The following is a transcript of an exchange between Gus Mastrapa and his mother that originally appeared on RobotStreetGang. We are reprinting it on Unwinnable to celebrate the release of Manhunt on PSN this week. To preserve the integrity and gritty realism of the dialogue, no edits have been made. (more…)
News came a day before Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, that Blackberry will release versions of its popular Blackberry Messenger for Android (and iOS) this summer. For many Blackberry users, BBM was one of the main reasons, and perhaps the only reason, to remain loyal to the platform through lackluster devices, poor OS updates, and a shrinking market share being eaten away by Apple, Samsung, HTC and Motorola. Sensing this, industry pundits have been calling on Blackberry to finally port BBM to other devices for years. Now, it’s years too late.
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It started with a gravestone. My own. This was before I’d read Spoon River Anthology, which is a wonderful collection of poetry. This was just me on the computer one day, Googling myself. There it was – my gravestone. Matthew Michael Ritter. Already dead, of course – died at the age of only 12 or 13. Still, I felt a compulsion to visit that grave – until I learned it was 300 miles away. So I forgot about it for a while. (more…)
The following is the latest in a series of journal entries chronicling the author’s descent into next-gen gaming degeneracy and assorted geekery – from getting his first television in years to trying to figure out why the @$@$&@@ you need two goddamn directional pads just to walk down an effing hallway. (more…)
Thanks, Mom.
There’s a long list of writers, directors, artists and musicians who have influenced me. Recently I wrote about how the science fiction author Douglas Adams helped lead me down the left hand path towards atheism. But I would have never read Adams or countless others if not for one woman. My mother had more to do with me becoming the person I am today than any teacher ever did. And she did it behind the wheel of a faded fire-engine red Ford Fairmont station wagon. (more…)
“Those pesky play-it-safe publishers are concerned only about their quarterly profits,” says a fictitious composite of veteran developers on Kickstarter. “They won’t let us innovate and make a sequel to this two-decades-old game. That’s where you can help. With Kickstarter, you have the power to make a statement that you do want innovative games. Games just like your grandma used to make. Now in HD! Remakes and sequels so original that publishers run away screaming.”
For years, we’ve been told that publishers stifle innovation. But now that we’ve found a way to bypass them, in place of safe and predictable sequels to last year’s hits, we get safe and predictable sequels to decade- or two-decades-old hits. (more…)
The Museum of Modern Art wants you to play Canabalt with a mouse. I don’t even think that’s even possible outside of the museum’s Applied Design exhibition. It’s a little weird, yet Canabalt’s mouse controller is just one example of how the show’s curator Paola Antonelli has attempted to change up the way gamers think about interacting with their favorite games. (more…)
