Phoenix Simms

"In all of her work there's a deep sense of care and respect for how people, both individually and collective…

I miss AA and AAA being unabashedly bizarro in their design, whether they're story-driven or not. A state of …

So, I replayed Silent Hill: Homecoming for the first time since it came out when I was in high school. A lot …

I wrote here about different design aspects of Blue Prince we found evocative. For me, it was the references …

Nathalie Lawhead joined us on Zoom to talk about their work, interactive fiction, internet subcultures, socia…

My latest for Unwinnable, musing about the concepts of cosiness, wholesomeness, and how these terms are becom…

Back on my voice over labour rights and gen-AI grind. Ever since researching for the piece I wrote for Contai…

At its core, AOTK has an anti-establishment philosophy, much like the avant garde. Especially with its pencha…

How do you design a truly solarpunk game? Kara Stone knows the way. Known Mysteries is the first solar-powere…

Grace and I discuss curating an exhibit focused on artists' games and how terminology does a lot for both pla…

There's a curious folding of time and space, or at least our personal perception of time and space when it co…

Lovely Lady RPG's strongest narrative exists in the concept of the void, but the game's self-aware tone often…

There's a poetic quality to having deliberate pauses within a game world.

Do status ailments and their treatments in games perpetuate toxic mythology about diseases and disabilities?

Heisei Pistol Show is a time capsule of a game. One that intersects with the Menhera community's philosophy o…

OVERWHELM is less about punishment and more about vindication. Vindication that sometimes even perseverance, …

When you strictly define games as a commercial product you devalue the prominent place games and their rhetor…

If you love survival horror, then you should know how important creative freedom to take game design risks ar…

Nikhil Murthy's Syphilisation emerged as a way to address some enduring colonial-imperialist assumptions in t…

Grief is mundane, despite how profound of an emotion and process it is. Grief can also be cumulative and coll…

Dragon Age: Veilguard is being released during a period of global climate change, which makes some players vi…

Grief has become an increasingly common subject for videogames, and the ones who depict it best know that gri…

Mothra is at once an icon of ritual and tradition as well as one of feminine transgression. For Unwinnable's …

"Shadows, as a collective entity, are natural and need not be characterized as Other." Grace B. and I have…