Writer’s note: After an outpouring of love for the word game Jotto, this article has been updated. If you are one of the countless smartphone users currently beguiled by a five by six grid of letters, you may be interested to know about Wordle’s Jewish precursors. Before Twitter was lit up by rows of gray,…
In a handsomely-furnished psychologist’s office, below a picture window offering a view of a city skyline, a reclined figure, staring down a stately portrait of Freud, speaks about his doting mother and his abusive father. The patient, a man in his mid-30s, is a veteran and amateur artist with a criminal record; he is prone…
When I first heard about a new documentary, “Tacheles,” which follows a group of Germans designing a video game about the Holocaust, in which “Jews can defend themselves and Nazis can act humanely,” I thought it sounded like a recipe for disaster. At best, it seemed like a poorly thought-through attempt at catharsis; at worst,…
The JCC Maccabi Games have added video game tournaments to the Olympic-style competition. Three-thousand Jewish teenagers are due to compete in various athletic events at the upcoming Maccabi Games, in Atlanta from July 28 to August 2, and Detroit from August 4 to 9. This year, esports are joining the lineup of events. Esports are…
Playstation 4’s “Spider-Man” video game is known for its meticulous, open-world recreation of New York City — right down to the pedestrians. And as a painstaking facsimile, the game’s locales come complete with Orthodox Jews wearing kippot and wide-brimmed hats. But if you find yourself playing the game on Shabbat, you may notice that these…
As any 2020 presidential contender might tell you, the youth vote is important. Which explains why Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, hot off announcing a plan to cancel $1.6 trillion of student debt, is planning a series of videos to be streamed on Twitch, a tremendously popular live-streaming platform that caters to gamers and is known…
A petition is calling for the removal of a video game, where gamers play as figures such as Jesus Christ, Adolf Hitler and President Trump — and has them kill minorities. “Jesus Strikes Back: Judgement Day” was released online in January. A Change.org petition has received about 3,000 of the 5,000 signatures it’s asking for. The…
A professional video gamer from Baltimore is suspected of killing at least two people and wounded several others on Sunday when he opened fire at a video game tournament that was being streamed online from a restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida, police said. David Katz, 24, of Baltimore then turned the gun on himself. Jacksonville Sheriff…
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