At age 17, Ovidio Cartagena started his art career with The Lord of the Rings by creating a bad fan calendar. As he told me, everything about it was off: The days for the months were mislabeled and so was each weekday. His peers were supportive, but even the art...
Pokimane is streaming less on Twitch, but I’m seeing more of her than ever
Imane “Pokimane” Anys is one of the most recognizable faces on Twitch. The content creator got her start streaming on the platform in 2013, playing games like League of Legends. Over the past decade, she’s gone on to co-found OfflineTV, a premier content creation group, and has amassed a following...
The versatile Cypher System powers tabletop adventures across genres
When an internal document from Wizards of the Coast outlining proposed changes to Dungeons & Dragons’ Open Gaming License leaked in January, fan uproar led to record sales of rival tabletop role-playing games. One of the winners was the Cypher System from Monte Cook Games, which earned about three years’...
We asked the Olympics why their official esports are so weird
On March 1, the International Olympic Committee announced the first details of the Olympic Esports Series 2023, the next step in the venerable sporting body’s tentative move into the esports arena. (It previously hosted an Olympic Virtual Series in tandem with the Tokyo 2020 games.) Beginning with qualification this month...
AI can’t replace humans yet — but if the WGA writers don’t win, it might not matter
The first of what is sure to be many labor protests against artificial intelligence has already begun. It started with Hollywood writers who wanted to make sure they won’t be forced to work with — or be replaced by — AI tools like ChatGPT. But it has already grown beyond...
The Mass Effect modding scene did what BioWare couldn’t
Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the remaster nearly a decade in the making, struck a nerve when it was finally released. Fans were thrilled to return to spacefaring as Commander Shepard, but a minor DLC from the first game, Pinnacle Station, was missing. BioWare later revealed that the code for that...
Walt Disney cheated his animators out of profits — and their strike changed the world
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike just shy of a month now, with no foreseeable end in sight. Motivated by a breakdown in negotiations with Hollywood studios over pensions, residual compensation for streaming productions, health care, and protections for writers rooms in the wake of AI,...
Meet the inventors making Hyrule’s most complicated contraptions
When Nintendo first started showing footage from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Hyrule’s hero navigated the world with simple vehicles and gliders. I would have never imagined that Link would eventually cruise around in a hot rod that spits flames — and instead of killing the environment...
How QTCinderella became the heart of the streaming community
Dragging streamers out from their respective dens and into the real-life limelight is a somewhat thankless job. Still, content creator and consummate event planner QTCinderella has made a name for herself doing just that. Last weekend, she put on one of the largest streamer-run events in content creation, The Streamer...
Can you create a fighting game character so strong it destroys computers?
While most “who would win” battles take place in the unfettered realm of the imagination, in 1999 a group of anonymous software developers released a little program called MUGEN that lets you make them a little more real. At first glance, MUGEN looks like one of the zillions of lousy...