the moon. I’m fairly convinced that the moon is Destiny’s best design accomplishment, the point […]
Save Points: Wasted Days (Dark Souls 2)
Jake Muncy has basically grown up as a gamer. He’s of a generation where video games have always existed, and as he has matured, so have they. Which is why we’re giving him the space to do Save Points, a column where he revisits his gaming history and works through the significance of the video games that […]
Game Over, Man: #Gamergate, 4Chan, and the Power of Trolls
So this has been a surreal weekend in my corner of the world. If you have any contact with the part of reality that a video game writer lives in (on Twitter, mostly, let’s be honest), you’ve heard of “#Gamergate,” the movement debate conflagration that has exploded over the past couple of weeks and paralyzed […]
Who Will Survive in America: One Nerd’s Journey Into the World of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood
I feel like there are a few ways to respond to the inane in the world. Smart people usually respond with anger and baffled disgust—why does this exist? Why do people care? I’ve never thought that was a great reaction, though. I prefer to embrace the inane. I can’t guarantee that it makes the world […]
Save Points: Glory and Gore (Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes)
Jake Muncy has basically grown up as a gamer. He’s of a generation where video games have always existed, and as he has matured, so have they. Which is why we’re giving him the space to do Save Points, a column where he revisits his gaming history and works through the significance of the video games that […]
Bonus Content: Interview with Charles Webb
We spoke with Charles Webb, a pop culture critic for outlets as diverse as Paste, MTV Geek and his own FreakSugar (as well as his peer Rowan Kaiser) for a piece on games journalism at large, and we felt it was an interesting discussion, which is why we’ve included it as bonus content here. Jake (Loser […]