James Ball

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Sam Leith |Doug Blair |James Ball |Oliver Jia

Grade: A-It has been nearly ten years since addicts of the empire-building simulator Civilization — or Civ, as players call it — have had a fresh fix. Was it the original Civ that cost you an A on your paper? It’s back, and this time round it aims to cost you a promotion at work. You’ve both grown up. Prepare to lose very many hours to its blend of diplomacy, resource management, city-building and strategic ultraviolence.

Dec 9, 2024 | thespectator.com | Ben Domenech |James Ball |Rory Sutherland |Grace Curley

It was a gray May afternoon in New York City when a thirty-year-old homeless man named Jordan Neely — who had dozens of encounters with law enforcement, suffered from schizophrenia and other mental health issues and was under the influence of synthetic drugs — boarded the F train and began ranting and raving at the straphangers on board. He said he was ready to die, that someone would die today, screaming that he didn’t mind going to jail or getting life in prison.

Dec 9, 2024 | thespectator.com | James Ball |Rory Sutherland |Royals Meghan |Julie Burchill

Like all other forms of culture, video games offer a way to escape from, or reflect on, reality through fiction. Unlike almost any other form of culture, they are interactive — you, the player, control the experience. Nowhere is this more true than with immersive role-playing games (RPGs), in which the player embodies a character forced to make moral (or wildly immoral) choices in a fictionalized world, which change the narrative of the game for good or ill.

Dec 9, 2024 | thespectator.com | Julie Burchill |James Ball |Rory Sutherland |Royals Meghan

Looking back on the Queen’s 1992 “annus horribilis,” the events involved — though surprising at the time — seem almost staid now. The wife of her favorite son was photographed canoodling with an American. Her daughter divorced. Her daughter-in-law was the co-creator of a frank book about the sorrows of her marriage to the Queen’s eldest son, and to top it off, Windsor Castle burnt down.