a major barrier to the exploration of emotional resonance in games is the puzzle-solving orientation, in which all game objects and actors are reduced to the status of things to be used in order to achieve an end
thus, soft chambers is invested in discovering ways to disrupt this orientation
/.../
whereas the traditional approach to 'closing distance’ has been to attempt 'immersion’ of the player within the game world, soft chambers believes it may be more fruitful to explore ways in which we can allow the game to spill into the player’s world
§
the norm for videogame development is the negation of the self; indeed, we are encouraged to pride ourselves on this negation, on our dedication to our labour against the demands of our body, our relationships
/.../
as we explore the development of games that are more caring of our players, we wish to explore modes of production that are more caring of ourselves
§
because videogames are the aesthetic form of rationalization, replacing punching with hugging or building with growing is not enough
but it is a start
§
Is Deus Ex Still The Best Game Ever?
§
Errant Signal - Blendo Games (Spoilers)
§
The story of the last two games—Soul Reaver 2 and Defiance—then becomes the process of rectifying history, of restoring it to its proper flow. Put another way, the return of the soul to its proper, divine status is the objective of vanilla Gnosticism; in Legacy of Kain the objective is the restoration of history’s proper flow.
Showing posts with label Narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Narrative. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Friday, April 11, 2014
11/4
§TEXTS
We’ve bought into the idea that storytelling is about a journey to an endpoint, an authored destination. The real destination is the creation of meaning, whether that be the reader’s interpretation or reconstructing the author’s intent.
/.../
Hypertext tales are often sold as games of choices, of agency, of your version of the narrative – when it would be better to embrace what they are good at, which is telling a different kind of fiction: one which is host to multiple narratives, narrative superposition for want of a better term, from which meaning can be derived.
http://www.electrondance.com/stop-crying-about-choice/
§
"I HATE how people who aren't straight white cisgender men are treated in the game industry. I HATE that so many women can't come to a professional event without getting hit on by some creepy dude… and I HATE that it never, ever happens to me. I mean, who even thinks this? Shouldn't I feel happy that I'm not getting hit on?! No, I feel like SHIT. I start to wonder, what's wrong with me? I clearly don't look manly or bearded or stubbly enough, so I don't get to be treated like a real human, but I'm also not hot enough for any of their creepy attention. I'm like invisible or something."
/.../
"I didn't last in the industry very long, as you can probably imagine," Deirdra Kiai continues after a long pause. "I was pushed over to the margins, where I quietly worked alone on my own projects, desperately struggling to find my voice."
"They could exclude me all they wanted, but they couldn't stop me from making games."
/.../
"I've been able to do these things, but only IN SPITE of the industry's social pressure not to. Imagine what I could have done if I'd been encouraged instead of IGNORED. Imagine how many other brilliant, talented people could be making weird, wonderful games along WITH ME."
http://tmi.kotaku.com/making-games-is-easy-belonging-is-hard-1551649858
§
...if the factors that lead to replay do not exist solely “in the games themselves” that does not mean they aren’t worth talking about – indeed, as Fernández-Vara’s insights show, the middle-ground between game and player is fundamental to a “game-type experience” as such. This paper admits both to the elusive and idiosyncratic nature of replay value, while attempting a tentative outline for a mode in which replay value may be described and analyzed.
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/the-games-people-replay/
§VIDEOS
Top 5 Reasons Game Reviews Don't Matter | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzkVlQ3nlVM
§
Game Theory: Are Gamers Killing Video Games?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxhs-GLE29Q
§
Is VR the future of Gaming? A look at nearly every VR device shown at GDC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2myY_pQEMk
§
Net Neutrality - What a Closed Internet Means for Games - Extra Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQtiIazfoQM
§DATA
A new study out of Ohio State University is suggesting that playing aggressive, Black characters in video games might make people who already have a tendency towards racism more racist.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4882
§
Some data available from games with moral decision systems show that gamers are generally unwilling to play as evil characters. In a study, over 1000 gamers were surveyed to see how the average player interacts with a game system that allows the player to choose a "good" or "evil" path through a game story. The finding was that the average gamer prefers to be good or heroic in such games. Gamers are most interested in exploring a character whose moral choices closely match to their own. However, those players that experience a game for the second time are then more likely to choose evil. The article includes an exploration of which actions gamers felt particularly evil, and what kind of choices turn out to be more difficult for them.
http://gamescriticism.org/articles/lange-1-1/
We’ve bought into the idea that storytelling is about a journey to an endpoint, an authored destination. The real destination is the creation of meaning, whether that be the reader’s interpretation or reconstructing the author’s intent.
/.../
Hypertext tales are often sold as games of choices, of agency, of your version of the narrative – when it would be better to embrace what they are good at, which is telling a different kind of fiction: one which is host to multiple narratives, narrative superposition for want of a better term, from which meaning can be derived.
http://www.electrondance.com/stop-crying-about-choice/
§
"I HATE how people who aren't straight white cisgender men are treated in the game industry. I HATE that so many women can't come to a professional event without getting hit on by some creepy dude… and I HATE that it never, ever happens to me. I mean, who even thinks this? Shouldn't I feel happy that I'm not getting hit on?! No, I feel like SHIT. I start to wonder, what's wrong with me? I clearly don't look manly or bearded or stubbly enough, so I don't get to be treated like a real human, but I'm also not hot enough for any of their creepy attention. I'm like invisible or something."
/.../
"I didn't last in the industry very long, as you can probably imagine," Deirdra Kiai continues after a long pause. "I was pushed over to the margins, where I quietly worked alone on my own projects, desperately struggling to find my voice."
"They could exclude me all they wanted, but they couldn't stop me from making games."
/.../
"I've been able to do these things, but only IN SPITE of the industry's social pressure not to. Imagine what I could have done if I'd been encouraged instead of IGNORED. Imagine how many other brilliant, talented people could be making weird, wonderful games along WITH ME."
http://tmi.kotaku.com/making-games-is-easy-belonging-is-hard-1551649858
§
...if the factors that lead to replay do not exist solely “in the games themselves” that does not mean they aren’t worth talking about – indeed, as Fernández-Vara’s insights show, the middle-ground between game and player is fundamental to a “game-type experience” as such. This paper admits both to the elusive and idiosyncratic nature of replay value, while attempting a tentative outline for a mode in which replay value may be described and analyzed.
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/the-games-people-replay/
§VIDEOS
Top 5 Reasons Game Reviews Don't Matter | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzkVlQ3nlVM
§
Game Theory: Are Gamers Killing Video Games?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxhs-GLE29Q
§
Is VR the future of Gaming? A look at nearly every VR device shown at GDC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2myY_pQEMk
§
Net Neutrality - What a Closed Internet Means for Games - Extra Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQtiIazfoQM
§DATA
A new study out of Ohio State University is suggesting that playing aggressive, Black characters in video games might make people who already have a tendency towards racism more racist.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4882
§
Some data available from games with moral decision systems show that gamers are generally unwilling to play as evil characters. In a study, over 1000 gamers were surveyed to see how the average player interacts with a game system that allows the player to choose a "good" or "evil" path through a game story. The finding was that the average gamer prefers to be good or heroic in such games. Gamers are most interested in exploring a character whose moral choices closely match to their own. However, those players that experience a game for the second time are then more likely to choose evil. The article includes an exploration of which actions gamers felt particularly evil, and what kind of choices turn out to be more difficult for them.
http://gamescriticism.org/articles/lange-1-1/
Thursday, November 21, 2013
21st November Link Collection
§GAME DESIGN
I am now convinced that the virtues of clarity and craft, to which I had subscribed absolutely as a matter of course, impose significant limitations on our expressive potential that can be difficult to see until you play something like this.
/.../
A product, which is a special kind of designed work, has at least two intrinsic features. One is to perform the task for which it was made; the other is to convince you to buy it. (The next time you hear the phrase ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ ask yourself whether the dissonance you’re discussing might actually stand between ‘what marketing decided would generate money’ and ‘what the designers defiantly attempted to produce’.)
/.../
Punishing us for touching the Cross Guys even though that is exactly what we must do to proceed reeks of poor affordances; it seems to place the design at cross purposes, obfuscating the rules of the system and causing us to form an inaccurate cognitive model of how the game works
/.../
In their role as the protagonist’s jailers they must usually be avoided; in their role as the wielders of power, however, it is occasionally necessary to exploit them even when this does us harm. (The mechanics deceive, in other words, because they model deceptive power structures.) That the world forces some among us to use the ugliest of personal traits to their advantage would, in any other context, be considered a thoughtful bit of hard-won wisdom that speaks to the human condition. In videogames we are, for many discomforting reasons, unaccustomed to receiving such wisdom.
http://blog.brendanvance.com/2013/11/02/problem-attic/
§
It explains how in original chess draws are more and more of a problem and that high level play is becoming less and less interesting.http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
Game 1 Viswanthan Anand vs Magnus Carlsen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH_5Ko7QCi8
§
What if we take games, but re-frame them in other terms with other values? http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2013/11/games-without-gamers-imagining-indie.html
§ACCESSIBILITY
I think it’s the defensive fanbase, not passionate advocates for change in the games space, who are ‘too sensitive’ and obsessed with what they believe is ‘correct’.
http://www.edge-online.com/features/why-defensive-videogame-fanbases-display-the-exact-same-sensitivity-they-claim-to-abhor/
§
... the culture around video games is strangling the wider conversation of play and games as a medium.
/.../
This is a technophilic narrative of play and games, where we ‘evolve’ from Chess and Go to Mario and Halo. It’s a misnomer; design hasn’t advanced in a way that makes video games particularly special outside of being new. I find many of the questions and problems thinkers face is because we look to video games and the mainstream discourse on them as the totality of what can come of games.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/end-the-video-supremacy-of-games/§
Now it’s okay if your game is about setting up all these gunfights, but then don’t pretend it’s part of some great story. Everything has to be “real”! This happened with Mass Effect, when everyone got upset about skipping the combat, because then that means you didn’t earn the cutscene. “Earn every single story bit, you lazy bastard! Oh no, am I discussing my experience of Mass Effect with someone who didn’t earn it?” Same with Dark Souls; people told me I had to earn it but I didn’t have the time and I wasn’t interested in the difficulty, I was interested more in all the player messages and unpredictability. Games are this artform where this is so important, and I think it’s holding it back.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/08/level-with-me-thomas-grip/§
The whole purpose of introducing the distinction between abstract and concrete thinking (which is better understood as a continuum than a strict dichotomy) was to highlight the role of imagination as a limiting factor for participation in play of certain kinds.
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/interview-chris-bateman-partii/§
From the inaccessibility of the Game Developer Conference to the toxic overtones of the Penny Arcade Expo, there hasn’t been enough space to accommodate the growing diversity of people interested in playing, creating, and thinking about games.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/and-queerness-for-all/
§NARRATIVE
... writers have no shortage of definitions for environmental narrative. I grabbed a handful at an IGDA panel on environmental narrative in 2010: Tom Jubert, writer for Penumbra: Overture (Frictional Games, 2007) and The Swapper (Facepalm Games, 2013), suggested it was the parts of the story told without dialogue; Rhianna Pratchett, writer for Heavenly Sword (Ninja Theory, 2007) and Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics, 2013) said it was nonlinear, nonverbal storytelling; James Swallow, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal, 2011), said it was about discovery of the story – about the players finding out for themselves, rather than delivery of story through dialogue or text.
http://www.electrondance.com/the-beautiful-dead/
§WORK
While there are a great many “bad” people in the tech sector, I do think that alliances with workers on the “factory floor” of AAA production is productive and helpful for small games creators. They’re natural allies in that they are alienated from their labor which is extracted from them through long hours of crunch situated in incredibly abusive cycles of storm and stress that shave years off of their lives and provides incredibly poor (but decently compensated) lifestyles.
http://thiscageisworms.com/2013/11/05/indie-and-aaa-and-a-complex-relationship/
§SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD
If the true measure of new hardware’s worth is how stark the difference is between it and what came before, then this is the most next-gen game that 2013 has yet produced.
http://www.edge-online.com/review/super-mario-3d-world-review/
§FINAL FANTASY
“What is Final Fantasy?”
/.../
... the most accurate response to Karmali’s question might end up being: Final Fantasy is dead.
/.../
... if the storytelling that formed the core of the Final Fantasy experience is no longer in favor, at a time when Square Enix needs the brand itself to be bigger than ever, and the franchise to appeal to as many players as possible, is it even still possible to keep Final Fantasy relevant? Or is it more likely the case that whatever is carried over in the series, and preserved from its ashes, is something that, good or bad, just simply isn’t Final Fantasy anymore?
http://gamingvulture.com/2013/11/04/what-is-final-fantasy/
§ANTICHAMBER
As with a religious text, discussions could be had over issues of interpretation. Whether we find them in our world or a virtual one like Antichamber, we’re better off struggling with these words of guidance, even when perplexing, than we are ignoring them.
http://gamechurch.com/antichamber/
§WALKING DEAD
I’m interested in Season Two because I loved Season One, but I’m also interested in seeing how we talk about a young female protagonist in a terrible world. I’m interested in seeing what happens to her, how she’s treated when she meets others, and how we engage with those issues both in and out of the game.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=3942
§BROTHERS
The levels are designed not for their organic nature as a believable world. In fact, the fable-like nature of the story hides the fact that little about the geography makes sense. Instead the game is designed to allow the camera to work on its own, mostly independent of the player’s control while still meeting the needs of the player. Camera movement and framing are the other main methods—besides cutting—that convey information and meaning in film. These are the techniques that Brothers borrow and adapt for the video game medium’s own uses. The rest of the game had to be designed to accommodate this.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/176232-the-cinema-in-brothers-a-tale-of-two-sons/
I am now convinced that the virtues of clarity and craft, to which I had subscribed absolutely as a matter of course, impose significant limitations on our expressive potential that can be difficult to see until you play something like this.
/.../
A product, which is a special kind of designed work, has at least two intrinsic features. One is to perform the task for which it was made; the other is to convince you to buy it. (The next time you hear the phrase ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ ask yourself whether the dissonance you’re discussing might actually stand between ‘what marketing decided would generate money’ and ‘what the designers defiantly attempted to produce’.)
/.../
Punishing us for touching the Cross Guys even though that is exactly what we must do to proceed reeks of poor affordances; it seems to place the design at cross purposes, obfuscating the rules of the system and causing us to form an inaccurate cognitive model of how the game works
/.../
In their role as the protagonist’s jailers they must usually be avoided; in their role as the wielders of power, however, it is occasionally necessary to exploit them even when this does us harm. (The mechanics deceive, in other words, because they model deceptive power structures.) That the world forces some among us to use the ugliest of personal traits to their advantage would, in any other context, be considered a thoughtful bit of hard-won wisdom that speaks to the human condition. In videogames we are, for many discomforting reasons, unaccustomed to receiving such wisdom.
http://blog.brendanvance.com/2013/11/02/problem-attic/
§
It explains how in original chess draws are more and more of a problem and that high level play is becoming less and less interesting.http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2013/11/11/high-level-chess.html
Game 1 Viswanthan Anand vs Magnus Carlsen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH_5Ko7QCi8
§
What if we take games, but re-frame them in other terms with other values? http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2013/11/games-without-gamers-imagining-indie.html
§ACCESSIBILITY
I think it’s the defensive fanbase, not passionate advocates for change in the games space, who are ‘too sensitive’ and obsessed with what they believe is ‘correct’.
http://www.edge-online.com/features/why-defensive-videogame-fanbases-display-the-exact-same-sensitivity-they-claim-to-abhor/
§
... the culture around video games is strangling the wider conversation of play and games as a medium.
/.../
This is a technophilic narrative of play and games, where we ‘evolve’ from Chess and Go to Mario and Halo. It’s a misnomer; design hasn’t advanced in a way that makes video games particularly special outside of being new. I find many of the questions and problems thinkers face is because we look to video games and the mainstream discourse on them as the totality of what can come of games.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/end-the-video-supremacy-of-games/§
Now it’s okay if your game is about setting up all these gunfights, but then don’t pretend it’s part of some great story. Everything has to be “real”! This happened with Mass Effect, when everyone got upset about skipping the combat, because then that means you didn’t earn the cutscene. “Earn every single story bit, you lazy bastard! Oh no, am I discussing my experience of Mass Effect with someone who didn’t earn it?” Same with Dark Souls; people told me I had to earn it but I didn’t have the time and I wasn’t interested in the difficulty, I was interested more in all the player messages and unpredictability. Games are this artform where this is so important, and I think it’s holding it back.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/08/level-with-me-thomas-grip/§
The whole purpose of introducing the distinction between abstract and concrete thinking (which is better understood as a continuum than a strict dichotomy) was to highlight the role of imagination as a limiting factor for participation in play of certain kinds.
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/interview-chris-bateman-partii/§
From the inaccessibility of the Game Developer Conference to the toxic overtones of the Penny Arcade Expo, there hasn’t been enough space to accommodate the growing diversity of people interested in playing, creating, and thinking about games.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/and-queerness-for-all/
§NARRATIVE
... writers have no shortage of definitions for environmental narrative. I grabbed a handful at an IGDA panel on environmental narrative in 2010: Tom Jubert, writer for Penumbra: Overture (Frictional Games, 2007) and The Swapper (Facepalm Games, 2013), suggested it was the parts of the story told without dialogue; Rhianna Pratchett, writer for Heavenly Sword (Ninja Theory, 2007) and Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics, 2013) said it was nonlinear, nonverbal storytelling; James Swallow, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal, 2011), said it was about discovery of the story – about the players finding out for themselves, rather than delivery of story through dialogue or text.
http://www.electrondance.com/the-beautiful-dead/
§WORK
While there are a great many “bad” people in the tech sector, I do think that alliances with workers on the “factory floor” of AAA production is productive and helpful for small games creators. They’re natural allies in that they are alienated from their labor which is extracted from them through long hours of crunch situated in incredibly abusive cycles of storm and stress that shave years off of their lives and provides incredibly poor (but decently compensated) lifestyles.
http://thiscageisworms.com/2013/11/05/indie-and-aaa-and-a-complex-relationship/
§SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD
If the true measure of new hardware’s worth is how stark the difference is between it and what came before, then this is the most next-gen game that 2013 has yet produced.
http://www.edge-online.com/review/super-mario-3d-world-review/
§FINAL FANTASY
“What is Final Fantasy?”
/.../
... the most accurate response to Karmali’s question might end up being: Final Fantasy is dead.
/.../
... if the storytelling that formed the core of the Final Fantasy experience is no longer in favor, at a time when Square Enix needs the brand itself to be bigger than ever, and the franchise to appeal to as many players as possible, is it even still possible to keep Final Fantasy relevant? Or is it more likely the case that whatever is carried over in the series, and preserved from its ashes, is something that, good or bad, just simply isn’t Final Fantasy anymore?
http://gamingvulture.com/2013/11/04/what-is-final-fantasy/
§ANTICHAMBER
As with a religious text, discussions could be had over issues of interpretation. Whether we find them in our world or a virtual one like Antichamber, we’re better off struggling with these words of guidance, even when perplexing, than we are ignoring them.
http://gamechurch.com/antichamber/
§WALKING DEAD
I’m interested in Season Two because I loved Season One, but I’m also interested in seeing how we talk about a young female protagonist in a terrible world. I’m interested in seeing what happens to her, how she’s treated when she meets others, and how we engage with those issues both in and out of the game.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=3942
§BROTHERS
The levels are designed not for their organic nature as a believable world. In fact, the fable-like nature of the story hides the fact that little about the geography makes sense. Instead the game is designed to allow the camera to work on its own, mostly independent of the player’s control while still meeting the needs of the player. Camera movement and framing are the other main methods—besides cutting—that convey information and meaning in film. These are the techniques that Brothers borrow and adapt for the video game medium’s own uses. The rest of the game had to be designed to accommodate this.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/176232-the-cinema-in-brothers-a-tale-of-two-sons/
Monday, November 4, 2013
Before Next-Gen Critical Compilation
http://www.critical-distance.com/2013/10/27/october-27th/
http://www.critical-distance.com/2013/11/03/november-3rd/
§INSPIRATION
By replacing immersion with the frame of attention, which is a word that holds scientific and psychological significance, we can use this frame of attention to make more meaningful observations.
/.../
It’s worth remembering that realism is not fidelity.
/.../
And Anita Sarkeesian says as much in her videos: remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.
/.../
Failure in games often implicitly suggests that you aren’t grokking a system and that therefore you’re misunderstanding the text. But Cart Life doesn’t require mastery of its systems to understand what it does. In fact, playing Cart Life well misses the point.
/.../
[on Depression Quest] After a really rough time, my character fought his way out of deep depression, just a bit. And I reached a decision tree with five choices, and for the first time, all five choices were blue and available to me. No AAA video game power fantasy, no immersive sim, has ever made me feel as close to having as much agency as I felt like I had in that moment.
/.../
[on Kentucky Route Zero] The choices are not about making change in the game world, but determining the character’s intentions. You can never exhaust all the content in a dialogue tree because it cares more about the beautiful transience of conversation. It’s about what questions you ask, which information you seek, and which you don’t - not because any of it is quest-specific, but because it affects how you perceive your character.
/.../
Failure, choice, realism, these concepts and any value we assign to them are destroyed by these games. They don’t erase failure, or devalue choice, they come from a different frame of mind completely.
/.../
Video games don’t exist.
We invented them.
And we can destroy them.http://samcrisp.tumblr.com/post/62718211352/how-to-destroy-everything-or-why-video-games-do-not
§BIOSHOCK
BioShock Infinite is the worst game of the year.
It’s an unjustified shooter without a single new idea. It’s a self-gratifying spectacle that confuses cunning with depth. It’s a craven, heartless game of false moral equivalencies that uses the suffering of oppressed people as window dressing, as theme, while it explores its own cold metaphysical conceits.
For its lack of humanity, for its fake guilt, for its flat boring gameplay, for its 100 million dollar cost, for its cleverness, for its cowardice, BioShock Infinite is not just the worst game of the year. It’s the worst game I’ve played this generation.
/.../
The BioShock series’ great talent thus far seems to be thematizing videogame conventions rather than challenging them. It has mastered the safe subversion, never mind its conservative heart. Clever self-awareness trumps actual innovation. And gamers eat it up. Because we love to feel smart, removed, safely above it all.
http://tevisthompson.com/on-videogame-reviews/
§
... Where the self-examination begins. We start to see something about our own, internalized, beliefs and acceptances of colonialism, um, through shooting people in the face."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FylamIJ19n8
§METAL GEAR SOLID 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_-jyF987MQ
§NARRATIVE: WALKING DEAD/BEYOND: TWO SOULS
But on a deeper level, throughout the series, we made decisions about what kind of a man Lee was, and how Clementine would see him. Our choices may not have affected the story outcome or averted his death, but they certainly affected his life—they made him the character we got to know and care about. (Or, depending, dislike but maybe understand.) One could make the same argument about the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages of the world, but given that The Walking Dead was a character study as much as it was an adventure, the fact that our decisions affected Lee's character is more central to the game's meaning as a whole. Game critic Sparky Clarkson has effectively encapsulated why player choice mattered in a post over at his blog awesomely titled "Your choices don't matter." Rather, the choices do matter, he says, but "they don't matter in the way that they appear to."
Lee's choices don't change the world, or alter the fundamental flow of the story. He can do nothing to keep the drugstore safe, preserve the motel stronghold, or prevent the treacheries in Savannah. If those are the kinds of choices that "matter", then Lee's decisions don't. But decisions that mattered in that way wouldn't really fit the themes of The Walking Dead. It's not a world where a man ultimately has any real power to save anyone.
But the choices in The Walking Dead aren't really about changing the world, they're about changing Lee. The player's choices define who Lee is, whose company he values, what principles he chooses to uphold. The world reacts to those decisions, in subtle ways that either reinforce those decisions (for instance, in the developing friendship with Kenny) or play off them (as in the case of Duck's fate). The player's choices matter because they establish a context for his emotional connection, through Lee, to the game world
http://kotaku.com/5964667/yes-your-choices-in-the-walking-dead-mattered
§
Most players are used to a "choice" moment, i.e. "PRESS X TO THIS, PRESS Y TO THAT". Since they never saw that anywhere in the bar, a lot of players didn't know they had the option to leave. [BEYOND: TWO SOULS]
Players are also used to the outcomes of choices being obvious. Someone dying, someone leaving, someone lying, etc. Subtlety and nuance are not things that games are implementing left and right. When something as low-key as a buried phobia rearing it's head hours later in the game is a consequence, it's understandable for it to go over a lot of heads.
/.../
An Adventure game like Beyond that does away with standard HUD elements just doesn't look like it's as advanced as it is. Players are most likely to assume what they are seeing is a pre-determined part of the game, and not results of actions they have taken or not taken. A more immersive and natural storytelling system also makes the game seem less interactive. Quite the double-edged sword.
/.../
It's very easy to miss dozens of important interactions if you don't explore the environment. Because you don't see everything on an overlay, you have to search around to see what can be toyed with. Sometimes, you simply don't expect things to be of any importance.
/.../
So the game's better form of discovery also comes with the chance of unintentionally leaving things behind. Yet another double-edged sword.
http://playersdelight.blogspot.ca/2013/10/beyond-two-souls-most-unique-feature-is.html
§THE UNFINISHED SWAN
The wife he chooses is a wife he creates in his own image, a woman who is “a female version of himself,” and who the King loves dearly. The woman created is a combination of two Greek myths: Narcissus, falling in love with his own reflection, and Pygmalion and Galatea, about an artist who falls in love with a statue he has created, and which subsequently comes to life. The intersection between these two myths leads to thematic intertwining between the narratives. It is one of the clearest cases where creation and love, as in the Pygmalion myth, are tied to self-creation and self-love, as in the Narcissus story. It is as if the King cannot distinguish between them, and the interrelation between these concepts becomes a running theme throughout the game. /.../ The King’s struggle to manifest the perfect self through his creations reflects the dissonance between his two selves. He constantly has his designs fail, he is left by his wife and mirror-self, and eventually he is faced with the possibility that he won’t have a legacy at all; he muses at the end of the game that all his works that “were meant to last forever… would crumble into dust. Or be painted over by someone who would come after [him].” /.../ ... he finally finds contentment in who he is rather than who he would like to be. It is in this spirit that he is able to at last give up creative control, bequeathing his magic paintbrush to his son, Monroe.
/.../ Rather than attempting to prevent outside influence, external support is necessary for Monroe to advance. /.../ This difference in attitude is crucial, and reflects the different mentalities of the characters. Where the King holds up an ideal and strives to achieve it, inevitably falling short, Monroe feels “pretty unfinished himself” and must make sense of his new reality, both in terms of the white world he finds himself in and the recent loss of his mother. He must become a creator in order to create himself, while the King approached it in the other direction, trying to create himself by becoming a creator.
http://theanimistblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/of-all-his-creations-his-greatest-was-himself-creation-and-self-creation-in-the-unfinished-swan/
§BRAID
Almost every repeated character or item seen throughout the game can be found in a mundane form in or around the Princess’s house. /.../
I noticed an interesting detail when examining the chandelier itself. When you look closely, three distinct figures can be seen across the wood patterning. The one in the middle is clearly female, and she’s pointedly turning her attention toward the figure to her left while the other simply watches. When the chandelier breaks, there’s a specific break in this image as well — the female figure and her chosen companion on one side, and the onlooker alone on the other.
http://leedzie.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/the-psychosis-of-braid/
§PRIVILEGE
We are quick to use ‘death of the author’ arguments because of the cultural history behind it, and so why not at least consider the death of the player?
http://www.mattiebrice.com/death-of-the-player/
/.../
Can’t we still be taken through experiences without our every whim thought of and satisfied?
§PLAYING
Playing in public in itself is a political act, especially in hard times.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/inside-failed-utopian-new-games-movement/
§
I’ve started walking more in videogames because I was irritated by the way I felt compelled to run.
http://joeblade.com/2013/10/20/running-walking-and-remember-me/
§FUTURE
Make three lists numbering one through 20. In one column, write down 20 legendary, meaningful, culturally significant novels capable of standing the test of time. In the second, do the same for film. I expect that your third column, in which you’d write 20 games capable of doing the same, cannot be completed.
/.../Vice City is, after just a few years, a messy, clunky thing, because what it did has been done better by its sequels. Forgetting its cool setting and story -- I don’t think I’ll be remembering Tommy Vercetti on my deathbed, anyway -- GTA 5 has negated the need to ever play Vice City again. Rockstar Games made its own history irrelevant by giving us access to something better. It will do it again in five years. These are the building blocks of a brand, and not something with any historical value. What other medium seeks out its own obsolescence?
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/21/how-long-can-video-games-matter
§
In truth, video games have no timeless masterpieces. There will come a day, sooner than we think, when no one will play Wind Waker. Or Chrono Trigger. Or Super Metroid. No one but curators and historians. And eventually, not even them. Tetris will not last, nor will Super Mario Bros. In a few years, who will be willing to survive fungal zombies for 15 hours just to reach the emotional climax of The Last of Us? For a medium so dependent on its players’ engagement, on their sustained attention, the question is not simply whether old games can technically be played, but will they? I think we sense this. And we want to protect our games while we can. We long to declare masterpieces and preserve them for the future because we are afraid: that one day, the game that meant so much to us will no longer have a player. Or even a legend to remember it by.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/88903/the-legend-of-zelda-the-wind-waker-hd-reprinting-the-legend
§
We'll accept innovations, even a radical one like Ocarina of Time's shift to 3D, so long as they add depth to the skills we already know. Sequels that interrupt the iterative continuity of the series, often end up as a footnote. At best, they accumulate, like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a kind of dark horse mystique.
/.../
Much like the recurring mythos that underlies their respective stories, Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker are not separate games, but the same game extended in slightly different directions.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/25/5028042/opinion-why-sequels-are-sometimes-good-for-gamers-and-how-they-can-be
§THE STANLEY PARABLE
I am irrevocably grafted to his story, like hanging on to driftwood out at sea. He floats on without any regard for my splinters. Can I really be blamed for burning it all down? And though I am released from my porcelain casting, I am evoked to serve in this nightmare patriarchy. Which is why I need you; only the living can make choices.
Stanley’s always been dead.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/the-stanley-parable-review/
§
How they wish to destroy one another. How they wish to control one another. How they both wish to be free. Can you see? Can you see how much they need one another? Playing a game forges a relationship between player and designer and the experience of play is a conversation between them.
http://www.electrondance.com/the-stanley-paradox/
§GONE HOME
What struck me about this single page of Sam’s Diary in Gone Home is that it’s an exception to a rule — not part of a consistent fabric of showing the player what kind of thing they can and can’t do. It’s the only time Katie refuses to execute an action; the rest of the time, as Merritt points out, she acts like a camera, your lens into the world.
http://deadpixel.co/2013/08/not-gonna-happen/
§
Gone Home is played using Katie, a real character. There is much talk of player agency, but I don’t think there’s ever enough talk of character agency. My point is this: Katie might pick up the various things she finds, but she wouldn’t throw them across the floor the way the game allowed me to.
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2013/10/on-gone-home.html
§
Gone Home is too dressed up as a horror to justify comments that it proves forthright tales about teen romance, about lesbian relationships, about nostalgia and broken families, can be made at this scale and succeed. I wonder, even now, if it would have succeeded without tricking the player into playing it as a horror game. The most cynical part of me wonders if it was made into a horror because Fullbright figured it wouldn’t sell otherwise.
/.../
The beauty of the Dark Souls narrative form is the eloquence with which it drops nuggets and hints, and invites the player to want to explore and resolve these mysteries. But truthfully, it only really belongs to Gone Home’s peripheral characters. Sam and Lonnie’s narrative form is little different than BioShock’s, with a voice in your ear clearly explaining everything you need to know at each story beat, leaving little mystery on their part for the player to unlock. It naturally dissects itself to form two not-quite-related parts: the plainly told teen romance, and everyone else’s Dark Souls. Which, I think, could offer an interesting reading of the broken state of the family, but I’ll leave that for another day.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/gone-home-a-tale-of-three-games/
§GENDER
One woman told me that when she plays as a male character, her teammates listen to her, and take her more seriously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFOVVAhnAns
§
Participants who wore sexualized avatars internalized the avatar’s appearance and self-
objectified, reporting more body-related thoughts than those wearing nonsexualized avatars. Participants
who saw their own faces, particularly on sexualized avatars, expressed more rape myth acceptance than
those in other conditions. Implications for both online and offline consequences of using sexualized avatars are discussed.
http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2013/fox-chb-sexualized-virtual-selves.pdf
§
Games media is constantly trying to legitimise the hobby it’s built on: to prove that games can be every bit as valid as movies and art and novels. But for some reason, rather than celebrating titles that claw at the boundaries of what is accepted, the media’s first response when presented with something difficult is to turn its nose up in disgust and claim that it’s damaging the medium.
http://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2013/10/if-you-want-to-be-an-adult-stop-acting-like-a-child/
§HORROR
In the end, we are left afraid not due to simple emotional response but because of the game’s implications. Adrenaline wears off. Ideas attach themselves to our mind and stay with us. That may be a more truthful execution of horror.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/176000-the-mirror-of-i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream/
§
As you design, repeat this mantra to yourself: "I will have no keycard doors in my game." No feeding fertilizer or poison to giant plants. Check yourself before adding puzzles about inserting crystals, gems, or figurines into some ornate locking mechanism. Reconsider any puzzle involving a four-digit number sequence, found elsewhere, that opens a lock.
Do not employ sliding block puzzles. Ever. That includes sliding statues! No!
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/10/useful-tips-for-horror-game-designers.html
§
Earlier today, I had a peculiar reaction to the footage of The Evil Within that oozed through the clogged pipes of the interweb from the Eurogamer Expo and directly onto my screen. As Craig pointed out, the spinny-blade room is so daft that it’s immediately rendered non-threatening. Finding such a machine in a mental institution raises logistical questions rather than the hairs on the back of my neck.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/09/27/editorial-horror-and-a-maddening-lack-of-imagination/
§
Horror art nowadays tends to stick to clichés, to familiar genre markers. A review of a few of the latest horror games makes this clear, almost painfully so. That said, part of the appeal of the genre, to some people, is its predictability. Horror orbits around a few central themes because they are apparently important to our culture.
http://ontologicalgeek.com/the-possibilities-of-horror-in-games/
§BASTION
Ultimately, I noticed a strange ambiguity concerning the themes of creation and destruction in Bastion right from the beginning; the player is told the Calamity has everything destroyed, yet this is the beginning of a story, Furthermore, the setting is falling apart except for where the kid steps, where the path is actually being created before him.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/creation-vs-destruction-in-bastions-narrative/
§ART
Art is a relational proposition, one of habitus and contingency in relation to the structuring roles of economy and power. I think the better question to ask is “what do games do?”
/.../
Maybe drawing the utopia out can be done through the process of making.
Games like Howling Dogs and Kentucky Route Zero are the material embodiment of this positive impulse. These games would not exist without the blood and horror that is the AAA games industry. They have to exist in stark contrast with it – but at the same time they draw out the utopian, feminist, trans, queer, anarchist ghostly utopia in them
http://dropouthangoutspaceout.tumblr.com/post/59044073396/on-kentucky-route-zero-and-howling-dogs
http://www.critical-distance.com/2013/11/03/november-3rd/
§INSPIRATION
By replacing immersion with the frame of attention, which is a word that holds scientific and psychological significance, we can use this frame of attention to make more meaningful observations.
/.../
It’s worth remembering that realism is not fidelity.
/.../
And Anita Sarkeesian says as much in her videos: remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.
/.../
Failure in games often implicitly suggests that you aren’t grokking a system and that therefore you’re misunderstanding the text. But Cart Life doesn’t require mastery of its systems to understand what it does. In fact, playing Cart Life well misses the point.
/.../
[on Depression Quest] After a really rough time, my character fought his way out of deep depression, just a bit. And I reached a decision tree with five choices, and for the first time, all five choices were blue and available to me. No AAA video game power fantasy, no immersive sim, has ever made me feel as close to having as much agency as I felt like I had in that moment.
/.../
[on Kentucky Route Zero] The choices are not about making change in the game world, but determining the character’s intentions. You can never exhaust all the content in a dialogue tree because it cares more about the beautiful transience of conversation. It’s about what questions you ask, which information you seek, and which you don’t - not because any of it is quest-specific, but because it affects how you perceive your character.
/.../
Failure, choice, realism, these concepts and any value we assign to them are destroyed by these games. They don’t erase failure, or devalue choice, they come from a different frame of mind completely.
/.../
Video games don’t exist.
We invented them.
And we can destroy them.http://samcrisp.tumblr.com/post/62718211352/how-to-destroy-everything-or-why-video-games-do-not
§BIOSHOCK
BioShock Infinite is the worst game of the year.
It’s an unjustified shooter without a single new idea. It’s a self-gratifying spectacle that confuses cunning with depth. It’s a craven, heartless game of false moral equivalencies that uses the suffering of oppressed people as window dressing, as theme, while it explores its own cold metaphysical conceits.
For its lack of humanity, for its fake guilt, for its flat boring gameplay, for its 100 million dollar cost, for its cleverness, for its cowardice, BioShock Infinite is not just the worst game of the year. It’s the worst game I’ve played this generation.
/.../
The BioShock series’ great talent thus far seems to be thematizing videogame conventions rather than challenging them. It has mastered the safe subversion, never mind its conservative heart. Clever self-awareness trumps actual innovation. And gamers eat it up. Because we love to feel smart, removed, safely above it all.
http://tevisthompson.com/on-videogame-reviews/
§
... Where the self-examination begins. We start to see something about our own, internalized, beliefs and acceptances of colonialism, um, through shooting people in the face."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FylamIJ19n8
§METAL GEAR SOLID 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_-jyF987MQ
§NARRATIVE: WALKING DEAD/BEYOND: TWO SOULS
But on a deeper level, throughout the series, we made decisions about what kind of a man Lee was, and how Clementine would see him. Our choices may not have affected the story outcome or averted his death, but they certainly affected his life—they made him the character we got to know and care about. (Or, depending, dislike but maybe understand.) One could make the same argument about the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages of the world, but given that The Walking Dead was a character study as much as it was an adventure, the fact that our decisions affected Lee's character is more central to the game's meaning as a whole. Game critic Sparky Clarkson has effectively encapsulated why player choice mattered in a post over at his blog awesomely titled "Your choices don't matter." Rather, the choices do matter, he says, but "they don't matter in the way that they appear to."
Lee's choices don't change the world, or alter the fundamental flow of the story. He can do nothing to keep the drugstore safe, preserve the motel stronghold, or prevent the treacheries in Savannah. If those are the kinds of choices that "matter", then Lee's decisions don't. But decisions that mattered in that way wouldn't really fit the themes of The Walking Dead. It's not a world where a man ultimately has any real power to save anyone.
But the choices in The Walking Dead aren't really about changing the world, they're about changing Lee. The player's choices define who Lee is, whose company he values, what principles he chooses to uphold. The world reacts to those decisions, in subtle ways that either reinforce those decisions (for instance, in the developing friendship with Kenny) or play off them (as in the case of Duck's fate). The player's choices matter because they establish a context for his emotional connection, through Lee, to the game world
http://kotaku.com/5964667/yes-your-choices-in-the-walking-dead-mattered
§
Most players are used to a "choice" moment, i.e. "PRESS X TO THIS, PRESS Y TO THAT". Since they never saw that anywhere in the bar, a lot of players didn't know they had the option to leave. [BEYOND: TWO SOULS]
Players are also used to the outcomes of choices being obvious. Someone dying, someone leaving, someone lying, etc. Subtlety and nuance are not things that games are implementing left and right. When something as low-key as a buried phobia rearing it's head hours later in the game is a consequence, it's understandable for it to go over a lot of heads.
/.../
An Adventure game like Beyond that does away with standard HUD elements just doesn't look like it's as advanced as it is. Players are most likely to assume what they are seeing is a pre-determined part of the game, and not results of actions they have taken or not taken. A more immersive and natural storytelling system also makes the game seem less interactive. Quite the double-edged sword.
/.../
It's very easy to miss dozens of important interactions if you don't explore the environment. Because you don't see everything on an overlay, you have to search around to see what can be toyed with. Sometimes, you simply don't expect things to be of any importance.
/.../
So the game's better form of discovery also comes with the chance of unintentionally leaving things behind. Yet another double-edged sword.
http://playersdelight.blogspot.ca/2013/10/beyond-two-souls-most-unique-feature-is.html
§THE UNFINISHED SWAN
The wife he chooses is a wife he creates in his own image, a woman who is “a female version of himself,” and who the King loves dearly. The woman created is a combination of two Greek myths: Narcissus, falling in love with his own reflection, and Pygmalion and Galatea, about an artist who falls in love with a statue he has created, and which subsequently comes to life. The intersection between these two myths leads to thematic intertwining between the narratives. It is one of the clearest cases where creation and love, as in the Pygmalion myth, are tied to self-creation and self-love, as in the Narcissus story. It is as if the King cannot distinguish between them, and the interrelation between these concepts becomes a running theme throughout the game. /.../ The King’s struggle to manifest the perfect self through his creations reflects the dissonance between his two selves. He constantly has his designs fail, he is left by his wife and mirror-self, and eventually he is faced with the possibility that he won’t have a legacy at all; he muses at the end of the game that all his works that “were meant to last forever… would crumble into dust. Or be painted over by someone who would come after [him].” /.../ ... he finally finds contentment in who he is rather than who he would like to be. It is in this spirit that he is able to at last give up creative control, bequeathing his magic paintbrush to his son, Monroe.
/.../ Rather than attempting to prevent outside influence, external support is necessary for Monroe to advance. /.../ This difference in attitude is crucial, and reflects the different mentalities of the characters. Where the King holds up an ideal and strives to achieve it, inevitably falling short, Monroe feels “pretty unfinished himself” and must make sense of his new reality, both in terms of the white world he finds himself in and the recent loss of his mother. He must become a creator in order to create himself, while the King approached it in the other direction, trying to create himself by becoming a creator.
http://theanimistblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/of-all-his-creations-his-greatest-was-himself-creation-and-self-creation-in-the-unfinished-swan/
§BRAID
Almost every repeated character or item seen throughout the game can be found in a mundane form in or around the Princess’s house. /.../
I noticed an interesting detail when examining the chandelier itself. When you look closely, three distinct figures can be seen across the wood patterning. The one in the middle is clearly female, and she’s pointedly turning her attention toward the figure to her left while the other simply watches. When the chandelier breaks, there’s a specific break in this image as well — the female figure and her chosen companion on one side, and the onlooker alone on the other.
http://leedzie.wordpress.com/2013/10/21/the-psychosis-of-braid/
§PRIVILEGE
We are quick to use ‘death of the author’ arguments because of the cultural history behind it, and so why not at least consider the death of the player?
http://www.mattiebrice.com/death-of-the-player/
/.../
Can’t we still be taken through experiences without our every whim thought of and satisfied?
§PLAYING
Playing in public in itself is a political act, especially in hard times.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/inside-failed-utopian-new-games-movement/
§
I’ve started walking more in videogames because I was irritated by the way I felt compelled to run.
http://joeblade.com/2013/10/20/running-walking-and-remember-me/
§FUTURE
Make three lists numbering one through 20. In one column, write down 20 legendary, meaningful, culturally significant novels capable of standing the test of time. In the second, do the same for film. I expect that your third column, in which you’d write 20 games capable of doing the same, cannot be completed.
/.../Vice City is, after just a few years, a messy, clunky thing, because what it did has been done better by its sequels. Forgetting its cool setting and story -- I don’t think I’ll be remembering Tommy Vercetti on my deathbed, anyway -- GTA 5 has negated the need to ever play Vice City again. Rockstar Games made its own history irrelevant by giving us access to something better. It will do it again in five years. These are the building blocks of a brand, and not something with any historical value. What other medium seeks out its own obsolescence?
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/21/how-long-can-video-games-matter
§
In truth, video games have no timeless masterpieces. There will come a day, sooner than we think, when no one will play Wind Waker. Or Chrono Trigger. Or Super Metroid. No one but curators and historians. And eventually, not even them. Tetris will not last, nor will Super Mario Bros. In a few years, who will be willing to survive fungal zombies for 15 hours just to reach the emotional climax of The Last of Us? For a medium so dependent on its players’ engagement, on their sustained attention, the question is not simply whether old games can technically be played, but will they? I think we sense this. And we want to protect our games while we can. We long to declare masterpieces and preserve them for the future because we are afraid: that one day, the game that meant so much to us will no longer have a player. Or even a legend to remember it by.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/88903/the-legend-of-zelda-the-wind-waker-hd-reprinting-the-legend
§
We'll accept innovations, even a radical one like Ocarina of Time's shift to 3D, so long as they add depth to the skills we already know. Sequels that interrupt the iterative continuity of the series, often end up as a footnote. At best, they accumulate, like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, a kind of dark horse mystique.
/.../
Much like the recurring mythos that underlies their respective stories, Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker are not separate games, but the same game extended in slightly different directions.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/25/5028042/opinion-why-sequels-are-sometimes-good-for-gamers-and-how-they-can-be
§THE STANLEY PARABLE
I am irrevocably grafted to his story, like hanging on to driftwood out at sea. He floats on without any regard for my splinters. Can I really be blamed for burning it all down? And though I am released from my porcelain casting, I am evoked to serve in this nightmare patriarchy. Which is why I need you; only the living can make choices.
Stanley’s always been dead.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/the-stanley-parable-review/
§
How they wish to destroy one another. How they wish to control one another. How they both wish to be free. Can you see? Can you see how much they need one another? Playing a game forges a relationship between player and designer and the experience of play is a conversation between them.
http://www.electrondance.com/the-stanley-paradox/
§GONE HOME
What struck me about this single page of Sam’s Diary in Gone Home is that it’s an exception to a rule — not part of a consistent fabric of showing the player what kind of thing they can and can’t do. It’s the only time Katie refuses to execute an action; the rest of the time, as Merritt points out, she acts like a camera, your lens into the world.
http://deadpixel.co/2013/08/not-gonna-happen/
§
Gone Home is played using Katie, a real character. There is much talk of player agency, but I don’t think there’s ever enough talk of character agency. My point is this: Katie might pick up the various things she finds, but she wouldn’t throw them across the floor the way the game allowed me to.
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2013/10/on-gone-home.html
§
Gone Home is too dressed up as a horror to justify comments that it proves forthright tales about teen romance, about lesbian relationships, about nostalgia and broken families, can be made at this scale and succeed. I wonder, even now, if it would have succeeded without tricking the player into playing it as a horror game. The most cynical part of me wonders if it was made into a horror because Fullbright figured it wouldn’t sell otherwise.
/.../
The beauty of the Dark Souls narrative form is the eloquence with which it drops nuggets and hints, and invites the player to want to explore and resolve these mysteries. But truthfully, it only really belongs to Gone Home’s peripheral characters. Sam and Lonnie’s narrative form is little different than BioShock’s, with a voice in your ear clearly explaining everything you need to know at each story beat, leaving little mystery on their part for the player to unlock. It naturally dissects itself to form two not-quite-related parts: the plainly told teen romance, and everyone else’s Dark Souls. Which, I think, could offer an interesting reading of the broken state of the family, but I’ll leave that for another day.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/gone-home-a-tale-of-three-games/
§GENDER
One woman told me that when she plays as a male character, her teammates listen to her, and take her more seriously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFOVVAhnAns
§
Participants who wore sexualized avatars internalized the avatar’s appearance and self-
objectified, reporting more body-related thoughts than those wearing nonsexualized avatars. Participants
who saw their own faces, particularly on sexualized avatars, expressed more rape myth acceptance than
those in other conditions. Implications for both online and offline consequences of using sexualized avatars are discussed.
http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2013/fox-chb-sexualized-virtual-selves.pdf
§
Games media is constantly trying to legitimise the hobby it’s built on: to prove that games can be every bit as valid as movies and art and novels. But for some reason, rather than celebrating titles that claw at the boundaries of what is accepted, the media’s first response when presented with something difficult is to turn its nose up in disgust and claim that it’s damaging the medium.
http://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2013/10/if-you-want-to-be-an-adult-stop-acting-like-a-child/
§HORROR
In the end, we are left afraid not due to simple emotional response but because of the game’s implications. Adrenaline wears off. Ideas attach themselves to our mind and stay with us. That may be a more truthful execution of horror.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/176000-the-mirror-of-i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream/
§
As you design, repeat this mantra to yourself: "I will have no keycard doors in my game." No feeding fertilizer or poison to giant plants. Check yourself before adding puzzles about inserting crystals, gems, or figurines into some ornate locking mechanism. Reconsider any puzzle involving a four-digit number sequence, found elsewhere, that opens a lock.
Do not employ sliding block puzzles. Ever. That includes sliding statues! No!
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/10/useful-tips-for-horror-game-designers.html
§
Earlier today, I had a peculiar reaction to the footage of The Evil Within that oozed through the clogged pipes of the interweb from the Eurogamer Expo and directly onto my screen. As Craig pointed out, the spinny-blade room is so daft that it’s immediately rendered non-threatening. Finding such a machine in a mental institution raises logistical questions rather than the hairs on the back of my neck.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/09/27/editorial-horror-and-a-maddening-lack-of-imagination/
§
Horror art nowadays tends to stick to clichés, to familiar genre markers. A review of a few of the latest horror games makes this clear, almost painfully so. That said, part of the appeal of the genre, to some people, is its predictability. Horror orbits around a few central themes because they are apparently important to our culture.
http://ontologicalgeek.com/the-possibilities-of-horror-in-games/
§BASTION
Ultimately, I noticed a strange ambiguity concerning the themes of creation and destruction in Bastion right from the beginning; the player is told the Calamity has everything destroyed, yet this is the beginning of a story, Furthermore, the setting is falling apart except for where the kid steps, where the path is actually being created before him.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/creation-vs-destruction-in-bastions-narrative/
§ART
Art is a relational proposition, one of habitus and contingency in relation to the structuring roles of economy and power. I think the better question to ask is “what do games do?”
/.../
Maybe drawing the utopia out can be done through the process of making.
Games like Howling Dogs and Kentucky Route Zero are the material embodiment of this positive impulse. These games would not exist without the blood and horror that is the AAA games industry. They have to exist in stark contrast with it – but at the same time they draw out the utopian, feminist, trans, queer, anarchist ghostly utopia in them
http://dropouthangoutspaceout.tumblr.com/post/59044073396/on-kentucky-route-zero-and-howling-dogs
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