Interfaces for contemporary large language, generative media, and perception AI models are often engineered for single user interaction. We investigate ritual as a design scaffold for developing collaborative, multi-user human-AI engagement. We consider the specific case of an immersive staging of the musical Xanadu performed at UCLA in Spring 2025. During a two-week run, over five hundred audience members contributed sketches and jazzercise moves that vision language models translated to virtual scenery elements and from choreographic prompts. This paper discusses four facets of interaction-as-ritual within the show: audience input as offerings that AI transforms into components of the ritual; performers as ritual guides, demonstrating how to interact with technology and sorting audience members into cohorts; AI systems as instruments "played" by the humans, in which sensing, generative components, and stagecraft create systems that can be mastered over time; and reciprocity of interaction, in which the show's AI machinery guides human behavior as well as being guided by humans, completing a human-AI feedback loop that visibly reshapes the virtual world. Ritual served as a frame for integrating linear narrative, character identity, music and interaction. The production explored how AI systems can support group creativity and play, addressing a critical gap in prevailing single user AI design paradigms.

Games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild don't come along often. The 2017 title came 31 years into the franchise's history and somehow felt familiar while simultaneously remixing or entirely removing core tenets of the series. To put it mildly, the changes worked. Breath of the Wild is the biggest-selling Zelda game of all time and was an unqualified success with critics and players alike. What in the world do you do for an encore?

Since I first hit start on Tears of the Kingdom two weeks ago, scarcely a minute has passed when I was not either playing it, or wishing I was playing it. I am honestly slightly annoyed to be taking time away from it to write this review. I am a grown 34-year-old woman and video games rarely get their hooks into me the way they did when I was 8, or 18, and relatively free of responsibilities. But now and then, every few years, I play something that reminds me that video games are kind of magic. They can transport you somewhere else.

Nagoya – A Japanese security firm has developed a system using artificial intelligence to detect thefts of cash contributions from shrines' donation boxes and notify parishioners of incidents in real time. Nagoya-based Trinity Inc. hopes the new system, to be launched this summer, will help catch thieves red-handed at shrines, which are open 24 hours a day and often left unstaffed for long periods of time. Many visitors to Japan's shrines leave cash offerings inside offertory boxes typically installed in front of the shrine's main building. The system is able to detect suspicious behavior captured by security cameras, such as people peering into an offertory box or going behind a box, and sends still images to registered users via the Line messaging app. As many shrines are run by multiple parishioners, the service will allow any number of people to register, according to the firm.

Based on the Mongol invasion of Tsushima island in the 13th century, Ghost follows the exploits of Jin Sakai, a samurai and nephew of the local lord, as he attempts to rally the island’s populace and drive back the invading horde after a crushing defeat at Komodahama beach. The mission structure is similar to FarCry or Assassin’s Creed, with a mix of quests that either advance the overall story, assist one of the game’s primary side characters, clears towns of their occupying forces, earn goodwill with the populace or gain new powers and weapons. Being a samurai game, you’re going to be slicing and dicing your way through enemy crowds using the Sakai family’s heirloom katana but your wakizashi won’t spend much time in its sheath either.

In March 2004, when René Koiter was 19, his twin brother Michel came down with a fever. René and Michel were students in the Netherlands--Michel at the Utrecht School of the Arts, René at the University of Utrecht--and they were doing freelance design work for Blizzard Entertainment, a video game developer about to launch its marquee franchise: World of Warcraft. Michel's fever wasn't supposed to be fatal. Michel was young and healthy--he and René were regulars at their local Taekwondo center. But a few days later, Michel's heart started failing, and René and their father rushed to the hospital to save him.

There's a story I tell, when people ask why I love The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Basically, I found a shield. But it's how I found that shield that came to define my love for Morrowind. I was walking through a barren wasteland, a place I'd visited probably a dozen times, but this time I took a different route--only to find an unassuming door built into a rock formation. A tomb, and at the end of it, mounted high on the wall where you might think it was just part of the scenery, was Eleidon's Ward--the best shield in Morrowind.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is finally upon us, and so far the critics almost universally agree: This game is something special. I called it one of the best games I've ever played in my review, and I think it's already a strong contender for Game of the Year. But the game is vast, complex and full of all sorts of crazy stuff. Here's some tips and some advice for how to get started. If, on the other hand, you don't need tips or advice and just want to experience the game all on your own, I totally understand.

Breath of the Wild (BoTW) is a huge game, full of exploration, experimentation and mystery. Like no Zelda title has for decades, it eschews handholding and tutorials in favour of encouraging players to find out how the systems work in their own right. That can be magical when it works, but if you want to go into the game a bit more prepared, here's a few of the most useful things to know when setting out to explore Hyrule. While weapons and shields are impermanent, and the vast majority of skills Link receives are granted in the first two hours, there are still a number of avenues for character growth. The order you approach areas does matter, and you can make BotW easier or harder as you see fit – or even make it borderline impossible, skipping most of the game entirely and making a beeline to the final boss armed only with a sword and four hearts.

Some minor spoilers follow, as well as many screenshots from the game. I've just won a tense trial by combat in a strange shrine overlooking the sea against a robotic Guardian. The shrine sits on the brink of a high precipice. I saw it from a distance and fought my way there, just because I could. Now I'm trudging up a narrow ravine, following an ox I've startled, when suddenly a bokoblin on a horse wielding a spear comes charging over the rim toward me.