Tears for Yuna: I've always loved reading and talking with critic Leigh Alexander about Final Fantasy games, and her terrific new article about replaying Final Fantasy X is no exception.
A Childhood Spent With Computers: Writer/Kotaku contributor Leigh Alexander has published an ebook titled Breathing Machine: A Memoir of Computers. It's all about growing up alongside the computers of the 1980s and 90s, and it's good! You can get it at Amazon or a bunch of other places, and read an excerpt here.
This Is What Video Games Are: A Dispatch From a Crowded Gaming Expo
“Sometimes I’m tempted to just, like, lie,” laughs a colleague across a table from me.
Will The 21st Century Be Defined By Games?
On Monday, Kotaku ran Eric Zimmerman's Manifesto for a Ludic Century, a treatise on the importance of games as a paradigm for understanding the 21st century. Eric outlined systems thinking, play and design as crucial future literacies and argued that games as an art form should not have to be justified.
The Nirvana of Video Games? Video games need a grunge movement, or at least that's what Kotaku contributor and 90s aficionado Leigh Alexander argues in this excellent piece over at Gamasutra. It's a version of a talk she recently gave at a UK games convention, and it involves Paula Abdul.
The Weird Escapism Of Life Sims
The cash machine showed my balance at 245,000. It was the most money I’d ever collected. I’d already paid off a good portion of my balance in sensible parcels — you know, skim a little bit off of each week’s income and set it aside, chip meaningfully at your debt before you even realize money’s missing. It gave me…
Final Fantasy VII is out on Steam, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to point readers to "The Final Fantasy VII Letters," a series Leigh Alexander and I wrote back in 2011. She was a FFVII veteran and I'd never played, and together we went on a journey that changed us forever. Or, well, we had fun, anyway.
Man Cave Fan Fiction
About two years after The End came a memorable day: Mark unearthed an incredible stash. Coarse-knuckled and goose-prickling under a wan, strange sun, he hunched over a small old dumpster he found behind the old Winn Dixie, and pried away at it. It took some time, as the thing had corroded shut. The color and iron…
Over at Gamasutra, longtime Kotaku contributor Leigh Alexander has written a harsh, well-argued critique of the Xbox One, calling it a desperate prayer to stop time. "Not only am I unmoved by this 'groundbreaking' reveal," she writes, "but I can't imagine who reasonably would care—except for the most high-end, most…
'Now Is The Best Time': A Critique Of BioShock Infinite
I always found Metal Gear Solid 4 to be not a brilliant game, but a fascinating one. A mad ideologue glutted with tech retreads, again and again, the narrative he's always dreamed of, and has never been able to get quite right.
Why I Cried at GDC
I did a lot of crying at GDC this year.
Leigh Alexander writes about the games we play to feel in control while our messy, ugly lives buzz in the background.
I Wish I Were Good At Video Games So I Could Be Cool Like People In 90s Movies
Having Mad Skills is a huge part of the video game culture mythos. Do you remember the future promised to us in the 1990s, where every TV show had a kid just like you "going in the game," crowned with a giant jutting VR helmet? Remember all the kids in action kneepads, waving power-gloved fingers, conducting the…
The Beautifully Melancholy Chrono Cross Was Unfairly Overlooked
Japanese RPGs used to be a lot more controversial. Or maybe it was just because I was a teenager during the genre's heyday – you know, when Final Fantasy games flew off shelves, when hours of CG cutscenes featuring teary-eyed androgynes were considered breathtaking rather than tiresome — and teenagers like to argue…
Why the Chrono Cross Soundtrack is My Favorite
The Dating Secrets of Your Favorite Video Game Characters
Nathan Drake has recently purchased a new MacBook, after talking to several of his friends about it for several weeks. He has done more discussing the MacBook than he has actually using it, and secretly he enjoys causing the icons to sort of ‘pop' along the bar at the bottom of the screen more than he enjoys operating…
"Stuff Gamers Say"
Kotaku columnist Leigh Alexander has put together a funny collection of "Stuff Gamers Say" over at the mumbling/entertaining/frustrating online magazine Thought Catalog. Top points for "Time to Crate" reference.
Last Year's Best, New(ish) Video Game Ideas
2011 was yet another good year for video games, but on its face it was a little predictable.
I Love Metal Gear, But I Don't Want a Metal Gear Solid 5.
I am pretty much the biggest Metal Gear Solid fan there is, and I really, really hope that Metal Gear Solid 5 doesn't happen.
I’m Tired of Being a “Woman in Games.” I’m a Person.
Sexism in games remains an unsolved problem, it's clear. Some of you will be nodding along, and some of you will hear the s-word and roll your eyes and go, "oh, this again?" You guys can piss off-–go click on some new screenshots or a trailer consisting of a release date slowly fading into view. You're hopeless.