They drop in through the ceiling. They crawl in through tunnels. Furthermore, they send their enemies to the afterlife in a silent, noiseless maneuver. They charm beautiful men and women and travel the world, taking on incredible risks and pulse-pounding missions. They even have cool theme songs. Not only that, but they’re Jason Bourne. James Bond....

I recently finished a fifty-five-hour playthrough of Grand Theft Auto V. It’s a ridiculously fun game. It’s also can be a very disappointing game.  Unlike Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto V is a flawed masterpiece worth playing, thinking, and talking about whose good will never erase its bad and whose bad doesn’t, for me, overwhelm its go...

Survival Horror video games are filled with colorful, twisted and depraved characters. In a game that is meant to thrill and scare the player, these horror video game characters stand out because of their sheer imitativeness and their terrifying, bowel-loosening abilities. They can stand toe-to-toe with any major movie villain, and some of the...

“Gritty Action Movies.” “Suspenseful Morality Sci-Fi Movies from the 1930s.” “Whistleblower Steamy Psychological Animation Based on a Book Set in Biblical Times About Trucks, Trains, & Planes.” Genres can be weird, right?  Game genres can be as simple as “driving “(DriveClub) or “FPS” (Battlefield) or as elaborately specific as “first-pers...

In another post, I argued that video games (like all expressive media) influence the world but that, cumulatively, their influence is more likely to be positive than negative because games can show us new.  Good ways of thinking and acting that we can then rally around, whereas the bad ways of thinking and acting depicted in video ga...

I remember a time in about 1991 playing one of my favorite childhood video game, Super Mario Bros 3. That I borrowed from a friend for a weekend. I wanted to beat it before I gave it back, but this being the relatively early days of console gaming. Super Mario Bros 3 had no save feature of any kind So in order to reach the end, I just left my Ninte...

Is there a revenge element to the plot?, so there aren’t any direct plot spoilers here. You only need to avoid reading the post if you don’t want to know whether a character or game’s situation is morally ambiguous or complicated. In the early days of games, when narrative wasn’t much of a concern for most games Plot structures were generally like ...

The video game industry has never been short of innovations aiming at improving the gaming experience for gamers irrespective of the age. Today, gamers have access to a full range of gaming consoles, highly interactive titles and accessories.

When I saw the roller-coaster-like movie Gravity, I was surprised to realize that I occasionally felt like I was watching a video game on a giant screen. The film fluidly changed perspectives back and forth from third to first person, often framing the action as a game would, and the focus on challenging environments presenting life-and-death ...