And why you might want to too.
Despite the irrefutable advantages of electronics versus their less advanced counterparts, there are certain positives to so-called ‘lower tech’ tools versus their silicon-laden cousins. We all know that moving parts have more of an opportunity to break, but they’re often easier to fix. There’s something almost indescribably satisfying about a well designed hardware product or an elegant mechanical system that is difficult to replicate on a screen. Sometimes tactile beats out bleeding edge technology.
One such category that I’ve recently come to appreciate is everyday and at-the-ready notetaking and journaling. Once you get over your disinterest in picking up a…
Will Bethesda games be exclusive to Xbox now?
After months of inevitability, Microsoft officially acquired ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. One of the biggest acquisitions in gaming. Bethesda is a long heralded game developer known for bringing to life fantastic RPGs. There’s a fanatical fanbase behind Bethesda games and most gamers find themselves gravitating to at least one of Bethesda’s RPG entries.
That’s not even to mention the incredible critical success of games that aren’t quite as well known outside of the gaming community like Dishonored and Wolfenstein. …
The tragic irony of the availability of widespread information.
The internet has long been a place for massive amounts of information. A great encyclopedia for information on everything that humans have been able to learn. A place where we can keep our shared consciousness outside of written words on physical pages or verbal stories shared between people.
And yet, despite all of the valid information that remains available for consumption on the internet, there exists a massive pile of misinformation and disinformation. We’ll talk about misinformation first.
Misinformation is factually false information. It’s knowledge that is developed and shared which doesn’t exist exclusively in the realm of truth. Misinformation…
How the internet continues to be a wealth of knowledge for those who seek it.
In one of my final classes in college, I remember a professor urging us all to continue to learn as we stepped outside of the world of structure and into the world of day jobs. He urged us to find something we enjoyed doing rather than something we just accepted as a professions that will carry us through our lives. I suppose it’s the job of the educator to promote continued education, but the impact it had on me was lasting. …
Why games are a unique form of entertainment.
Video games have been, for quite a while now, a popular medium for expression. But the age-old question always arises: are they art? Hundreds of years after painting and sculpting survived this debate, and decades after film and TV weathered it, video games are the newest form of entertainment to barge through years of preconceived notions to convince the world that they belong in the same realms as the aforementioned media.
With a solid foothold in the world of popular culture, it’s not a question of if, but rather when video games will be accepted into the same echelon of…
How a decade of anticipation was destined to lead to disappointment. And how it’s even worse than that.
Cyberpunk 2077 was released across the world on Thursday, December 10th. A game that was originally revealed to be in development by CD Projekt in 2012, the game rose to immeasurable levels of promise following a wildly ambitious demo that was shown behind closed doors to members of the press at E3 2018 and released to the public shortly thereafter. The 48-minute long demo gave viewers a glimpse into Night City and V’s story that lived within it. In the following years, the game has only deepened consumers’ enthusiasm for the end product. A few more gameplay demos and a…
How Android is slipping in one of its cornerstones.
“Be together. Not the same.” Android’s fleeting motto in an ad campaign that ran a couple of years ago really spoke to me. As a longtime Android-user and iPhone-dismisser, my reasoning for sticking to the operating system was so succinctly summed up in just five words. It was an outright jab at a company that’s known for restricting its users’ ability to alter the way their devices function. It was also a celebration for the operating system, reminding its users that although they didn’t converse via blue bubbles, they were still one diverse community.
To me, the “Be together. Not…
Netflix, Instagram, and YouTube — anything that demands your attention — are competitors too
Worldwide pandemics are objectively bad. Period. (Wear your mask. Keep your distance. Visit cdc.gov or who.int for more information). But we’d be remiss if we failed to recognize that this nightmare of a year has springboarded some lucky sectors into an unexpected wealth of opportunities. One such sector being gaming, and in the modern age of online consumption where everything is battling for your attention, video games are competing with more “mainstream” avenues for engagement whose sole focus is to hold onto your attention. …
The PS5 and (especially) the Xbox Series X bring in the next generation of gaming, and the load times are insane.
The days of deciding which game to play based on which game is already open are close to being over. For quick sessions, it’s not uncommon for me to decide with my friends that we are going to play one game versus another simply because one or two of us already have it loaded. Thankfully, given the technology of the newest generation of consoles, these days are numbered.
With the release of the Xbox Series X/S and the PS5, load times are finally brought to the modern era with the use of speedy Solid State Drives (SSD) rather than their…
I think I’m probably not unlike many of my peers in this.
I used to really consider the amount of time I would get out of a game when informing my purchase decision. If all goes well and the game is good, I’d have hours upon hours of enjoyment ahead of me. If, for whatever reason, it was a bad game, I would need to get creative; to find the best thing to do in the game and hope that it provided me with some amount of entertainment. Luckily, I grew up in an era where games media was beginning to flourish. I rarely had instances where my purchasing decisions were the…
Jacob Mitchener
(Mostly) tech writer based in NYC. Other interests include movies, games, music, soccer, and traveling. You’ll find a little bit of all of that here.
