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    Burned Out, Davey Wreden Tried to Heal by Making the Cozy Wanderstop

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    Nothing moves quickly in Wanderstop. To make a single cup of tea in the new video game is a meditative ritual of deliberate steps.The recovering hero, Alta, has to forage for tea leaves, dry out those leaves, plant seeds for fruit to flavor the tea, water those seeds, watch the plant grow, harvest the fruit individually, and then, with a fantastical apparatus the player traverses using rolling ladders, heat up the water, drain it into a brewing pot, throw the ingredients in one by one, go to a shelf of bespoke mugs, select one, place it under a tap and — finally — pour.There is recognition for doing so without spilling a single drop but no punishment if it is not perfect. It is not that kind of game.Davey Wreden, the 36-year-old writer and director of Wanderstop, has not released a stand-alone game in a decade. He burned out after commercial success with The Stanley Parable (2013), an absurd meditation on cubicle life and choice that has been cited as an inspiration for the TV show “Severance,” and artistic acclaim with the game’s follow-up.Wanderstop was supposed to be different from those mind-bending works, a calming experience set at a woodland tea shop.It did not end up that way.“I started out trying to make this game in a way that it wasn’t going to be a complex story about me and my life, and I failed to do that,” Wreden said. “The more that I began having Alta speak the words in my own head, the more compelling it got.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Censoring Games

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      What China’s influence over Marvel Rivals reveals about censorship.Marvel Rivals is one of the biggest video games in the world. Since its launch in December, more than 40 million people have signed up to fight one another as comic book heroes like Iron Man and Wolverine.But when players used the game’s text chat to talk with teammates and opponents, they noticed something: Certain phrases, including “free Hong Kong” and “Tiananmen Square,” were not allowed.While Marvel Rivals is based on an iconic American franchise, it was developed by a Chinese company, NetEase Games. It has become the latest example of Chinese censorship creeping into media that Americans consume.You can’t type “free Tibet,” “free Xinjiang,” “Uyghur camps,” “Taiwan is a country” or “1989” (the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre) in the chat. You can type “America is a dictatorship” but not “China is a dictatorship.” Even memes aren’t spared. “Winnie the Pooh” is banned, because people have compared China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to the cartoon bear.The restrictions are largely confined to China-related topics. You can type “free Palestine,” “free Kashmir” and “free Crimea.”Why does all of this matter? Video games are not just sources of entertainment; they are also social platforms. Every day, hundreds of millions of children and adults log on to games like Fortnite, World of Warcraft and, yes, Marvel Rivals to play together and hang out. For many young people, these games are as social as Facebook or X.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With an Evil Empire’s Power Comes Great Responsibility

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      Weighty player choices give the fantasy role-playing game Avowed an impressive central narrative. But simplistic combat and rote side quests keep it from excellence.Most video games are power fantasies. You might have endless lives or be capable of shrugging off mortal wounds and clearing out dozens of bad guys with superhuman prowess.The role-playing game Avowed wholeheartedly embraces the fantasy, yet stands out as a game that encourages the player to think about what it means to be so powerful. It asks us to engage with our power rather than simply benefit from it.At its most predictable, Avowed manifests this empowerment with the typical medieval fantasy fare of swords and shields and wands and guns, which you will use to blast your way through any impediment blocking your path forward. But these battles are only a colorful distraction next to your character’s real source of power: your mandate, as the envoy of a distant emperor, to decide how things should be run in the wild and untamed Living Lands.Composed of a few independent fiefs, the Living Lands resemble the Caribbean islands before their settlement by European powers, complete with piratical touches like aquamarine coves, waterlogged ruins and flintlock pistols. You have arrived to root out the source of a mysterious plague and to soften the ground for your expansionist benefactor’s future colonization efforts.It’s novel to play a game as, if not entirely a villain, an unsympathetic tool of power. Your empire, Aedyr, has a downright awful reputation in the Living Lands, exacerbated by your bloodthirsty colleagues known charmingly as the Steel Garrote. Throughout the game you’ll be tasked with defusing diplomatic flare-ups caused by the Steel Garrote and its nasty leader.The Living Lands resemble the Caribbean islands before their settlement by European powers, complete with piratical touches like aquamarine coves, waterlogged ruins and flintlock pistols. Obsidian EntertainmentWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      PlayStation Network Is Working After 24-Hour Outage, Sony Says

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      Users on social media had complained that they could not access their games after the unexplained outage began on Friday night.The PlayStation Network, which users of the Sony PlayStation platform rely on to play games, download content and access apps, started working again on Saturday night after a 24-hour outage that left customers frustrated.“All services are up and running,” PlayStation announced on its website around 7 p.m. on Saturday. The problems, which prevented many customers from “launching games, apps or network features,” were first reported at 7 p.m. on Friday, the company said.“PSN has been restored,” the company’s support team posted on X at 6:58 p.m. on Saturday. “You should be able to access online features without any problems now.”The company did not explain the cause of the outage and did not immediately respond to an email seeking more information.The issues affected users of PlayStation’s most popular offerings, including its console and web products. Account management, gaming and social, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store and PlayStation Direct were among the impacted services.PlayStation creates software and hardware, including hugely popular gaming consoles. Users play video games and run apps like Netflix, Spotify and YouTube through the PlayStation Network.On social media, some users reported that they were able to use their PlayStation on Saturday afternoon but many were still experiencing issues into the evening.During the outage, some users reported that they were not able to play offline games, a testament to how severe the server problems were, as offline games usually do not face the same issues that online games will sometimes experience.As users complained on social media, other brands fired off trolling messages.“Calling all gamers: this play station still works,” Krispy Kreme posted on X. Krispy Kreme offered free glazed doughnuts for two hours on Saturday “because sweet rewards don’t need a server.”“bet y’all want physical copies now,” GameStop, the struggling video game retail chain, said on X. More

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      Sports Betting Reveals the Addiction in All of Us

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      When we think about any addiction, we tend to focus on people who are utterly consumed by it — those whose lives are visibly falling apart. Yet gambling challenges our usual assumptions about addiction and risk, as its harms extend far beyond the most severe cases.Consider a young man from my therapy practice, a former college athlete, who isn’t bankrupt or in crisis but feels stuck in a cycle of unhealthy online sports betting. He repeatedly deletes the betting app from his phone, only to reinstall it days later at the prompting of a well-timed email, a group bet with friends or simply the ads plastered across every sports arena. He does fine at work and mostly keeps to the dollar limits he sets, but his internal preoccupation, restlessness and chasing of losses just feel bad. He wouldn’t call himself addicted, but he doesn’t feel healthy, either. At the very least, he has the creeping sense that he’d feel better if he put his attention and energy toward something more meaningful.Serious gambling addiction is devastating. Beyond financial ruin, it increases the risk of physical health problems, domestic violence and family rupture. Every year, 2.5 million American adults suffer from severe gambling problems. Many suffer invisibly, silently wagering away their lives on cellphones, perhaps in the very same room as their family and friends.These severe cases demand attention, but focusing only on them obscures something important. As a physician and someone in recovery from alcohol and stimulant addiction myself, I’m concerned by how we have been conditioned to see addiction in all-or-nothing terms. Beyond the millions of Americans who meet the criteria for gambling disorder, five million to eight million more have a mild to moderate gambling problem that still affects their lives — like my patient. Since the federal ban on sports betting was struck down in 2018, sports gambling in the United States has exploded, with annual wagers now approaching $150 billion.Today’s surge of sports betting — supercharged by technology and unfettered industry practices — shows how everyone can struggle with self-control to varying degrees. No longer a simple matter of putting money down on which competitor will win, modern technology has transformed sports betting into a high-speed, continuous stream of wagers throughout the game. For Sunday’s Super Bowl, people can place bets on things from the result of the coin toss to the yardage of the next drive, from Kendrick Lamar’s halftime guests to how many times Taylor Swift is mentioned.Online gambling companies collect troves of personalized data to guide betting variables and marketing to match each user’s patterns and preferences. (The Athletic, which is owned by The New York Times, has a partnership with BetMGM, online sports betting and gaming company.) Subscription plans and automated deposits further erode the friction between impulse and action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pamela Hayden, the Voice of Bart’s Friend Milhouse, Retires From ‘The Simpsons’

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      Ms. Hayden voiced many “Simpsons” characters since the show started in 1989. She’s most famously the voice of Bart’s awkward 10-year-old best friend.Pamela Hayden, who has voiced characters on “The Simpsons” since it began in 1989 and famously played Bart’s nerdy best friend Milhouse Van Houten, announced on Wednesday that she was retiring from the show.Ms. Hayden, 70, said on her Facebook page that after 35 years she would stop performing on “The Simpsons” and would “pursue other creative outlets.” Episode seven of season 36, scheduled to air on Nov. 24, will be her final episode.“One thing that I love about Milhouse is he’s always getting knocked down but he keeps getting up,” Ms. Hayden said in a tribute video posted on “The Simpsons” social media pages. “I love the little guy.”Credited with voicing dozens of Simpson’s characters, including one of Milhouse’s bullies, Jimbo Jones, Ms. Hayden’s most famous character is Milhouse. His blue hair and big eyes are accentuated with large, round glasses. The clumsy, shy 10-year-old is one of the most endearing characters in Springfield, thanks in part to his halting, sheepish voice and his stubborn resilience.Milhouse, named after former President Richard Milhous Nixon, often finds himself following his best friend, Bart, into trouble as a gullible sidekick. Throughout the show, Milhouse often cites his mother’s concerns for his safety as an excuse to not go on adventures. In one instance, Milhouse relayed that his mother “says solving riddles is an asthma trigger.”Hayden, left, has voiced the character of Milhouse and others for 35 years.FOXWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Walz and AOC Play Madden and Crazy Taxi and Talk Politics

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      Wearing a camouflage Vikings hat, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, on Sunday to play Madden NFL 25 and talk about the election.“Are we going to play some ball? Are we ready to do it?” Mr. Walz said to the audience watching via the streaming platform Twitch, cautioning that he was prepared to lose. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, played as the Buffalo Bills, while Mr. Walz, a former high school football coach, went with the Vikings.He and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez talked about the politics of Congress, where Mr. Walz served before he became governor and the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee. They compared the House to “public school,” with the Senate being more like “private school.” The House, they agreed, is where policy for the nation is shaped, and Mr. Walz said he would have been proud to have voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a signature achievement of President Biden’s administration.As the talk turned to the Senate and its procedures, Mr. Walz said knowingly to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: “I don’t know where you stand, but I’m going to guess you and I are probably the same on the filibuster.”“Oh yeah, we have got to get rid of that thing,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez responded.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was an early proponent of removing the filibuster several years ago. Vice President Kamala Harris said in September that she would support ending the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade. After the stream ended, a Walz campaign official said that Mr. Walz “shares the vice president’s position.”In their Bills-Vikings Madden matchup on Sunday, which Mr. Walz and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez played for just a scoreless first half, they discussed housing policy and she asked him about voters who might be frustrated by the huge sums of money in politics or by the Biden administration’s positions about the war in Gaza. Twitch showed that about 12,500 people were watching on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s channel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Phoenix Springs: Computer Game as Philosophical Journey

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      The writer of the game Phoenix Springs says it touches upon two questions at the heart of Buddhism: What is the nature of death, and what is the nature of perception?Reflecting on mankind’s long history with technology, the British philosopher John Gray makes a bracing assertion in his book “Straw Dogs”: “Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world. Once a technology enters human life — whether it be fire, the wheel, the automobile, radio, television or the internet — it changes it in ways we can never fully understand.”It’s an observation brought to mind by the new point-and-click computer game Phoenix Springs, an eye-catching, thought-provoking exploration of the unintended consequences that follow a society-wide embrace of biohacking.Players fall into the role of Iris, a veteran reporter, as she sits on a train with a desert looming through a window. The opening seconds, and an arresting dissolve from the sun-flooded train to a shadowy apartment, sets the tone for what follows — a slippery exploration of memory, time and space grounded in Iris’s quest to uncover the mystery of what happened to her brother.Phoenix Springs, by Calligram Studio, offers a refreshing take on the point-and-click genre whose heyday was the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of amassing items that need to be deployed throughout the game, Iris collects information — names, ideas, phrases — which she must apply to her surroundings to try to make sense of them.The game’s writer and designer, Jigme Ozer, said he tried to avoid “the key before door problem” baked into too many point-and-click games — where the player picks up an object lying around an environment and then looks for where it can be used. That’s not how it works in real life, Ozer observed. “If you have a problem,” Ozer said, “it stays in your head before you go looking for the solution.”Iris’s problem is unveiled in those early moments on the train.Clicking on Iris causes a squarish white overlay to appear with the name Leo Dormer. The window disappears when you click the name, and hovering the cursor over Iris causes a small text box to appear with both of their names next to each other.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Silent Hill 2 Was Clumsy, Brutal and Brilliant

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      A remake of the 2001 survival horror game sands down the unwieldy combat that made it a powerful, disturbing classic.The survival horror masterpiece Silent Hill 2 features some of the most ungainly combat ever included in a video game. You play as James Sunderland, a grieving widower who has received a letter that purports to have been written by his wife. You must make your way through a mysterious fog-enshrouded town while fending off the monsters that inhabit it, and you are barely up to the task.Your primary means of self-defense are a length of steel pipe and a flimsy wooden plank, both of which are awkward to wield. Winding up to swing takes an unreasonably long time. If you connect, you’re left defenseless while taking a moment to recover.When you eventually find a gun, you have little ammunition, and aiming is so delicate that you almost always miss. There’s not even much incentive to fight: Vanquished foes don’t drop items or power-ups, and defeating them doesn’t earn you experience points. Faced with an enemy in the 2001 game, it’s nearly always better just to run away.In its remake of Silent Hill 2 that was released for the PlayStation 5 and PC this week, the Polish developer Bloober Team has pointedly addressed this clumsiness.A glowing review in IGN explains that the remake “smoothly polishes down the rough edges of the original game’s combat” by integrating an over-the-shoulder targeting system and dodge and parry movements that allow James “to nimbly sidestep around lurching enemies or the streams of acidic bile they spew.” In keeping with other modern horror games, the new Silent Hill 2 makes players feel quick, agile and powerful.But this is not an improvement. In fact, it’s a betrayal of the original game and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what made it so compelling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More