The two scariest things my mother ever said to me were ‘I thought you would have a family by now’ and ‘that little dog will be yours someday.’ Most days, if I’m working, I ignore my mother’s dog. If she’s really feeling neglected, she will stretch to her full height, which isn’t much, and push against me, her forepaws in the small of my back. At night, when I sleep on the couch — it’s always on a...
Editor’s note: Fifteen months before GamerGate, anger at Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes Vs Women” video series felt like it had finally reached a fever pitch. I could feel an ineffable dread growing in me, but I also think I believed myself—enjoying my career’s brief peak—high above the kind of bad-faith “willful misunderstanding” that was plaguing Sarkeesian...
Before I sit, Josh Larson is careful to make one thing clear: “This is a game about Ryan and his wife’s four-year-old son, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer two and a half years ago,” he explains. And then this: “He’s still alive.” I look around; Ryan Green has already slipped out of the room. I hesitate, then nod. I take my seat at the rickety desk and put on a pair of expensive noise...
The words “do not resuscitate” imply crucial treatment is somehow being withheld; “allow natural death,” conversely, suggests that something is being given. Exactly six years ago I bought a Nintendo Wii – came home from Toys “R” Us, plugged it in. (The box is still there on the floor of my girlhood bedroom, right where I left it in another November.) “Can you imagine, Al?” my mother asked my...
I keep having this weird dream. I’m on a rocket ship in outer space. Sometimes I’m strapped into a seat, but often I’m in free-fall. Often there are other people on the rocket ship, but sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes the rocket ship isn’t floating through space. Sometimes, instead, it’s on fire and trembling – it is reentering Earth’s atmosphere, presumably because of a mechanical failure...
Disclosure: Mark of the Ninja’s writer Chris Dahlen is a former editor of Paste’s games section, and lead designer Nels Anderson has contributed to Paste in the past. Neither are currently affiliated with Paste in any way. Additionally the writer of this review has written for publications edited by Dahlen. I am, in my everyday life, a klutz. I bump into the refrigerator anytime I walk into my...
When I was a teenager in Cambridge, I wanted to buy a British book. What I ended up with was 253, written by an American called Geoff Ryman. 253 contains 253 vignettes about 252 passengers on the London tube train, most of whom are connected in some way (the 253rd person is the train’s driver). The book describes the moments before a train crash. Before its publication in the...
And you talked seriously with the woman downstairs about the asking price and our budget, which really was very funny, because it was the largest house I had ever stood in, except your dad's.
Mystery House (Apple II, 1980) was the very first release from Sierra Online. Husband-and-wife cofounders Ken and Roberta Williams mailed the game in Ziplock baggies. They eventually sold over 10,000 copies. A word of warning, though: Mystery House isn’t any fun. “By any standards it’s an incredibly abusive play experience,” game designer Erin Robinson explains. She goes...
Here’s something: I lived in a frat house for three months. It wasn’t as bad as you might guess. Actually, it was nice. I only got two parking tickets that summer. I also read several issues of Men’s Health, cover-to-cover, on the toilet. It was a type of tourism. (“I’m in here!” I’d shout from my toilet’s stall, absolutely panicked anytime I heard the bathroom door open. In a frat house you can...