As the long-anticipated video game Cyberpunk 2077 looms on the horizon (or begins to, at least) Cameron Kunzelman writes about how the politics of the cyberpunk genre are in its aesthetics, and considers what exactly it is those politics are.
Ethan Chiel
Can Andy Byford Save the Subways?
The new president of the New York City Transit Authority is smart, seems almost unfailingly polite, and is very English. Whether that’s enough to enable him to wrangle the system he’s been tasked with fixing remains to be seen. William Finnegan paints a deft portrait of Andy Byford settling into his new job and getting […]
Let’s Talk About Guns and Video Games
In his introduction to a weeklong series on the relationship between games and guns, Waypoint Editor-in-Chief Austin Walker outlines the need to reflect on how violence in games often transforms from an act into something else, a mode of being, and the need to reflect empathetically and critically on that transformation.
The Universe Has Been Outsourced
The production of big-name, high-budget games increasingly relies on outsourcing (or “external development,” if you prefer) for the creation of 3D art, level design, and other game assets. Michael Thomsen visited one of the firms that provides this work, the Shanghai-headquartered Virtuos Ltd. Thomsen draws out the tension between the demand for such work and […]
How Video Games Demonize Fat People
Anshuman Iddamsetty interrogates why in video games being fat so often means being considered less than human.
To Give a Name To It
Navneet Alang weaves together the story of an ex, his Sikh-Canadian family’s Christmas traditions, and the history of Punjab together to explain why baby names can mean so much, even if they’re just hypothetical.
Jackie Chan’s Plan to Keep Kicking Forever
Jackie Chan is a one-man industry. Like all one-man industries, however, he relies on many, many other people. This GQ profile of Chan by Alex Pappademas introduces you to the man himself, but also to those around him: co-stars, directors, and most important of all, the Jackie Chan Stunt Team.
Mark Zuckerberg Would Like the Authority to Rule, Please
The Facebook CEO is in control of his company. He could just use a little more confidence.
Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?
In a little more than a decade, Facebook has become one of the most important technology companies in the world. But as it’s grown, the company has had to try to figure out how to govern its 2 billion users, something it hasn’t quite managed. In light of that, Max Read grapples with an increasingly […]
A Weekend in Texas with ZeroHedge Readers
An unofficial conference for readers of the conspiratorially-minded finance blog ZeroHedge brings a host of largely male, mostly conservative readers (and reporter Alexandra Scaggs) to the small, left-leaning town of Marfa, Texas. Prepare for Bitcoin and specialized jeans with room for four knives in this first of a three-part series.
