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Tom Bissell was an acclaimed, prize-winning young writer. Then he started playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. For three years he has been cocaine addicted, sleep deprived and barely able to write a word. “There are times when I think GTA IV is the most colossal creative achievement of the last 25 years, times […]

Jamin Brophy-Warren, who publishes a video-game arts and culture magazine called Kill Screen, told me that there is something in the amplitude and dynamic of Mario’s jumps—just enough supernatural lift yet also just enough gravitational resistance—that makes the act of performing that jump, over and over, deeply satisfying. He also cited the archetypal quality of […]

The odd recording session in March was one very small contribution to what Apple Corps — the company still controlled by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison — hopes will be the most deeply immersive way ever of experiencing the music and the mythology of the Beatles. The […]

The face of the enemy flashed across a 20-foot screen. “That’s right,” Jason Rohrer announced. “It’s Roger Ebert.” There were a few boos, as several hundred people stirred in their seats. The film critic’s cherubic face stared at the audience. “Ebert said video games can’t be art,” Rohrer said. “He issued all of us a […]

Excerpt from “Game Change”: A candidate whose aides were prepared to block him from becoming president. A wife whose virtuous image was a mirage. A mistress with a video camera. Inside the John Edwards triangle, nothing was too crazy to be true. By John Heilemann and Mark Halperin