-
Writers
Categories
Recent Comments
- Tim Johnson on Fear of Music: The Untold History of Rock Band Network
- Davin Harris on Why Are You Doing This? Hotline Miami and Drive
- Charles Gnarlson on The Doubt of the Benefit: Fake Progress and Lumosity’s “Brain Games”
- Ruby Rhod on EQUIP WOLF SHIRT; USE:WHISKEY// ON: SURVIVAL
- FatherTime on Pandora’s Lunchbox: Deregulating Decency With Dorks’ Dollars
Medium Difficulty Tweets
Featured Posts
-
The Playstation Meeting 2013 and Why We Should Be Scared
12 March 2013 -
Horror Done Right: Alan Wake, Language, and Control
3 July 2012 -
The “Entitled Ones”: Consumer Demand, “Entitlement,” and the Reception of Mass Effect 3
20 March 2012 -
Why All My Characters Are Ladies
16 April 2012 -
Fair-Weather Friends: Animal Crossing and Digital Responsibilities
2 October 2012
-
Meta
Author Archives: Adam Maresca
PAX, GDC, IGF, RIP: A Meandering, Fatigued Look At The Last Two Weeks
Having been to PAX East this year, not even a week later most of the memories are hazy stretches of nothing. After paying the yearly tithe to the overlords of video game culture, I planned in between seeing a few … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Conversation, Features
Tagged 2013, Adam Harshberger, Adam Maresca, Bioware, Cart Life, cosplay, Dadliest Catch, destructoid, Don Maclean, DRM, Dropchord, GDC, Howling Dogs, IGF, Lollipop Chainsaw, Octodad, PAX East, Porpentine, Richard Hofmeier, Sim City, Soda Drinker Pro, Utilikilts, Vibrams Fivefingers
Leave a comment
With Friends Like These: Screw Ups and Patterns of Power in the Games Industry
Randy Pitchford is a happy man. Sure, the last couple of major titles he’s overseen as head of Gearbox Software have had their share of detractors, but that’s not going to be any skin off of his nose. If someone … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Conversation
Tagged Adam Maresca, Aliens, Atari, Ben Kuchera, Borderlands, Call of Duty, Code Hunters, Colonial Marines, Dave Mason, Dickwolves, Duke Nukem Forever, Erik Kain, Eurogamer, Gaspar Lewis, Gearbox, Kotaku, Krahulik, Mike Krahulick, Mike Sacco, New Games Journalims, Obsolescence, Penny Arcade, Randy Pitchford, RapeLay, Simon Parkin, Stephen Totilo, Tentacle Bento, The Penny Arcade Report, TimeGate, Tiny Tina
Leave a comment
Toys in The Attic: A Thoroughly Modern Reading of Revolution X
History is a series of repeating cycles meshing like gears in varying but finite permutations. The saving grace of this eternally restless sturm und drang is the return of past works to relevance, and the power to mine new meaning … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Conversation, Humour
Tagged Acclaim, Adam Maresca, Aerosmith, CDs, EDI, homefront, Joe Perry, Just Push Play, Lazerdisc, Midway Plaza, Red Dawn, Revolution X, Steven Tyler, Wembley Stadium
5 Comments
Requiem for Linnaeus: On The Taxonomy of “Game”
Editor’s Note: Carl Linnaeus was an 18th Century scientist who is considered the father of modern taxonomy, the classification of organisms. One of the issues in the modern critical community for video games that mystifies me the most is … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Conversation
Tagged Adam Maresca, Baby, Bathwater, class, domain, family, Games, Gaspar Lewis, genus, kingdom, Linnaeus, order, phylum, species, Taxonomy
6 Comments
Hired Guns: The Real Price of Game Violence
Adam Maresca America is slowly recovering from a flashpoint of public violence. Having learned nothing from the warnings of experts in the past, our news media has fostered an environment for a succession of copycats in the slaughter of the … Continue reading
Lost in Space and Time: Perception, Memory, and Tony Hawk
Adam Maresca It should have been so simple. It was billed as a greatest-hits mash-up of two games that were pivotal in the collective game memory of millions. Installments in a series which charted the high water mark of extreme … Continue reading
Pandora’s Lunchbox: Deregulating Decency With Dorks’ Dollars
Editor’s Note: The Following Article contains images that, while not genuinely pornographic, would not be a great thing for your boss to see over your shoulder. Please read responsibly. by Adam Maresca Thanks to the likes of open-source funding services like Kickstarter, the “marketplace of ideas” has never been more literal, or more troubling. Though their record is far from perfect, the service recently has come under fire again. This time the cause is the cancellation of the card game Tentacle Bento for, presumably, flagrantly violating the company’s obscenity guidelines. The fact the game tripled its initial goal and ran on the site for quite some time is not the major source of the outcry, though. It’s that the game was pulled from Kickstarter at all. That Which Must Be Preserved At All Costs. Insert Credit’s initial coverage by Brandon Sheffield is one of the main sources of the complaints that got the Continue reading
The State of Music Games
by Adil Sherwani Red-Red-Red-Red-Yellow-Yellow-Green-Green. This is the button sequence for the opening riff to “I Love Rock N Roll,” the first song in the original Guitar Hero. In 2005, this sequence (and the game) ushered in both a new way … Continue reading
Posted in Features
6 Comments