It’s 3:30 AM. My “villager,” a bobble-headed avatar with the face of a Tarutaru, is sitting on a sofa in a model home, her legs swinging, an idle loop. Near her, a television is tuned to static. In my real life I’m ignoring the Nintendo 3DS, which I’ve left open and running on the kitchen counter. At 3:32 AM—a full minute early, by my estimation—a UFO crosses the television screen. The animation...
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...
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...
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...
This piece inspired Rhizome to reissue Theresa Duncan’s three computer games. Thanks to Kickstarter support, the games were made available to play online. Developed in 1994 and published the following year, Chop Suey was a cunning piece of multimedia edutainment, suited just as well to grown-ups — smirking hipsters and punk rockers, probably — as it was to the prescribed...
Earlier this month, New York University’s Game Center presented Bad is Beautiful, a playable exhibit of some of video games’ most brilliantly aberrant atrocities. At least one game was missing. “This is the crap avant-garde,” the exhibit’s website gushes. And the Game Center’s main mission — to champion garbage, to uncover the truth and beauty burning within even the most inane — sure is...