Games that perform beyond expectations (in either direction) get turned into teachable moments. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a breakout hit but slots neatly into existing industry discourse: this is how westerners are fixing the JRPG genre

In Queensland Australia one can find the wonderfully named, University of Sunshine Coast. Recently coming out of this university is a study that reveals an equally wonderful paradox: that intellectual passion can emerge not just from instruction and classrooms but from playful engagement.

Disclaimer: I am currently not working in the industry but I used to and was also job hunting while at the expo… I know, it is not good time.

When I was in the 4th grade, the Nintendo 64 made its grand debut and soon asserted itself as the new must-have console for every household with a child. Games like Mario Kart, Starfox 64, and The Legend of Zelda, too, became household names, and their respective characters were well recognized.

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I’m going to tell you a secret about my book SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion: The history it tells is not totally complete.

Play-through: is a new format where I will be writing in more of a diary format for bigger games that I am playing. The first game I am trialing this with is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Switch 2.

Happy 4th? Other than the whole America falling apart thing, I guess.

Happy New Month!!! 🎉✨

Back in 2011, music journalist Steven Hyden sought to reinvent the way we measure the success of a particular band or artist. You see, traditionally, music acts would be judged by either their commercial success (how many albums or singles have they sold) and/or their critical success (how strong are the reviews for said albums and singles). Hyden intro…

When you hear the word vacation, what comes to mind?

Introduction

Are video games a waste of time? Sometimes I think so, or I’m made to think so, but then I recall my fond memories of them.

Chai-2 is a revolutionary AI model that can design antibodies from scratch with unprecedented success rates, making it a game-changer for disease treatment and research. It achieves double-digit hit rates in de novo antibody design, outperforming previous methods by orders of magnitude. This breakthrough enables rapid and precise molecular engineering, …

Since the beginning of 2025, I have become increasingly familiar with my Senators’ email addresses. I have been contacting them frequently with my concerns about our current administration. Lately, many of my emails have been about multiple parts of the “big beautiful bill.” In my most recent email, I expressed my concerns about the enormous proposed cu…

The podcast was recorded today, complete with video for those of you who subscribe on Patreon. Dr McLean and myself discussed a number of shows and movies that use time travel (and one that did not) and explored some thoughts — largely circling around the topic of shows that overused time travel as a plot device each week, a…

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So, I am currently chasing two very heavy stories — one involving the shooting death of a local child. I almost didn’t do one of these this week, however, I learned today is National Video Game Day, and decided that we all could use something fun as a little treat. So, what’s a better treat than a Tuesday Top 10 we can argue about on social media?

How are you doing?

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