A longtime first-person shooter fan finds Battlefield 6’s glossy near future combat disturbingly close to today’s wars, and uncomfortably like training rather than escapism.
Tag: games
After more than 30 years, the “Golden Owl” has been found, ending frantic quests by thousands of players from around the world that involved wild excavations, low blows and even lawsuits. Based on mysterious clues from a book, this treasure hunt turned into a flourishing business, while keeping thousands of hunters hooked over decades.
Welcome to Friday, where the 2020 Olympic Games finally kick off, Xi Jinping makes a historic trip to Tibet, and there’s some beef (or rather, chuletón) between Spain and the EU. We also take an exclusive look at how the so-called “salvage grocery stores’ popping up around the world are finding commercially viable ways to […]
PARIS — Block construction, robotics and basic coding — all in one package, and especially designed for a non-tech-savvy public. That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind Mindstorms, which toymaker Lego first introduced two decades ago to teach people (children primarily) about programming, but in a fun way — by creating educational robots that walk, talk, etc. For the first versions of Mindstorms, the two Lego engineers who came up with the toy — Gaute Munch and and Erik Hansen — worked closely with researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Munch is now director of advanced technology at […]
-Analysis- The PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games finally kicked off Thursday with the riveting-if-baffling sport of curling and a first victory for hosts South Korea. But all eyes will be on the official opening ceremony tomorrow, especially since a disproportionate dose of the attention for this edition will be focused off the ice and snow. Coming […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Compete, don’t kill. The idea that peace might be achieved through sporting is an old paradox. Pitting athletes and countries against each other in a non-lethal — and cathartic — demonstration of skills, is at the very core of the Olympic ideal, going all the way back to ancient Greece. The timing […]
-OpEd- BEIJING — After studying China’s lottery operations, the country’s National Audit Office recently identified “violations of discipline, misuse of funds, system deficiencies, poor management, and a lack of supervision in certain cities and provinces.” The disclosures around this murky institution are startling, but sadly, Chinese citizens are hardly surprised. The China Welfare Lottery Management […]
What used to be simple outdoor fun is now considered real child therapy in our hyper-connected world.
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The Royal Game
Chess has been a favorite hobby of mine long before 1963, when I took part in the Franche-Comté regional finals in Besançon. (I finished third.)
In a seaside town in the Netherlands, an 11-year-old boy creates a private war zone in his everyday environment. What should his parents do?
HAMBURG – Jan Heusinger’s day was always the same: wake up, shower, have breakfast – and then spend the rest of his hours playing computer games. Four years ago, when he was 14, he’d bought World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game. By 2011, he’d stopped attending school to spend his days as an Orc […]
LE MONDE (France), LA REPUBBLICA (Italy), THE GUARDIAN (UK) Worldcrunch PARIS – Do you find yourself cheering like mad for an athlete whose name you just heard for the first time? Are you passionately tuning into sports you never knew you cared about? And though the endless ads and omnipresent sponsors can be a drag, […]