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1UP COVER STORY
1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JUNE 18 | GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND VIDEO GAMES
Interview: Robert Yang on Translating the Gay Experience Into Games
Cover Story: The philosophy behind some of gaming’s most subversive FPS mods.
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or many, Half-Life 2 represents the pinnacle of the first-person shooter experience. It had everything: An immersive environment, a compelling story, amazing visuals and most of importantly of all, the ability to players feel as though they truly mattered. Yet, in spite of its overwhelming popularity, only a small percentage of its fans know about the collection of experimental art-house mods that eventually followed.
Robert Yang’s “Radiator” series is a part of this cadre. Set within the modern world, his slice-of-life vignettes are absent the usual outsized ant lions and parasitic crustaceans. Instead, they deal with things closer to home: Awkward dates, the constellations, troubled marriages, reconciliation, and how people are seldom dissimilar from one another.
