video games

A 13-year-old kid has seemingly beat Tetris. Long believed impossible or a myth, the magical feat took place on December 21 and apparently shocked even the player, Willis Gibson, who reached level 157 and launched the heretofore unseen…

many times a year, as if on a hidden schedule, some tech person, often venture-capital-adjacent, types out a thought on social media like “The only thing liberal arts majors are good for is scrubbing floors while I punch them” and hits…

Following the critically acclaimed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a daunting task. It completely reimagined what a Zelda game could be, and created a massive, beautiful world where you could visit anything you saw. Its sequel,…

The sweetness of the human-robot relationship portrayed by Her comes across as quaint right now. But really, the most remarkable, startling aspect of rewatching Her a decade after its release has nothing to do with the AI romance. The thing…

Steven Johnson has written 13 books, on topics ranging from a London cholera outbreak to the value of video games. He’s been a television presenter and a podcast host. He’s a keynote speaker who doesn’t have to call himself that in his…

Gamers have long been stigmatized as lonely weirdos. Some of that has been deserved—ask anyone who’s had a bunch of children shout horrible slurs at them during a match of Call Of Duty. But some leaders in the gaming industry want to push…

In a subreddit dedicated to Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios’ critically acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons–based role-playing game, a player posed an important question: “I know you probably heard this here more times than I can count but…

For nearly 30 years, actor Charles Martinet was the voice of Nintendo’s most iconic character: Mario. He also lent vocals to Luigi, Wario, and others. When Nintendo confirmed in August that Martinet had essentially retired from that role,…

Lex and I spent untold hours that summer staring into the green-black screen of an Apple II, venturing from Independence to the Pacific Northwest along the Oregon Trail. It would be years before we learned about Manifest Destiny, about…

Activision Blizzard’s Diablo IV is a success. The game sold more copies during its prelaunch period than any other Blizzard Entertainment title before it. Players have already spent 93 million hours with the game, and counting.…