Octopath Traveler and the Lonely Road Less Traveled

Aristotle once famously said, "Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human." Our reliance on the people around us to enrich our irrefutably uninteresting lives—whether that be through work, play, or otherwise—is evidence enough that we as a …

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There Is a Place for Politics in Video Games

I once saw someone on my Twitter timeline unswervingly denounce the presence of political themes in video games. “Games are a way for me to escape reality, unperturbed by the harshness of the outside world,” she proclaimed, echoing the sentiment that so many gamers feel year after year. As election cycles come and go, the …

Pokémon: Let’s Go Is The Perfect Pokémon Game For Me

As the dust settles after last week’s Kanto-shattering Pokémon announcement, I find myself in an unfamiliar situation. For the first time in my life, I am excited about a new Pokémon game. In case you have been living under a rock for the past few days, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company announced in a press …

Privacy Is Dead

Here is a reminder for all you internet users out there: your data is never private. The recent data leak involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica is a reminder of such a fact, yet far too many people seem surprised that their data could possibly have been misused for nefarious reasons. And who can blame them? …

Let’s Plays and the Evolution of Storytelling in the Digital Age

Just over a year ago, a YouTube channel began uploading a Let’s Play of an unknown video game called Petscop. The game, according to the narrator who calls himself Paul, is a long-lost PlayStation title developed by a little-known studio called Garalina. Petscop is apparently unfinished, as Paul is quick to point out in the …