GeekExtreme: geek culture, games and tech

One button slows the world. You float through the air, picking off enemies who are suddenly crawling through molasses, and the whole firefight turns into something …

The four elements of game mechanics, in the most widely taught framework, are mechanics, aesthetics, story, and technology. That's the Elemental Tetrad from Jesse Schell's The …

I went looking for a quick answer to what I thought was a dumb question, and it turned into a proper rabbit hole. Because here's the …

Every mechanics list on the internet claims to be complete, which is funny, because the field itself can't agree on what counts as a mechanic. There's …

Game mechanics examples from popular video games read like a punch list of things you've done a thousand times: lock-on targeting came from Ocarina of Time …

I was recently conducting lifestyle and career placement interviews for a technical role. One of the candidates leaned back and stated with complete confidence that he …

I went down a rabbit hole the other night and came out somewhere strange. Picture a student, any student, anywhere. They hit a math problem they …

You can outsource your thinking, but you can't outsource your understanding. Andrej Karpathy's line keeps getting quoted online, and every time I see it, I think …