Writing Portfolio
I’m lying prone on a hill overlooking one of the many ramshackle towns that dot the island map of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Nestled against a nearby tree, one of my squadmates scopes a couple of solitary houses sticking out of the hills to our East. We had heard gunfire recently from that […] Read More
One of the main NPCs in Destiny 2 isn’t one of the Guardians, those beings granted immortality by a giant alien orb known as the Traveler, but a mortal human woman named Suraya Hawthorne. Previously a lone wanderer outside of the walls of the Last City, Suraya helps the power-stricken Guardians regain […] Read More
Bioshock Infinite’s floating city of Columbia is a fantasy. It’s a fantasy not only because it’s a picturesque turn-of-the century cluster of islands floating effortlessly through the clouds, but also because it presents an idyllic and carefree society -one whose white citizens are supported off the labor and oppression of its […] Read More
NetherRealm’s Injustice 2 is ostensibly a game about a group of superheroes getting together to fight an arch-villain named Brainiac. Brainiac threatens to abduct several cities before destroying Earth, but that dangling sword of Damocles is overshadowed by a more personal moral conflict—one carried over from the first Injustice—the clash between Batman’s strict […] Read More
Nintendo’s Arms is a game about punching opponents with cartoonish, springy appendages where regular, non-extendable arms would normally go. In it, neon emblazoned characters duke it out on a series of brightly lit stages for the honor of winning the Grand Prix. And that’s it… unless you dig a little deeper. As […] Read More
This September saw the largest ever prison work strike in American history. On September 9th, the 45th anniversary of the Attica Uprising, 24,000 prisoners at 29 prisons across the country refused to go to work. They spent the fall protestingworking conditions, wages, security and a plethora of other concerns. Prison protests […] Read More
Prey’s Typhon monsters are seriously creepy. Whether it’s a run-in with a duplicitous mimic, a stalking phantom or those eerie, confounding telepaths, you’re likely to come out unnerved by the encounter. Their gooey dripping profiles and low roaring static background noises make them distinctly uncomfortable to be around. (Which is […] Read More
Looking back at the spy genre’s vast catalogue of films, novels and games, it’s hard not to notice the paucity of black leads. When it comes down to who gets to play the tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy, the answer that invariably comes back each time is: white male. IO […] Read More
Bungie, by presenting a narrative paint-job for Destiny’s multiplayer, takes a departure from its previous first-person shooters. It marries its main storyline – about a humanity overwhelmed by darkness, staring down the end of its own existence – with a plotless and irreverent multiplayer mode. By doing so, it reveals the […] Read More
Though it may seem silly, I find the ease with which I can buy video games to be a useful metric of my success as an adult. The frictionless access to digital storefronts and the spending money to use on them has not always been available to me. Before I […] Read More
During a recent session playing Arkane’s Dishonored 2 I found myself stuffed into the attic crawl space of the Addermire Institute with my dead lover’s heart in my hand. Aside from the creepy sentimental value, I was using it to spy out the collectible runes and bone charm power-ups scattered around the building. […] Read More
Over the past few years, there has been notable improvement to the range of representation in games. Last year alone saw two separate big-budget titles featuring black protagonists, Mafia 3 and Watch Dogs 2-an embarrassment of riches, compared with the last few decades. As we begin to see more characters in games who […] Read More
The cost of modernization has driven people into cities where we earn increasingly isolated livings. A person feels as alone in their car crawling along in gridlocked traffic as they do on a crowded subway, headphones serving as a seal against the noise and the crowds. These and other daily necessities of city […] Read More
The recently released first-person shooter, Titanfall 2 has you playing as the novice pilot of a “Titan,” a two-story-tall military robot that can be climbed into and controlled. In Titanfall 1 your robot was effectively a (pretty cool) power-up to be used during multiplayer matches. But the sequel’s added single player campaign has you […] Read More
Science fiction works best when it uses fantastic worlds to comment on our real one. Paul Verhoeven’s dystopic run of films in the 1980s were a reaction to the rise of neoliberalism and corporate recklessness. Star Trek used its diverse cast to battle the hegemony of the 1960s TV landscape. Black Mirror uses its Twilight […] Read More
Playdead’s Inside and Id Software’s Doom were lauded on release for smart game design, sharp aesthetic execution, and for some pretty clever mechanics. But both also have something to say about the way we recklessly allow technology to consume ourselves in the name of progress. Over the last century, new technologies have again and again […] Read More
In December 1890, a group of artists decided to break off from the well-established Paris Salon — the dominant venue for artists to exhibit their work at the time — and start their own exhibition. They later became known as the Impressionists, whose experimental and unorthodox approach to painting helped […] Read More
I recently watched Breaking a Monster, a documentary by Luke Meyer about the band Unlocking the Truth, made up of three 13-year-old black kids from Brooklyn who started a metal band that rapidly skyrocketed to success. The film tracks Malcolm Brickhouse, Jarad Dawkins, and Alex Atkins during their first year as the […] Read More
Games have long relied on the narrative of heroic struggle against overwhelming odds to support their most popular mechanic: shooting men and collecting loot. Whether the villain is an evil wizard bent on world domination, hordes of inhuman zombies, or just brown-skinned soldiers, they all represent interchangeable ciphers ready to […] Read More
The Fallout franchise of games take place in an alternate universe, one in which the United States totally embraced nuclear weapons and technology after winning World War 2 without ever evolving from the culture and politics of the 1950′s and post-war American life in general. 100 years into this future, […] Read More