Essays (86)

A worker-owned, reader-supported news site covering video games, the internet, and the cultures that surround them.

A games criticism blog by Nick Capozzoli

A professional Japanese-to-English localization editor (and former game journalist) candidly appraises the text, audio, and design of video games. What ideas do they reflect? What feelings do they evoke? What lessons do they teach? And why will Geoff Keighley never in his wildest dreams bag an icon like Miss Piggy?

Articles on early video game history through the lens of the Atari Video Computer System's library, in chronological release order.

Autumn Wright is blogging from the end of the world. Follow them for criticism on videogames, animation, manga, and whatever other art and entertainment they find moving, plus the occasional jaunt through nature, theory, and the personal.

Bruno Dias publishes essays about video game narrative design, criticism, and theory—with occasional detours; this is a personal blog, after all.

Lean game critique and essays on formalism and methods of representation. Primarily mechanical breakdowns, although there's occasional narrative, thematic, or aesthetic analysis as well. Extra attention is given to action-puzzle titles, unusual arcade releases, and other games from the '90s and '00s. As informative as possible in 1000 words or less (most of the time)!

Game development, Japanese digs, Perservation, and related ongoing. By the developer of YOYOZO (only 39 KB and listed alongside Mario & Zelda as one of the "Best Games of 2023")

I've worked in the games industry for over 15 years and have posts about game development and narrative design stretching back to 2013. My blog is a general-purpose blog, but the RSS feed provided here contains all the games-specific posts only. These include postmortems, recommendations, posts about development best practices, and more.

Wherein I play and blog about every adventure game ever made in (nearly) chronological order.

Bullet Points Monthly features long-form articles and podcasts that look to place games in a wider cultural context, examining their relationship to our greater world much in the same manner as other forms of art and entertainment.

Exploring multimedia games and software of the 90s and beyond.

The world's biggest, longest-running, and most anarchic zine about visual novels, interactive fiction, and narrative games.

Springboard is a weekly newsletter that covers Gaming, Tech, and Mental Health. Starting in 2024, there have been exclusive interviews with developers, from gaming to emulators, as well as insights into the making of Daryl's published books, including the upcoming release, 'The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000'.

Exploring how games tell stories through structure, theme, and mechanics. Hundreds of essays from Assassin's Creed to QUBE and XCOM (and some stuff that's not games too).

Deemon's the name and I don't know what's the game. Welcome to this lil' cove, a space to mostly write and critique anything videogame related from a more personal place, or at least one that attempts to meet each work eye-to-eye, with the occasional ramblings about the medium at large to boot.

A blog about game dev experiments, DOOM maps, and showcases of cool games by others.

Thoughts on gaming, gamedev, and the internet by Kyle Labriola.

Future blogger fun time video games action. Distant Arcade is a gaming blog where we discuss video games from the past, present, and future with a focus on just writing about whatever’s on our mind.

Ephemeral Enigmas is all about giving offbeat, obscure, and forgotten games another look. The goal is to provide the deepest and most entertaining analysis I can muster for games that rarely get a fair shake while also providing my personal spin on things. Just about anything goes on this blog, so if you like learning about a very wide range of games (and don't mind lengthy rambles), you'll want to check in every week!