Lou's practice is hard to categorize, which is exactly why I find it so interesting. She uses game engines, deepfakes, found footage, and AI avatars to ask something most of us feel but struggle to name: what did the internet do to us? Not what it gave us — what it did to us. To our habits, our bodies, our sense of time.

In this conversation, we get into her origin story as a gamer who hacked The Sims with her sister, why Mark Zuckerberg and Kim Kardashian keep showing up in her work as near-religious figures, how she builds with gaming assets the way a painter builds with color, and what she means when she talks about internet collapse as a subject for anthropology rather than science fiction.

This is the public version of a longer members-only conversation. Paid members get the full hour, including a deep dive into her current project —Diamonds and Dust—a virtual world built around queer Hollywood history from the 1930s.

If this conversation makes you want more, the best next step is signing up for the Killscreen newsletter at www.killscreen.com. It's free to start, and it's where I do my most serious writing on games as cultural objects.

• (00:00) - Welcome and Setup
• (01:36) - Games and Early Play
• (03:09) - Hacking The Sims
• (05:20) - From Games to Film
• (12:25) - Internet Collapse Themes
• (18:55) - Zuckerberg and Kardashians
• (25:54) - Gaming Language and Wrap Up

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

I brought together two artists who are building things inside the very systems they're critiquing. Kara Stone is a game designer based in Calgary who runs Solar Server, a solar-powered web server hosting low-carbon games from her apartment balcony. Her latest game, Known Mysteries, is set in a near-future Alberta where oil and tech have fused into something indistinguishable. Joshua Ashish Dawson is a speculative designer and filmmaker who builds fictional climate futures from CGI and live action — ghost towns in the Atacama Desert, deregulated water systems, server farms built from the copper that destroyed the communities they replaced.

In this conversation, we get into what geography gives you that abstraction doesn't, whether the medium is complicit in what it critiques, and how both of them stay sane while making work about catastrophe.

• (00:00) - Welcome and Format
• (00:51) - Tech Supply Chains and Climate
• (02:29) - Meet Kara and Her Path
• (05:08) - Solar Server Explained
• (09:15) - Designing Known Mysteries
• (15:59) - Aesthetics and Constraints
• (18:42) - Meet Joshua and Next Steps

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

In this conversation, we talk about how they built the game from YouTube tutorials in a 300-seat theater with no budget, why donkeys became their central symbol (the answer involves a 15th-century woodcut, the global skin trade, and four years of development), and how they designed a game that assumes no single person holds all of the answers — on purpose.

We also get into the political stakes of a work that keeps touring as the conversation around AI and labor keeps sharpening around it.

Read my full piece on asses.masses at killscreen.com, and subscribe to the Killscreen newsletter for new writing on games and culture every Tuesday and Thursday.

Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

Want the full conversation?  Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

• (00:00) - Listening to Games
• (00:54) - Vadim’s Origin Story
• (04:53) - Surveying Sound First Games
• (07:28) - Tech Barriers and Audio Tools
• (10:33) - Peripherals and Movement

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

In this conversation, we talk about how a childhood encounter with Katamari Damacy cracked open her sense of what games could be, why she designs explicitly for people who think games aren't for them, and what it means to put a spotlight on a single player in front of seventy strangers. We also get into the origins of Nullspace — a 60-page Google Doc called "Performance and Video Games" — and why she believes the most meaningful thing a game can do has nothing to do with winning.

If you want the full conversation — including a deep dive into game time, duration, the politics of accessibility, and what Beau Ruberg's Video Games / Avant-Garde meant for this work — that's available for Killscreen members. Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

• (00:00) - Meet Symoné and Nullspace Motel
• (01:24) - From Anthropology to Circus
• (06:24) - First Big Stage Rush
• (09:12) - Games That Changed Everything
• (16:28) - Designing Audience Play

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

TikTok rewarded all of that. This was not a coincidence.

In this episode, I'm writing about Maya Man's StarQuest, a lecture-performance I saw at LA Dance Project—a work built from 111 AI-generated eight-second clips, each manually restaged from screenshots of Dance Moms episodes, generated using Google's Veo model, and shuffled endlessly by a custom app that never plays them in the same order twice.

The piece traces a throughline from competition dance to the algorithmic logic of social media—and then turns the camera on the artist herself. When Man tried to generate a mixed-race dancer to represent her own body, the model couldn't do it. Through that failure, she found her real role in the work: not dancer, but coach. The same relationship she'd been examining in Abby Lee Miller. The same one running the internet.

I also get into Ted Chiang's argument about AI consciousness and suffering, what it means to command something that performs on your behalf, and whether the act of prompting an AI model is, in some small way, a rehearsal of the same demanding absolutism the work sets out to critique. Also, exploding video game avatars.

If this kind of cultural criticism is your thing, I write about it every week at Killscreen—experimental games, interactive art, and the questions interactive media is quietly raising about how we live. 

• (00:00) - AI Consciousness Doubts
• (00:36) - Suffering and Moral Agency
• (01:22) - Seeing Star Quest Live
• (02:48) - Dance Moms to Data Bodies
• (03:54) - Building the AI Clip Machine
• (04:54) - Coaching the Uncanny Performers
• (06:18) - What We Owe Our Creations

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

• (00:00) - Does the Story Have to Connect to the Mechanics?
• (01:55) - Cave Story, Solo Dev, and the Free-to-Play Asterisk
• (05:54) - DJing, Ambient Music, and Scoring Love Eternal with Emily Glass
• (15:17) - From Brutal Freeware to Family Drama: Building Love Eternal
• (22:58) - Making a Game With Your Brother for Eight Years
• (24:16) - Division of Labor and Improvising Scenes Together
• (25:21) - Why the Jump Feels Right: Animation, Physics, and Dream Logic
• (36:21) - Level Design by Instinct, Portland to LA, and Closing

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

In this episode, Jamin Warren sits down with Hoffman—a computer scientist and anthropologist at one of Germany’s premier supercomputing centers—to discuss his creation of the "Anthrogame." By feeding classic ethnographic texts into Large Language Models, Hoffman has built a playable Dungeon Master version of Trobriand society, where players navigate the complex social and economic rituals of the South Pacific.

We explore the intersection of worldbuilding and fieldwork, the frustration of academic reach, and whether AI can turn dense monographs into "appetizers" that make us more curious about the real world. Is anthropology the original worldbuilding discipline? And why haven't game designers tapped into the "thick description" of real cultures?

Host: Jamin Warren
Guest: Michael Hoffman (Leibniz-Rechenzentrum)

• (00:00) - Introduction: The Decline of Reading
• (00:27) - Anthropology and AI: A New Frontier
• (01:27) - Michael Hoffman's Journey
• (02:40) - The Intersection of Anthropology and Game Design
• (28:57) - Cultural Representation in Pedagogy
• (29:33) - Malinowski and the Argonauts of the Western Pacific
• (34:47) - Developing an AI-Powered Text Adventure Game
• (46:22) - Challenges and Future of AI in Anthropology

Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com 

Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★

• (00:00) - Introduction to Digital Preservation
• (00:33) - Samo's Legacy Collection and Preservation Challenges
• (05:25) - The Philosophy Behind Remasters and Ports
• (14:52) - Reflections on Time and Creative Evolution
• (28:09) - Production-Driven Game Development
• (29:16) - Architectural Influence in Game Design
• (35:08) - Intertextuality and Media Inspiration
• (44:23) - Creative Community and Future Plans

Dom Rabrun thinks that's bullshit.

The Haitian-American painter and game designer is building Vèvè-Punk: Mind Singer, a game about the Haitian Revolution that refuses to let you pick up a weapon. Instead, you navigate Saint-Domingue's 16 racial classifications through dialogue trees, where saying the wrong thing to the wrong person can get you killed. Your protagonist isn't a soldier—she's a telepath and a singer. A free woman of color with zero strength, zero dexterity, and everything on the line.

Dom's work sits at the intersection of Haitian Vodou symbolism, Basquiat's visual language, and the kind of thoughtful, conversation-driven game design you'd find in Disco Elysium. He's part of a generation of artists who grew up with games, studied painting, then realized that interactivity might be the best way to tell certain stories.

But there's no lineage for what he's doing. Black filmmakers have Oscar Micheaux, Charles Burnett, Ava DuVernay. Black game designers? They're writing that history right now.

In this conversation, we discuss why physical violence is the laziest choice in games, what it means to hold a controller and "control" someone, and how Basquiat's painting Glenn taught him to think about right-clicking on reality. We also tackle the deeper question: when you're making a game about historical trauma, about enslavement, about revolution—how do you do that without replicating the very dehumanization you're trying to critique?

About Dom Rabrun: Dom's work merges technology, storytelling, and music into a cohesive creative system. Guided by his first-generation Haitian-American heritage, conservative Christian upbringing, and 15 years of experience in IT, he's developed a philosophy called "Vèvè-Punk," blending Haitian Vodou symbolism with futuristic Afro-Caribbean themes. In 2020, his video piece Dr. LaSalle, The Spider Queen, and Me earned first prize in a juried exhibition at the Phillips Collection. He was a 2022 fellow with Black Public Media, which is now executive producing his forthcoming video game. He lives and works in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Killscreen treats games and interactive media as cultural artifacts worthy of the same analytical rigor as film, literature, and art. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts.

Links: Dom Rabrun site and YouTube
Read the full article.

If you like what you're listening to, please consider becoming a member.

We read Jason Fagone's 2010 profile of the game's creator George Petro, who understood that the gun itself had to be an object of desire, calibrated like an iPhone for immediate satisfaction. The piece examines how Buck Hunter became morally complex without trying to be: a game that presents animals as innocent, majestic creatures, then asks you to shoot them anyway while chatting with friends over beer. It's the gap between the act and the environment that creates its under-the-skin power.

Fagone traces how an arcade game designed by non-hunters became the most lucrative shooter ever made, not through narrative sophistication but through understanding something older and weirder about human psychology. The sensation of shooting in Buck Hunter feels less like a video game and more like telling someone you love a lie—a tiny thrill followed by mostly subconscious regret, justified and moved past.

Originally published in Kill Screen Issue #1, Spring 2010. Get a physical copy if you are so inspired!

Music by Shiden Beats Music from Pixabay

Sound Effect by Universfield from Pixabay
Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay
Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

In this conversation, we explore Scent—a 20-minute experience where you play a dog witnessing an unnamed war. No shooting. No saving. Just survival, souls, and the anxiety of watching violence you can't stop.

Kwan spent seven years developing Scent with no budget, transforming it from a sci-fi project about his father losing vision into a meditation on human brutality from an animal's perspective. The result premiered at Tribeca Festival 2025 and earned an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica.

But Scent is just the latest in a practice that's been questioning gaming's assumptions for over a decade. His previous game The Hallway sits in Hong Kong's M+ Museum permanent collection. Forgetter won multiple awards at international game festivals. His work has been exhibited everywhere from Ars Electronica to the Nam June Paik Art Museum.

What we discuss:

• Growing up in Hong Kong game arcades without actually playing—just watching couples sit in racing games, viewing virtual Tokyo sunsets like they were on dates
• Why he moved from filmmaking to experimental games and what cinema taught him about interactive storytelling
• The design philosophy of "witness without power"—rejecting superhuman abilities and open worlds for fragile bodies and limited control
• How he creates psychological immersion through grass sounds and spatial audio instead of haptics and high-tech solutions
• Working on rails: why Scent is structured like a long cinematic take where you follow the dog's back through horror
• The philosophy of keeping violence off-screen—learning from Zone of Interest and the power of implied brutality
• Why he calls it an "interactive cinematic experience" more than a game, and what his Steam-native students think about that distinction
• Teaching international students at SAIC who come from different gaming cultures—China's lack of console culture versus Western expectations
• The strange ethics of trigger boxes: if you don't start the game, the war won't happen
• His interest in cloud streaming to remove Scent from Steam's expectations and make it browser-accessible
• Why short cinematic games should exist as a format—rejecting the assumption that meaningful experiences require 25+ hours

Alan Kwan is an artist working at the intersection of cinema and videogames. Originally from Hong Kong, he holds an MFA from MIT and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His experimental games and VR installations have been exhibited internationally and collected by major institutions including M+ Museum. His latest work, Scent, premiered at Tribeca Festival 2025.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Scent (2025) - available at [link]
• Forgetter (2021) with Allison Yang
• The Hallway (M+ Museum collection)
• Bad Trip (2011-12) - his first lifelogging game project
• Zone of Interest (film)
• Prix Ars Electronica
• Tribeca Festival
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

Links:

• Alan's work: https://www.kwanalan.com/
• Killscreen newsletter: killscreen.com

We explore the concept of inside-out research —diving deep into the "innards" of a game's server to map player traces—and discuss why the ephemeral nature of digital play requires a new movement called anticipatory archaeology.

Key Discussion Points

• From Fieldwork to Digital Spaces: Florence describes her journey from working on London construction sites as a heritage consultant to discovering the "archaeogaming" community on the Internet.
• The Elden Ring Survey: A deep dive into Florence’s "laborious" process of mapping the Church of Elleh using the player’s foot as a unit of measurement.
• Deciphering Player Traces: How bloodstains and messages left by "people who play videogames"  serve as digital artifacts of human activity and server algorithms.
• Generative Archaeology Games: An exploration of procedural generation and games like Blue Prince and Outer Wilds that encourage players to role-play as interpreters of material culture.
• The Ethics of Recording: Why we must treat the "assemblage of play" (the player, hardware, and software) as a significant cultural form  before it disappears into the ether.

Mentioned in this Episode

• Elden Ring (FromSoftware)
• Nothing Beside Remains (Florence Smith Nicholls)
• Blue Prince (Dogubomb)
• Curse of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope)
• The Assemblage of Play by T.L. Taylor

Notable Quotes

Music by Nick Sylvester. Hosted by Jamin Warren.

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Ghantous admits he's afraid of hardware. Despite this—or because of it—he's spent the past year confronting the physical reality behind our screens. Using Unity and Unreal Engine not to make games but to interrogate them, he reveals how ultra-pure silica mined in North Carolina becomes both microchips and golf course sand. The work forces us to reckon with what he calls the "big sludge of media" that surrounds us—accessible on one hand, black-boxed on the other.

We discuss his childhood moving between Oman, the Middle East, and North America, and how this itinerant experience shaped his understanding of sand's perpetual movement. He describes printing UV images onto silicon wafers—the raw material of microchips—creating what he calls "portals" framed by rings of sand scanned in his studio. Behind the cleared dust, ethereal reimaginings of Botticelli paintings emerge.

The conversation toggles between pleasure and guilt, much like the two voices in his video work—a synthetic childlike inquisitor and the artist's own voice. We talk about Chinese sand dredgers "editing the map" at planetary scale, golfers trapped in bunkers, and future projects where "Hello World" might take millions of years to print in deep time computing.

"I'm not standing on some moral high ground," Ghantous tells us. "I'm struggling with the temptations, both for new things and for fascinating things, but also trying not to look at my phone more."

Currently teaching at ETH Zürich, Ghantous hints at future works: games affecting one another across distances, sculptures bringing earthliness and computation together, seeking new languages for the consequences of our actions on other parts of the planet.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

We had a great conversation with Lauren back in 2021 and have featured more of her work here.

Photography by David Evan McDowell.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

In this talk, we spoke with Mario about his design process of games and live-action role-play experiences, how he incorporates research on politics and labor into his creative practice, and how he is shifting from commercial work to personal practice in the fine-art world.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

Sam and Andy sat down with us to speak about their 3D modeling software from childhood, why improv comedy is seminal for their practice, and the game they’re designing—fingers crossed, the first of many.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

Here, we speak with Danielle about the archive as an always-moving thing, why she’s attracted to low-fi aesthetics, and her new fascination with pirates.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

Rachel’s new project, I’m my loving memory, is in Rhizome’s traveling show, World on a Wire.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

Salome told us about her hyper-real upbringing in Las Vegas, the trials of working within the uncharted territory of art and tech, and the power for participatory work to destabilize the long-held role of the artist.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

Gayatri walked us through her immersive installation at TENT Rotterdam—the latest iteration of The Travelling Hand—which is on view until February 17th, 2021. Made up of a constellation of stories about religion, colonial/imperial power, archaeology, geopolitics, marginal histories, and resistance, the game board is set for three players. Each play is unique and lasts one hour, and there are multiple storylines to explore at the same time.

Here, Gayatri speaks with us about the simultaneous specificity and freedom that comes with working in games, disrupting western notions of time and progression, and how the concept of shapeshifting guides her work.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

Along with James George and Alexander Porter, Yasmin is also the Co-Founder of Scatter, a New York-based entertainment studio that creates tools and collaborates with artists to ‘volumetric filmmaking:’ storytelling through immersive technologies. Scatter’s Depthkit allows its users to create accessible storytelling experiences through 3D capture.

Here, Yasmin tells us about how working in a museum space led her to spatial and volumetric filmmaking, demystifying the role of creative technologist, and what it’s like to run a tech company fueled by creativity—one that continually redefines itself alongside its community.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

As Nicole embarks on two long-term interactive projects—one is an arts-funded experimental game that uses voice technology, and the other is a commercial indie game—she finds herself more and more interested in immersing herself within the world of games. Here, we speak with Nicole about what distinguishes the industry of video games and that of creative technology, the particularities of one’s voice as a method to activate technology, and how behind every digital project is a living, breathing human.

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

So when they started ustwo games six years ago, there was already a lot of accrued internal knowledge about how to work with small screens. ustwo games’ Monument Valley was a smash hit for a few reasons. It’s delightfully colored. It uses space in a novel way. And most importantly, it’s simple! That’s not a pejorative. It’s very easy to understand almost immediately. In Monument Valley, you’re a silent princess on a quest for forgiveness. In Monument Valley 2, you play as a mother and daughter on an adventure together. We spoke to Lea Schönfelder, a game designer on Monument Valley 2, about the differences between games and experiences, the difficulty of designing something easy, and how limits foster elegant design.

--

Resources:

+ ustwo games

+ Monument Valley 1 & 2

Host:

Jamin Warren (@jaminwarren)

--

Credits:

Anthony Martinez, producer

Nick Sylvester, music

--

About Killscreen

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the dialogue and practice of games and play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of games, play, and culture through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and highlight creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Follow us:

Website, Twitter, Instagram

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

We recorded this long before QAnon took hold and the President of the United States was advising people to inject disinfectant into our veins. Since then the relevance of conspiracy theories has become more important. This was recorded live in 2016 at the Killscreen Festival.

When I moved to California from New York a couple years ago, I’ll never forget driving through Texas. It was huge and expansive. It was quiet. It was dark. It was mysterious.

And for anyone else who’s explored America, you know, it’s a really really weird place. For this podcast, I staged a conversation between two people who are making beautiful work at the intersection of magical realism and Americana: Jake Elliott of Cardboard Computer, the studio behind Kentucky Route Zero; and Joseph Fink, creator of the podcast Welcome To Night Vale.

Jake’s approach to mystery made him a perfect pair for Joseph Fink, co-creator the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. It’s about a fictional radio broadcast reporting on the strange events that occur within it. It’s been describer as "caught somewhere between Weird Twitter and 'Tales of the Unexplained'.”

-Jamin Warren

For more, check us out at Killscreen.com

--

Resources:

Cardboard Computer | Kentucky Route Zero

Welcome to Nightvale

Number Stations

Credits:

Anthony Martinez, producer

Nick Sylvester, music

--

About Killscreen

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the dialogue and practice of games and play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of games, play, and culture through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and highlight creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Follow us:

Website, Twitter, Instagram

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.

--

Resources:

+ The Stanley Parable

+ The Beginner's Guide

Host:

Jamin Warren (@jaminwarren)

--

Credits:

Anthony Martinez, producer

Nick Sylvester, music

--

About Killscreen

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the dialogue and practice of games and play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of games, play, and culture through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and highlight creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Follow us:

Website, Twitter, Instagram

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

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She pushed the museum to expand design objects like Eames chairs into the digital domain. Under her guidance, they acquired everything from the @ symbol, and typefaces like Helvetica, to the original set of emoji released in Japan in 1999. In 2012, the museum did something different. They selected 14 videogames for their permanent collection. Some games you’ll know. The Sims. Pac-Man. Some games you might not. For example, Passage, Jason Rohrer’s game about life, death, and marriage. 

-Jamin Warren

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Resources:

+ Architecture and Design at MoMA

+ Applied Design exhibition

Host:

Jamin Warren (@jaminwarren)

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Credits:

Anthony Martinez, producer

Nick Sylvester, music

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About Killscreen

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the dialogue and practice of games and play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of games, play, and culture through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and highlight creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Follow us:

Website, Twitter, Instagram

This episode was hosted by Jamin Warren, founder of Killscreen. Music by Nick Sylvester.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at info@killscreen.com.

Killscreen is an arts and culture organization committed to advancing the practice of interdisciplinary play. Founded in 2010, we seek to drive the intersection of design, culture, and impact through cross-disciplinary collaboration to show the world why play matters. We want to break down the barriers that have traditionally segregated play and games from other creative disciplines and foster a diverse community of creators with ambassadorial relationships to the world around us.

Sign up for our newsletter.