Given our recent New Years 2026 post , you’d think we’d be all done talking about the calamities of the real world. It'd be nice to think we could all  be past the national and international events that are weighing so many of us down. We can’t, though. It seems almost impossible to slink away from the heinous news megaphoning from the media day in and day out. We’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, to reject the evidence we see with our own eyes. Told not to believe that Charlotte Renee Good was murdered. Told to believe that she had it coming. Told to believe that the bullies are the real victims.  We’ve been told to comply with those same bullies' demands, and certainly not question whether those demands are lawful. We’ve been told we need to learn our lesson. Called names, assigned societal roles that don't fit us, and called "domestic terrorists" for merely indulging in the freedoms everyone in our nation is supposed to enjoy. How very dare we! It fee...

Well, if you’re seeing this, you, too, have made it through. What does it mean when the introductions to New Year’s posts sound like the last surviving notes of long-gone pirates? It’s a format I expect we’ll be seeing more and more frequently, as the collected accumulation of stress and tragedy continue to shatter any sense of time… or shared reality. Still, as they say, the horrors persist, but so do we… even when there’s a cost. So if our New Year’s Resolutions seem smaller-scale this year, it’s because it’s all we can do to keep going - a feeling I’m sure you, too, know all too well. Furiously scratching at the walls in panic, we tumble into 2026… but at least we’re doing it together. - B A : Before I sink into the state of what we’ve thrown this particular post entry into, I want to go over resolutions, past and present. Though, as noted last year , we can’t really dwell on what we didn’t accomplish, even if they're just bits of media we meant to attend to. My goals weren’t lo...

Typically, you’ll see posts from me attempting to break a particular meme or trope related to gaming and the ways the rules of our fantasy worlds play out . It's rather enjoyable to pick apart the bait content engagement farmers put out there without giving them credit. For this post, I’d like to take a look at a particular trope that involves something very important in our lives today: when the jester makes fun of the King, they're likely to lose their head... something our TV court jesters have felt lately, particularly Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. What I’m talking about is censorship. Which is something that should worry those of us who consume media in all its forms just as much as it worries content creators, both big ones like the Colberts and Kimmels of the world, and small fry like us folks here at Never Say Dice. So for this week, let's talk a bit about censorship.  Funny What happened to Kimmel and Colbert isn’t funny. Of course, there are some that would a...

I don't know poker, not really , but I'm learning. It's the most legendary and storied of card games, especially since bridge, once a cornerstone of suburban American living, has mostly faded into the mists of history. Terms like "fold," "ante," and "wild card" are all part of our general lexicon. Regular "poker nights" provide complex characterization and plot foreshadowing in some of my all-time favorite media, including  M*A*S*H  and  Star Trek: The Next Generation . For all its history and still-visible presence (we all remember the online poker craze about 15 years ago), there's still a certain mystique to the game. Not only because of the dark, smoky rooms the game brings to mind, or the litany of terms and traditions that have amassed over the years, but because poker is about the  player  as much as it's about the game. Analyzing the other players, not only for how the play but psychologically, sniffing out hidden ...

Given the choice, I probably wouldn't have  chosen  to play as a space bug at the time. But there were very, very few games available, let alone games with manuals , let  alone  games with high-quality full-color comic books explaining the story.  Yars' Revenge  had all of these, and it was a space game to boot, so, for perhaps the first time, I fully envisioned myself as something non-humnaoid in taking on the role of an electronic game protagonist. Maybe I could have ignored it, gone with an alternate interpretation that I was simply flying some kind of insect-shaped spacecraft , but the comic (and the map at the back) were simply too  cool  for that. It gave me a weird feeling, what I now know to be called "cognitive dissonance," but I accepted that slapping that cartridge into the Atari 2600 and flipping the "on" switch meant becoming, for however long I'd be playing, something very different. It's not like I wasn't already in love with the...

There's something seriously, seriously wrong. You know it, I know it... but more than that, we all can  feel  it.  Anybody who consumes media, especially narrative media, feels it. Every round of layoffs, every cowardly kowtowing to censorious bigots, every work suddenly made unavailable, every creator screwed over... there's a  lot  and it's happening so constantly that it's easy to forget that  it didn't use to be like this . And it ain't like capitalism is anything new, but the system's never been so dead-set on eating itself like it has been the past few... I was going to say "years," but really, it's accelerated to an unfathomable degree over the past few  months . We're going to need to stop and take stock of what's going on and what we need to prepare for, as both consumers and creators. Did this whirlwind have a starting point, the flap of a butterfly's wing or the the first tightness in a coalmine canary's tiny chest? C...

You see, there was going to be a Father's Day post about the way the holiday coincided with the simultaneous No Kings Rallies, Trump Birthday Army 250th Anniversary Parade, Minnesota state government assasinations, and Israel's attacks on Iran. It was going to build on the themes of fatherhood and legacy in the  Metal Gear  franchise, and talk about how the villains are generally motivated by a need to force change for the benefit of future generations. It was going to build on my previous Father's Day post about breaking the cycles of paternal abuse in  Metal Gear , along with the  Yakuza/Like a Dragon  series . And then a series of unforeseen real-world issues came up in my life - nothing catastrophic, but all things that needed to be dealt with immediately... and the post was postponed. No big deal, I thought, Father's Day can be a starting point, but certainly doesn't need to be the focus. I could keep going in the direction I'd already charted.  And t...

It seems ludicrous now, here in the era of climate grief , when the most powerful financial entities admit that the worst is inevitable and adjust their plans for plunder accordingly , but there was a time, not that long ago, when environmentalism was hip and, even more unbelievably, hopeful . Earth Day turns 55 this year, and it's hard to imagine world that's turned farther from its founding spirit than the one we occupy now. Sure, the Captain Planet era seems hokey and naive now, when we're aware of terms like "greenwashing" and carefully constructed messaging that shifted the onus of eco-consciousness from massively polluting corporations onto consumers and the general public. Cynical ad campaign or not, effective or not, it was still a message of awareness and caring. As we aim our society straight at the wall of climate catastrophe and allow techbros to drop ever more LLM bricks on the fossil fuel gas pedal, it's worth it to remember that, thirty year...

Last week, in the face of an evident (and still extant, if not as prominent) financial crisis, we talked about ways that you can keep getting new experiences with games you’ve already acquired. This time, we wanted to discuss ways that you can access totally new (to you) games without requiring the kind of investment it takes to be on the cutting edge of releases. While we all have those inner voices (that may or may not sound like our parents) telling us to just be happy with what we already have or that we have games at home, if we have any interest in the way the medium of games develops, we want to at least be aware of what’s new and catching people’s attention. So how do we get our hands on games we don’t own (yet) without handing over much loot? - B B : We’re all gamers here, we’re all used to representing concepts as numerical models and converting values within that model. If we’re trying to cut down on one form of currency (cold, hard cash), we need to make up for it in other ...