So you want to get into anime. Buckle in. From outside, it looks like a big, scary and potentially fatal undertaking. And that’s because it is.

Overwatch’s one-year anniversary event is live—that means tons of new Legendary skins, three new arena maps and a slew of new bringing-me-to-tears adorable dancing emotes. Happy birthday, Overwatch, and may each year bring a new iteration of Sombra doing the Shuffle.

Before you start building your own worlds in Lego’s answer to Minecraft, you’ve got to learn the roles and earn some gold bricks. Let’s take a look at the opening moments of Lego Worlds.

Predictably, several 18+ sex role-play rooms have made their way into Overwatch’s new “custom games” lobby.

Welcome to Compete, a joint venture between Deadspin and Kotaku dedicated to covering the best, worst, dumbest, most thrilling, most interesting, and, generally, the most stupefying—in the better and worse senses of the word—in esports and competitive gaming. We’re just getting started here, but hope to make this a…

Kotaku is putting together a video team of fresh voices with a creative spark. Could that be you?

Kotaku and Deadspin are teaming up to cover esports, and we’re looking for some fresh talent to help make it happen.

Did you know we have a store? We have a store. You can buy hoodies, stickers and now this new t-shirt as well.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time playing Destiny, a video game in which players travel the galaxy watching internet commenters write things like “nobody plays Destiny.” But what about Kotaku’s staff? How much time have we wasted on this terrible, wonderful game?

Kotaku is looking to add some fresh voices to our ranks. Could that be you?

Today on Highlight Reel we have fast Zenyattas, beyblades of death, World War 1 physics and much more!

Today on Highlight Reel we have good bones and calcium, Mei bullfights, gravity deflects, smooth operators, and more!

Though Nintendo’s Mario Maker website makes it easier to find cool levels, it remains woefully incomplete. Where’s the ability to make playlists? Search for titles by name? Thankfully, fans are filling in the blanks.

We last checked in on Rain World a little over a year ago, with its nifty platforming and cute little Slugcat star.Yesterday at E3, half of the game’s two-man dev team showed off the progress they’ve made since then.

Yes, that’s Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates pretending to walk around in a level from DOOM and firing a shotgun at a demon marine.

As anyone who’s both played The Division and been to New York can instantly recognise, the developers did a pretty good job nailing the look and feel of the city’s streets. Which is cool for tourists and residents, but what about cartographers?

When it comes to engrossing the player into an interactive game world, the choice of perspective can have a massive impact on how gamers experience the various scenarios they find themselves in. Perspective serves as the graphical gateway into the virtual environment that players shall be exploring and shapes the way…

NOTE: This article was taken directly from my academic paper, “Effort Upon Effort: Japanese Influences in Western First-Person Shooters”, which was originally published on December 17, 2015.