Unwinnable

You feel compelled to support great writing… This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— Elsewhere, here. ——— I grew up in a no-logo household where I was not allowed to buy the “OLD NAVY” shirts when we shopped at the outlet mall on the way home from visiting cousins in Massachusetts.

You feel compelled to support great writing… This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— What does digital grass feel like? ——— Overwatch (a game the Palestinian BDS committee now asks that you boycott) released ten years ago. Ten years ago, I wrote my first paid piece about videogames.

You feel compelled to support great writing… This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— A tongue-in-cheek but also painfully earnest look at pop culture and anything else that deserves to be ridiculed while at the same time regarded with the utmost respect.

You feel compelled to support great writing… This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— Analyzing the digital and analog feedback loop. ——— Humble Grove, the co-op that previously brought us No Longer Home, recently gave me an opportunity to play an early build demo of their upcoming title A Line Held Tight.

No ads. No AI. So many bats. This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— Finding digital grace. ——— Spoilers a’plenty for Luna Abyss! Hell is a complicated topic. Depending on who is describing it, you could be discussing: an idea, an emotional state or a metaphysical plane of torment.

No ads. No AI. So many bats. This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— We are what we’re afraid of. ——— My entire life, I have yearned (and more than once, whined) about all I wanted was a Pokémon game where you didn’t have to make them fight.

No ads. No AI. So many bats. This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— Interfacing in the millennium. ——— I spent a lot of time when I was reviewing Zero Parades thinking about how it was written. I have spent a lot of time since I reviewed Zero Parades thinking about how it was written.

This is a slightly edited reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. (I prepped this with Tangerine Dream’s “Choronzon” playing, which seems suitably triumphant and slightly videogamey, if you’d like a little soundtrack while you read.) ——— This is the two hundredth issue of Unwinnable Monthly. I feel that this requires some explanation.

You feel compelled to support great writing… This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #200. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price. ——— What’s left when we’ve moved on. ——— I’ll write an indie game roundup again, I said! I did it last year, and it was simple.

You feel compelled to support great writing… In 2013, an episode of Legend of Korra’s second season revealed that Aang, the beloved protagonist of the wildly successful Avatar: the Last Airbender… was a bad dad. Or at least, if you were online at the time that Korra discourse was big, you would think this was what happened. What actually took place was, in the episode Civil Wars: Part I, Aang’s three kids argued about their father. It was a pretty normal adult sibling argument.