• Season

    Season

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    9–13 minutes

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    In Season, you bicycle through beautiful landscapes, documenting the world as you go by taking photos, recording audio, drawing sketches, and collecting mementoes for your scrapbook. Eventually the scrapbook will be stored in a museum vault to survive an impending, tumultuous changing of the “season”. 

  • Pentiment

    Pentiment

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    8–12 minutes

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    1 comment on Pentiment

    Pentiment is the closest you’ll get to playing Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose – which is to say, investigating a murder in a medieval monastery (hell yeah!). The game is set a few hundred years later than Eco’s book, when the Reformation is about to tear the Catholic Church apart, but it’s just as thoroughly researched.

  • Should I Write a Newsletter About Games?

    Should I Write a Newsletter About Games?

    I’m trying to talk myself out of writing a newsletter about games. There are many reasons why this would be a bad idea, not least because people are asking whether there’s a future of video games journalism at all, but I can’t get over the fact that I found so few newsletters about the most…

  • Enhance

    Enhance

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    4–6 minutes

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    Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Isn’t that what Don Draper said in Mad Men? Don’t tell me, the truth won’t measure up to how I remember it.

  • A List of Video Game Newsletters

    A List of Video Game Newsletters

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    3–4 minutes

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    1 comment on A List of Video Game Newsletters

    I recently realised that while I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, very few of them are about games. And of the ones about games, most are written for industry professionals and cover the production and business of games. They’re less about recommending or critiquing games, which is what I’m interested in right now. So…

  • The Taking of Stonehenge

    The Taking of Stonehenge

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    4–5 minutes

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    The Federation is proud of its scientific and cultural alliance with the UK. When we made contact with Earth in 2028, we chose the UK as one of our key partners due to its long history as a trading superpower. Just as the UK once built networks of commerce and knowledge between continents by sail,…

  • Superficial Thoughts on Bangkok Malls

    Superficial Thoughts on Bangkok Malls

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    3–5 minutes

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    Earlier this month I was on holiday in Thailand and Cambodia, mostly to see Angkor Wat and other temples, ruins, etc., all of which very much lived up to the hype – so while they were impressive, they were unsurprisingly impressive. I was surprised by one thing in particular, though: the malls in Bangkok. I…

  • Generative AI in Game Development: Threat or Menace?

    Generative AI in Game Development: Threat or Menace?

    As I approach my third decade in the games industry, my natural curiosity about new technologies is now mixed with worry: that if I don’t learn them quickly enough, they might also bring my obsolescence. I don’t want to be that person who refuses to use a new tool and declares that it’s the children…

  • Why third-party iOS app stores are vital for digital culture

    Why third-party iOS app stores are vital for digital culture

    Adapted from my Mastodon thread from Dec 14, 2022, which was covered by GameDiscoverCo and PocketGamer.biz. With the news Apple is planning to support third-party App Stores to comply with EU regulations, I see we’re rehashing the old arguments about whether it’s a good thing. To be clear, I don’t only think it’s a good…

  • A Cut in the Shape of My Heart

    A Cut in the Shape of My Heart

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    6–9 minutes

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    3 comments on A Cut in the Shape of My Heart

    A couple of years ago, in the midst of COVID lockdowns, a Guardian story went viral: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years. The story was, if anything, more surprising than the clickbait headline. It was an account by Wilf Davies, a 72 year old farmer who’d barely left his Welsh farm’s valley, and…