Posts By Medium: | Sub Specie

The past future tense in eSports casting

A brief note on using the future tense to describe recent events during eSportscasting. […Read more…]

Back to where we began in Quake

In which I ramble a tiny bit about Quake’s symbolic world and its mommy issues, along with a tenuous comparison to Dark Souls. […Read more…]

Preludes to Kentucky Route Zero

Last month, I made my debut in Unwinnable Weekly magazine with a piece on the preludes to Kentucky Route Zero. If, like me, your anxiously awaiting the fourth act of that game, it can’t hurt to take a look at the (free) games that came before. You can download A House in California, Ruins, and Balloon Diaspora from the Cardboard Computer website. I also briefly wrote about Ruins here before, back when I was a wee lad. Or actually, a couple of years ago. If you’re interested, you can read an excerpt from my article for free on the Unwinnable site, or better yet, subscribe or purchase the whole issue. […Read more…]

Guns & Gowns

Something of a ramble about what made me stop playing Knights of the Old Republic II for a while, about playing dress-up with guns and gowns and what that has to do with roleplaying, and about what Ian Bogost wrote in The Atlantic today on games and the representation of individuals. […Read more…]

Type Travels: Leigh Alexander’s Mona

Mona is a short story by Leigh Alexander with gorgeous illustrations by Emily Carroll. The story is part sensual urban horror, part homage to the game Silent Hill 2. The story recently went on sale, and I provided the design for the e-book versions. Have a look at the design below, and don’t forget to buy a copy of the story! […Read more…]

Walking the Planes 3: Pluralities

The third article in my series Walking the Planes has just been published over at The Ontological Geek. It’s about the Planescape setting and how its emphasis on diversity and plurality has affected me, both in discovering the setting as a teen, and nowadays. I’m not really sure yet what the next episode is going to be about, as I have multiple half-finished ideas bouncing around in my head. You’ll have to wait and see! […Read more…]

Memory Insufficient: Language and Games

Recently, I had the honour of being guest editor on Memory Insufficient, the games history ezine. I edited the special issue on Language and Games. You can read the editorial from the issue below, but really you should just go and download the whole issue here [pdf], because it’s free. […Read more…]

On Cheezer

Let me take you to the magical realm that is the 1990s of my youth. It’s OK. People were cool back then, you’ll see. Somewhere in that mythical land of boundless peak-capitalist optimism, not to mention actually the best music ever — feel free to try to debate me on this and run away screaming — we had something called a Cheezer. […Read more…]

Cake Salad (a reply to Cameron Kunzelman)

This open letter is a reply to Cameron Kunzelman’s piece “On Video Games, Content, and Expression”. It is about cake (layered and unlayered), salad, music, opera, analogies, and about games. Anyone is free to reply here or on their own blog. […Read more…]