We’re now three months in, and the social media-based “consumer revolt” against the “progressive agenda” of the gaming press, known as Gamergate, shows no signs of abating. I’ve gotten to know a lot o

October 1, 2014 Kiss the Girl By Gabe I spent last night playing Shadow of Mordor and I’m really digging it. I have to call out the tutorial as being especially well done. Any game like this has to te

I'd cleaved apart 200 or so bad guys before I had the grim epiphany that a video game had turned me into an expert in insurgency. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor , the new video game that serves as con

After playing the alpha and beta, I'm now enjoying retail Destiny on PS4. It's got some neat mechanics that distinguish it from the typical CoD/BF flavor of FPS that dominates AAA. However, I'm not go

By David Cain / raptitude.com Well I’m in the working world again. I’ve found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it’s returning to normal after my nine months of traveling. Because I had been living quite a different lifestyle while I was away, this…

Terrorism can never be defeated by military means alone. But how do you go about negotiating with people who have blood on their hands? Britains chief broker of the Northern Ireland peace deal explains how it can and must be done (for a start, always shake hands).

There was Gov. John Hickenlooper standing on the steps of the Colorado Capitol last week, making a speech holding a live baby goat calmly resting in his arms. And before you even ask: No, it had nothing to do with legal marijuana. But it was one of the few things, frankly, taking place around the…

The Double Up bug lurking inthe software of Game King video poker machines survived undetected for nearly seven years, in part because the steps to reproduce it were so complex. John Kane and Andre Nestor experimented until they couldtrigger it at will.

For any traditional protest movement, a front-page story in America’s leading newspaper linking it with death threats, harassment and terror threats should be a death knell. But this may not be the ca

This week, feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian cancelled a university speaking engagement after threats that it would be met with a shooting spree. The news seems like a stark and spectacularly grim esca

Senator Elizabeth Warren scarcely requires an introduction. She is the single most exciting Democrat currently on the national stage. Her differentness from the rest of the political profession is sta

An illustrated depiction of a misogynist being horrible to women online. Image by Cei Willis Brianna Wu is a developer and writer who's penned pieces on the gender imbalance in modern video games and

2008 Presidential County Election Results. Map from New York Times. Hale County in west central Alabama and Bamberg County in southern South Carolina are 450 miles apart. Both counties have a populati

When Ground Zero was finally cleared after the fall of the twin towers, New Yorkers trusted that thoughtful, ambitious urban design could make the city whole again. Why have they been so badly let down?

In a society that demands sons at almost any cost, some families are cutting their daughters hair short and giving them male names.

Billions of dollars are spent on experts who claim they can forecast whats around the corner, in business, finance and economics. Most of them get it wrong. Now a groundbreaking study has unlocked the secret: it is possible to predict the future and a new breed of superforecasters knows how to do…

WHEN Activision, a big games publisher, released Destiny in September 2014, it was not just covered in the gaming press. Many newspapers commented on the game's eye-watering budget, reported to be aro

There comes a time in the life of every aspiring journalist when he must put himself at risk of great personal peril in order to bring you a major developing story. Some go to treacherous riot zones a

I often say I’m a video game culture writer, but lately I don’t know exactly what that means. ‘Game culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackli

I told a story about my experiences with Fallout: New Vegas and how the game helped me explore and come to terms with my bisexuality at PAX Prime. The experience was greatly facilitated through the pa

When I was five, my mother brought the Gerber baby home from the hospital. At least that's what I thought — Raymond looked like the baby on the Gerber baby food jars when he was tiny. He was born with

Joshua Tucker: The following is a guest post from political scientists Kyle Dropp (Dartmouth College) Joshua D. Kertzer (Harvard University) and Thomas Zeitzoff (Princeton University). ***** Since Rus

(Photo By A screenshot from Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs Women in Video Games series, featuring an ad campaign for Hitman: Blood Money with sexualised images of dead women. Image: Screenshot) Hello, a

T here’s a hot trend among a vocal minority of gamers right now: the harassment of women developers and critics. Of course, this sort of thing is not new in tech – or, let’s face it, across the intern

Incredible amounts of money invite incredulity. Last week, many media commentators found themselves in disbelief: In a deal worth more than $1 billion , Amazon acquired Twitch—a company and website th

I've decided to devote today's column to a topic we all know and love: automotive styling. Now, you may not be aware of this, but I happen to be something of an expert on automotive styling, thanks to

The hermit set out of camp at midnight, carrying his backpack and his bag of break-in tools, and threaded through the forest, rock to root to rock, every step memorized. Not a boot print left behind.

The past few weeks have been thoroughly depressing and disheartening. Starting with an utterly awful revenge-porn fuelled attack on a female game developer, horror has piled upon horror as a small but

Under Jewish law, a woman who wants out of her marriage cant just call 1-800-DIVORCE. The man has to initiate. And sometimes he needs a little persuasion. Maybe a visit from henchmen with cattle prods. Or the old Taser-to-the-balls trick. After a few hours of this kind of torture, the stubborn…

There is a tacit agreement among children to wait until they are grown to start killing one another, and when this is violated we call it the unimaginable. We say, I never thought this kind of thing could happen here. But at some point in the past 20 years, it began to seem, not just imaginable, but…

Why are Russians dying in numbers, and at ages, and of causes never seen in any other country that is not, by any standard definition, at war?

Its hard to learn a new language. But its way harder to learn a new culture.

Behind the nations closed doors, with YouTube.

The first months of legal marijuana have laid bare a socio-economic fault line.

In 1938 Harvard University began following 268 male undergraduate students and kicked off the longest-running longitudinal studies of human development in history. The study’s goal was to determine as

Fans of the Tomb Raider series were upset when it was announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be an Xbox exclusive upon release. Why would Square Enix turn its back on PlayStation 4 customers? Wh

My hands are behind my back, I said. Im not resisting. Im not resisting. At which point one officer said: Youre resisting. Stop resisting.

Guardians of the Galaxy has enjoyed critical success, with 92% "fresh" on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes , and incredible commercial success, as it's destroyed August box office records . It was also co-w

As some of you may know, I recently spent a few weeks in Greece. I live in the Washington, D.C. area, and because my G650 was out for an oil change, I had to fly commercial. My itinerary was D.C.>Pari