Game theory by Matt S.“One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realise that having more and more won’t solve the problem, and happiness does not lie in possessions, or even relationship: The answer lies within…
Read MoreRetro reflections by Nick H. I recently fired up an old NES game and had an opportunity to rediscover what I already knew: that Metroid was brilliant in its level design. Without dialogue, without tutorials it still managed to create a game with rich exploration that did not hold your…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sony’s E3 show was the most impressive this year. It wasn’t just for the quality of the games that it had to show off. It was the the sheer quantity as well. Where the other businesses putting on shows padded out the presentation with…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. Horror is a product of culture. How that manifests might be different from one example of the genre to the next, however. It might be because the work is tapping into deep seated fears that are a combination of biological responses to perceived threats – the…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. No one would say that the Wii U was a commercial success. Actually, scratch that, no one aside from the most rabid fanboys would make such a claim. The console suffered from a complete dearth of support from third parties, sold in trickling numbers across the…
Read MoreInterview by Matt S. How’s this for unexpected; when digital download platforms, such as the PlayStation Network, Steam, and Nintendo’s eShop, started to really take off and become a common way for people to play games, the writing seemed to be on the wall for the physical games media. The…
Read MoreRetro Reflections by Nick H. I have had the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series on my mind a great deal of late. There are multiple reasons for that. Recently I wrote about a classic strategy/RPG hybrid Shining Force, so clearly the tactical genre is in the forefront of my…
Read MoreOpinion by Matt S. In a highly commercial industry, such as what we have with video games, it can be very difficult to justify building a transgressive game. By its nature, transgressive art is polarising, and that means a couple of things which tend to scare away investors, which a…
Read MoreGame theory by Matt S. In my last art game canon piece I wrote about Nier, which is the game that I would argue has the most valuable, expressive, successful narrative that has been presented in such a way that only games, as non-linear experiences, could achieve. This time around…
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago, we unveiled DDNet Premium; a service in addition to our regular reviews, podcast, and coverage that is all about in-depth and insightful information about the best and most interesting games and the people that make them. The service itself is about the cost of a…
Read More