Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
Why trying not to laugh makes everything funnier
Most social gatherings try to encourage laughter, but this strict parlor activity makes smiling a punishable offense. Participants must stare at each other…
Discover more
Why bands sue over similar-sounding chords
Plagiarism is a dangerous game when lawyers have good ears. Studios have repeatedly been dragged into massive legal battles because a freelance composer…
Discover more
Why bingo balls bounce so chaotically
Rather than a simple tumble, forced air creates localized turbulence to violently juggle the balls. It is an elaborate pneumatic chamber designed simply to…
Discover more
Rubik's cube white faces rest opposite yellow faces
No matter how furiously you scramble the plastic layout, the fundamental orientation never alters. Standard editions strictly glue the pale shade perfectly…
Discover more
The game where you clean up your father's cosmic mess
Therapy the video game, but with more rolling balls. The entire premise of this quirky Japanese classic is that your father, the King of All Cosmos, got…
Discover moreGeralt's beard grows in real time
Because tracking hundreds of intricate monster hunts just is not enough. You also have to monitor Geralt's facial hair length, proving that even a grim,…
Discover more
STACKY FOR IPHONEA bigger world.
One discovery
at a time.
Keep discovering with Stacky. Interesting facts in an app that is always within reach.
The cake in Portal was inspired by a real dessert
The most overused meme in video game history was born out of a desperate need for a lunch break. While trying to figure out what bizarre motivation a…
Discover more
Why PlayStation discs were dyed black
There was absolutely no mechanical benefit to making PS1 CDs black. Sony just wanted them to look futuristic and intimidating. They also hoped the dark…
Discover more
En passant allows a chess pawn to capture adjacent targets
Most casual players will accuse you of blatant cheating when you pull this off. If an opposing pawn sprints two squares forward past your pawn, you can…
Discover more
Super Mario 64 has a parallel-universe glitch
Welcome to the magical realm where math literally gives up. By exploiting floating-point precision errors at extreme velocities, speedrunners can trick the…
Discover more
Rocket League began with a hilariously long name
Before the clean, highly marketable name 'Rocket League', the developers tried this exact same concept in 2008. The problem? They named it 'Supersonic…
Discover more
Chain Chomps mimic a dog chained to a post
Childhood trauma makes for fantastic enemy design. The snapping iron balls tethered to wooden pegs were directly inspired by a terrifying neighborhood dog…
Discover more
Why Portal's companion cube has a heart
The most emotionally devastating betrayal in gaming history was born of sheer necessity. During the development of Portal, playtesters kept carrying standard…
Discover more
Mancala involves sowing seeds into consecutive board pits
Rather than moving a single avatar around a map, you pick up a giant handful of stones and drop them one by one into wooden divots. It requires constantly…
Discover more
A video game makes you chop fish with one hand
Sometimes disassociation is literally built into the gameplay. In What Remains of Edith Finch, you play out a memory of a man working in a cannery. The game…
Discover more
The phone that made you remove its battery to change games
The absolute pinnacle of user-hostile hardware engineering. Exchanging software literally required turning the device off, removing the back plate, and…
Discover more
The chaotic war game played with ping-pong balls
Standard cup-based target games are too orderly, so participants decided to recreate the chaos of actual combat. By allowing all players to throw…
Discover more
Spades was invented by Ohio college students
While most traditional card pastimes trace their lineage back to ancient European nobility, this one was entirely cooked up by college students in Ohio. They…
Discover more
Why three strikes are called a turkey
For reasons completely unrelated to the sport, throwing three perfect balls earns you the title of a large flightless bird. It is a wildly weird piece of…
Discover moreCastlevania hides an upside-down castle
Just when you think you have fully explored every gothic hallway, the map literally flips entirely upside down. It is a stunning display of getting double the…
Discover more
Team Fortress 2 has a jar of urine weapon
In a world of miniguns and rocket launchers, one character's ultimate technique is violently hurling a mason jar filled with a highly questionable,…
Discover more
Why apple bobbing is harder than it looks
Submerging your face into a communal tub of cold water to bite a floating fruit with no hands is a strange cultural tradition. The buoyancy of the apples…
Discover more
Color grading coats digital worlds in specific color tints
Raw digital renders look surprisingly dull and lifeless. Color grading fixes this by passing the final output through a mathematical lookup table, forcefully…
Discover more
When EA took John Madden off his own game’s cover
Imagine licensing your personal identity to a video game, only for a soulless corporation to brutally kick you off the box art the second a younger athlete…
Discover more