Below is the transcript of my talk given at the 2018 Mid-Atlantic Pop & American Culture Association. Check out the full episode here at the Games & Gaming Culture section of the site.   Play to Pay: The Machinations of Microtransactions & the Lure of Loot Boxes Welcome everyone. Today I’ll be speaking about microtransactions/loot…

If you’ve listened to our review of A24’s newest horror offering, “Hereditary,” directed by Ari Astar, then you know how much I hated the film. The experience of watching this in the theater was frustrating. I often felt bored due to the tedious nature of most of the scenes, editing and run time. Upon reflection,…

[Contains spoilers]   Far Cry 5 was born in controversy long before it was released. The original promo art caused a bit of a stir and was accused of both provoking and encouraging some kind of vague alt-right sentiment and/or being an indictment on the state of American society. This backlash against it died down…

So this year’s GDC Awards have come and gone, and the winners have been posted. I’m a little late to the game this year, as we’ve been busy at TLS with some redesigns and remodeling etc (on this very site) some of which are still in progress. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t look…

There is a style to Guillermo del Toro’s films that is simultaneously recognizable and elusive. Indeed, there are certain design aesthetics he favors, often letting the story dictate the production design rather than adapting the story to conform to a certain look.

It’s been exactly a year and the GDC Awards have announced their latest nominees. In what is probably now a tradition, I’m going to comb through the list and pick out a few categories and entries that lay within my particular myopic games purview.

[major spoilers ahead] The Last Jedi hit theaters this past weekend, and inevitably the tidal wave of opinions, reactions and rants washed over this galaxy, ranging from the usual ‘best since the original’ to ‘sucks worse than ever’ and all shades between.

The early access beta for Battlefront II just ended yesterday (after EA somewhat surreptitiously extended it by two more days) and after pouring a number of hours into it, I return from a galaxy far far away to give my initial impressions and thoughts on what was teased.

It’s the heart of summer, the time when traditionally as the temperature rises, so does my desire to cloister myself away in a cold room playing games, while conversely the number of major releases trickles and dries up to match the scorched earth outside. So, in that spirit I’m going to cover a handful of…

George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” is incomparable. It is the quintessential zombie film that set the standard and most of the rules for every zombie film that followed**. For me, however, George A. Romero’s masterwork was his 1978 film, “Dawn of the Dead.” 

Been a few rounds since my last post, so I figured it’s time to cobble something together on two recently released and very broadly related games from last week– in the same way grey wolves are broadly related to labradoodles– Outlast 2 and What Remains of Edith Finch.