Escapist #225: Electric Soul

For all their supposed superior intelligence, robots can be pretty stupid. They may be handy if you need someone to calculate pi to the thousandth place, but when it comes to the really tricky questions, they don’t have a clue. Present them with a paradox and they’ll blow a gasket. Read them a sonnet and steam will shoot from their ears. They can plot the very vectors of time and space, but they just can’t fathom “this emotion you hu-mons call … love.” You’d think that with all their advanced circuitry, they could just Google it.

Escapist #223: M is for Massive

In some ways, “massive” is the perfect word to describe online gaming. It communicates a certain heft – a suggestion that our games have not just become larger, but gained shape and substance. As massive gaming models have become more prevalent, the term has only increased in usage, finding its way into a bevy of acronyms each more weighty than the last: MMORPG, MMOFPS, MMORTS, etc. Even in debates on how best to classify these games – do we stick with the oddly truncated “MMO” or the accurate but somehow lopsided “MMOG”? – there is always the assumption that whatever else these games may be, they’re certainly massive. It’s the one M to rule them all.

Escapist #222: Dude Looks Like a Lady

Pity the princess – all dressed up, and nowhere to go. While the hero gets to scramble about to his heart’s delight, the videogame princess exists in a state of eternal kidnap, perpetually “in another castle.” It is a thankless task. She sits. She waits. She does the odd crossword puzzle.