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The weird, the beautiful, the unfundable: A look at Kickstarter’s gaming section

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Popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has been a boon for video game developers for a few years now. Sam Brooks investigates the less glamourous side of the platform. Pillars of Eternity, $3,986,929.Torment: Tides of Numenara, $4,188,927. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, $5,545,991. Shenmue 3, $6,333,295. All video games funded through Kickstarter – and yes, all those commas are in exactly … Read more

Saving our bacon: How Freedom Farms champions consumer-led change

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Choosing ethically produced meat and eggs at the supermarket is now a no-brainer for many of us, but not so long ago it wasn’t even an option. Like many people, Gregor Fyfe loves bacon. Always has. What he doesn’t love is not knowing how and where the pig that provided his bacon was raised. But … Read more

Has the 2018 Census failed Māori?

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A lack of consultation with Māori, and less participation in the 2018 Census across the board, shows that indigenous data sovereignty is more important than ever. You might have heard recently that Statistics NZ has conceded the 2018 census response rate may be down by almost 5%. This was acknowledged as “very serious”. The thing … Read more

How music festivals can help bring down New Zealand’s STI rate

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Australian music lovers were dancing up a storm in Byron Bay two weekends ago – but many of them were also helping to bring down Australia’s sexually transmissible infection (STI) rate at the same time. Could this be an approach we adopt in New Zealand? Australia’s premier music festival Splendour in the Grass was held … Read more

The Winstonmageddon-o-meter™: Does this mean war?

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New Zealand’s leading data visionaries Hayden Donnell and Toby Morris read the nation’s thermometer as it undergoes the six-week Jacinderregnum 1/8/2018 Winston Peters was enjoying his last day as acting prime minister. And then, the tweet. It was Andrew Geordie. Malcolm Turnbull had been pictured eating a pie with a knife and fork. Australia was … Read more

The Bulletin: Farewell PM Peters, we hardly knew ye

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Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Winston Peters wraps up acting-PM tenure, Gloriavale wants millions of taxpayer dollars, and teachers vote for a full day strike. In the end, the sky did not fall. Winston Peters is having his final day as the acting PM today, before going back to being merely the … Read more

Prefab building, the great hope for the housing crisis, is teetering on disaster

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The off-site industry is full of great energy but in a mess, stumbling around looking for solutions, writes Dan Heyworth, CEO of Box, a company which has dipped its toe in the prefab business. Heralded as key to the government’s ability to build 100,000 homes over the next 10 years, prefab is hot right now. … Read more

I’m not telling kids to harden up, but they need to learn resilience

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We think we are protecting children from failure because we don’t want them to get upset, but in effect we’re harming their ability to cope when things don’t go to plan, argues Derek Wright, interim executive director of the Waikato District Health Board After making some comments around the impact of modern life on young … Read more

The girl with the broken bones goes home: an update

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The family whose two children were taken by Oranga Tamariki has finally been reunited. Joris de Bres documents the family court’s ruling to return their daughter. Little Emma, the girl with the broken bones, turned two this week. The next day the Family Court discharged the custody order which had been in place since she … Read more

The Real Pod: We bow down to the Survivor Queen and do a sick stunt

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The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in New Zealand pop culture and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. This very normal episode of The Real Pod begins with Duncan in the toilet and ends with him being stood on by Alex while Jane shouts loudly. Inspired by the hypnotist from The Block NZ‘s Dinner … Read more

Why the fly-spray and toxic waste hysteria on synthetics has to stop

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Stuart Nash says it was just ‘a metaphor’, but that’s not good enough: for too long the drug debate has been blighted by wild and counterproductive hyperbole, writes Don Rowe  Police Minister Stuart Nash’s comments that synthetic cannabis users are smoking “fly spray and grass clippings” are a continuation of a myth that fuels dangerous … Read more

NZIFF: Burning, An Elephant Sitting Still, Thelma, Border, The Atlantic

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The seventh installment from our team film critics swarming the cinemas of Auckland and Wellington for the 2018 NZ International Film Festival. See also: Birds of Passage, First Reformed, Disobedience, 3 Faces In the Aisles, The Image Book, Apostasy, Brimstone and Glory You Were Never Really Here, Kusama – Infinity, Transit, Yellow is Forbidden, Piercing, Terrified, … Read more

The second to last man to be executed in New Zealand

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Tina Shaw reviews Fiona Kidman’s powerful and haunting new novel based on the short life and brutal death of Albert Black, hanged at Mt Eden jail in 1955. Fiona Kidman is adept at casting her imagination into the past and bringing to life significant characters and times. She stepped back to the Sydney and New … Read more

The robots are definitely coming, but you might not need to be afraid

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Should you fear the future of work? Rose Hoare looks at where your job is going, and what you can do to future-proof your career. You are probably aware of the disheartening predictions about robots coming to steal your job. They are expected to appear one day, smiling pleasantly and speaking grammatically perfect English (and … Read more

On the Rag: A bloody good month for women

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Listen to Alex Casey, Leonie Hayden and Michele A’Court tackle the past month in women, news and popular culture, with thanks to our friends at The Women’s Bookshop.  Join us as we reconvene for the monthly women’s summit known to many as On the Rag. There is mucho good news to yarn about this month, including … Read more

Five seasons of New Girl in one minute (WATCH)

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Can you sum up five seasons of the bed-hopping, flatmate-loving sitcom New Girl in one minute? Madeleine Chapman thinks she can. Watch five seasons of New Girl on Lightbox right here and right now: This content, like all television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent folk at Lightbox. Do … Read more

EXCLUSIVE: High Beams ‘Red Wine’ video premiere

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The Spinoff presents the video premiere of High Beams’ (IllBaz, Melodownz and Raiza Biza) ‘Red Wine’ video, the New Zealand Goodfellas (or, Goodfullas) IllBaz (Baz Raghib) says: Off the back of the ‘Live Stream’ video which we released to set the tone for the record, we wanted to do things a little differently with ‘Red Wine’. … Read more

The Side Eye: Inequality Tower 2018

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Imagine all the wealth in NZ as a ten-storey apartment building. Imagine half of NZ crammed in a tiny corner of the bottom floor.     Read the Inequality Tower 2015 on the Wireless here. Fill your boots with Side Eyes here. The Bulletin is The Spinoff’s acclaimed, free daily curated digest of all the most … Read more

I watched Naked Attraction with a nudist, and my mum (VIDEO)

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Alex Casey attempts to get to the bottom of the Naked Attraction controversy for The Spinoff TV.  Every Friday night, a new set of brave, naked tributes line-up for examination on TVNZ’s surreal dating show Naked Attraction. It’s a series that’s made a lot of people mad, raking in over 500 complaints to the network … Read more

Why victory at the Tenancy Tribunal is only half the battle for students

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Some who have successfully taken action against landlords at the Tenancy Tribunal are finding that getting them to pay the compensation demanded is another matter entirely, writes Esme Hall Victoria’s current flat is “pretty crap” – three of her flatmates sell drugs out of the house and have parties all the time. But it’s a … Read more

The Bulletin: NZ union leader detained by Israel

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Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Union leader detained while part of Gaza aid flotilla, another school ditches NCEA level 1, and the future of community halls in the spotlight. The National Director of the Unite Union in NZ has been detained by Israel, reports Radio NZ. Mike Treen was part of a Freedom … Read more

Why keeping lines workers safe means turning off your power

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When it comes to safety, sometimes looking back on the past can make you glad you’re alive today, writes Vector’s Chief Networks Officer Andre Botha. All of these things were once considered perfectly normal: not wearing seat belts; public DDT-spraying trucks (to end Polio, of course); giving the kids a booster seat so they could … Read more

What’s the deal with the country-of-origin food labelling bill?

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A select committee has proposed limiting the kinds of products the Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill will apply to, and plenty of folk ain’t happy about it. What’s the story? Back in 2016, then Green MP Steffan Browning introduced a member’s bill that proposed mandatory country-of-origin labelling (CoOL) on all … Read more

Cam girls: Meeting the women who do sex work via webcam

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In the first of a new series on PhD students delving into fascinating subjects, Madeleine Holden talks to Madeline Henry, who is studying the critical psychology of digital sex work. “Farts. Hiccuping. Pouring squishy food on yourself. Pretending to be a dog. Wearing a bunch of sanitary pads at the same time. And lighting your … Read more

The refugee crisis, from Serbia to Wellington and back again

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Sandra Ivanov and her family left Serbia in the 1990s to escape the wars that tore the region apart. She ended up in New Zealand, and this year went back to Serbia to volunteer to help the continuing wave of refugees passing through her birthplace. Here is her account of the continuing crisis.  Thousands of … Read more

At NZ’s premier event on alternative proteins, where were the vegan voices?

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The Vegan Society’s Claire Insley went along to ProteinTECH 2018 last week and left confident that a plant-based future was closer than we think, despite the day’s lunch offering leaving a lot to be desired.  Investors look to whatever’s new and sexy, and right now plant-based proteins are the future. At last week’s ProteinTECH Conference … Read more