An interview with Mary Pilon about her new book, ‘The Monopolists,’ which uncovers the real story about how Monopoly became the game it is today.
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
The Art of Running from the Police
A young man concerned that the police will take him into custody comes to see danger and risk in the mundane doings of everyday life. To survive outside prison, he learns to hesitate when others walk casually forward, to see what others fail to notice, to fear what others trust or take for granted.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Rage Against the Machines
FarmVille’s mimicry of the economically obsolete production unit of the family farm, in short, proved all too apt—like the hordes of small farmers sucked into tenantry and debt peonage during the first wave of industrialization in America, the freeholders on FarmVille’s vast virtual acreage soon learned that the game’s largely concealed infrastructure was where all […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
The Art of Running from the Police
A young man concerned that the police will take him into custody comes to see danger and risk in the mundane doings of everyday life. To survive outside prison, he learns to hesitate when others walk casually forward, to see what others fail to notice, to fear what others trust or take for granted.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits
An account of Nintendo’s rise from a playing card manufacturer in 1889 to a video game industry giant in the ’80s and ’90s. Adapted from Console Wars, out this month: After several decades of staggering success, Fusajiro Yamauchi retired in 1929 and was succeeded by his son-in-law Sekiryo Yamauchi, who ran Nintendo efficiently for nineteen […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Many Gigs Does It Take to Make It in NYC?
The gig economy (“a phrase which encompasses both the related collaborative economy and sharing economy”) is inescapable.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Tech Boom, Then and Now
In Guernica, Nathan Deuel visits the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and daughter and writes about how the recent tech boom has changed the city. Here, Deuel recalls being in college during the first dot-com boom when working for a website felt like a novel idea, and before, as he later writes in […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Karma Bum
What It’s Like To Be 9 Years Old and Playing Video Games with Allen Ginsberg: The following night, after Ginsberg’s poetry reading (why would I want to go to that?) a group of students eager for him to impart morsels of omniscience were forced to wait outside my room while we played video games on […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
A Reading List for My 25-Year-Old Self
This list is a birthday gift to me and, I hope, of use to you, too.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Desert Bus: The Worst Video Game Ever Created
In the early 1990s, magician duo Penn & Teller decided to create “Desert Bus,” a satirical video game for the Sega CD game console that required players to spend hours driving a bus through Arizona and Nevada: “Penn, Teller, and the game’s publisher, Absolute Entertainment, planned a lavish prize for any player that scored a […]
