§§§MGSV
He is, just like all the other Snakes in all the other Metal Gears, just a bloke with a mullet who crawls around on the floor a lot. There’s no
shame in that: the amorphous, interchangeable character of Snake is one
of the more compelling blokes in all of contemporary video games. But
that isn’t enough for MGS V. It wants us to see him not only as the
greatest warrior of the 20th century, but also as the greatest man to
have ever lived. General. Tactician. Visionary. Father. Philosopher. But
he’s none of these things. He’s simply really good at solo sneaking
missions, just like his cloned son before him.
/.../
AND AND AND
it’s not even Big Boss at all, which makes the whole thing, which hardly
made sense to begin with, stray even further away from possibly ever
making any sense. The destructiveness of the game's violently
unnecessary twist cannot be overstated.
[It defintely
takes a special sort of madness to keep writing the Metal Gear Saga, and
it takes a different (?) sort of madness to continue to invest so much
of oneself into the world of Metal Gear when it just barely makes sense
anymore. It's very hard to let go of the series because it can't let go
of itself, and what's even worse, the very fact that it can't let go of
itself and explores similar themes and concepts in every game but adds
new layers and world building to it every time is precisely why I love
the series to begin with! But after MGS4 I just felt that it kind of
hurt more than it felt good, and although that game was far from my
favorite in the series, I could live with it being the last game. Peace
Walker came and well it was good, but I kinda lost interest although I
tried to hang on anyway. And then this fifth game -- I don't even know.
I'm still waiting for someone to write something so that I can
appreciate the game for its hidden genius, but all I can find is
disappointment. On some level I do get the twist that we are big boss
and always have been, and it ties into the existential themes of past
Kojima games where we were told to find ourselves, our own paths,
effectively becoming just men with guns (and thus not soldiers), but I
don't think all of the bollocks that is MGS5 makes up for that. Yes it's
a neat Kojima ending that it's not really an ending, and that we all
waited for Kojima to make sense of Big Boss and it all for us, and that
instead zie just trolls us and tells us that this is the end for hir
involvement in the saga and that it is now up to us to make the legend
come alive, up to us to decide what it was all about. Up to us to create
our own meaning instead of trying to piece it all together and find
meaning in some sort of passed-on canon without contradictions. MGS was
never about that, just as it was precicely about neurotic attachment to
building upon existing canon. Everything MGS is just that sort of
paradox.
But still. You know?]
§
Whether intentional or not, Kojima's stylised, fetishistic view of military life seems to be saying "This is why people go to war: to enact the media that excited them so much."
In
other words, Snake doesn't have to do anything overtly evil for us to
determine that he's not exactly the nicest man. It's just that so many
war games put the player in the role of a psychopath that we simply take
his egregious actions for granted.
§
Raiden is at the whim of the designer.
The true ending of Metal Gear Solid 5 takes it one step further. We don’t need Raiden anymore, because we’re doing that job ourselves.
From that perspective, it makes sense why this new game focuses so much
more on gameplay and less on half hour long cutscenes: the real story
is about the player becoming Big Boss.
§
Hideo Kojima or (The Art of Meaningful Game Mechanics)
§
Two Minute Game Crit - Metal Gear Solid: Crouch and Zoom
[perhaps we could use some crotch and zoom in the series as well - to balance out all the tits and zoom?]
§§§SUPER MARIO
Game Maker's Toolkit - Analysing Mario to Master Super Mario Maker
§
Game Maker's Toolkit - Super Mario 3D World's 4 Step Level Design
§
Miyamoto on World 1-1: How Nintendo made Mario's most iconic level
§
Really Freakin' Clever - Super Mario Sunshine
§
Let's Review Mario Maker Fan Levels. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
§
The Weirdness of Super Mario EXPLAINED! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
§
There is a futile egotism to “Super Mario Maker,” a piece of software that
caters to delusory belief that enthusiasm and creativity are
interchangeable, that being a fan of something can, if practiced with
enough care, create an equivalent of the work to which one’s fandom is
fixated. This self-deception is antithetical to the genius of “Mario”
games. From “Donkey Kong” to “Super Mario 64,” Mario games have always
felt like creations in pursuit of abstract ideas rather than homages to
any specific history or design tradition.
§§§MISC
Errant Signal - (Spoilers) Fallout 4 and Role Playing
[I
do feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really want less
player privilege/powergaming/less wish-fullfillment and more
roleplaying/violence/what the players don't know that they need
in games, and in this context - more Fallout 1&2 and less Fallout
4. And I really want what Planescape Torment or Unrest attempts in a AAA
with Mass Effect's budget. I'm thinking that might be a while, and so I
just have to be grateful that the difference between indie and
non-indie is shrinking, which also means that indiegames can be really
fucking beautiful and large in scope. There was even one game
kickstarted that specifically wanted to do Mass Effect but different,
but yeah the scope was just a couple of hours on that one. We'll get
there eventually!]
§
I wanted to start from one simple word, one that is used by marketing departments and journalists alike; it pervades reviews, previews, the lexicon of indie games and it trickled down to gamers themselves. The word ‘addictive’. Gaming is, as far as I know, the only community in which the word addictive is considered a positive.
[This piece is really personal and hit home for me, even if my story with depression is quite different and has made me play less and not more games for the last ten years (but before that, yep, had me playing Baldur's Gate 2 constantly for three months).
§
Kuchera expresses the relief he feels at discovering Assassin’s Creed: Unity to be an unplayable buggy mess, such that it no longer binds him to go out and buy the game. It’s an unburdening, a release from one’s unspoken, self-imposed obligation, shared, Kuchera notes, by many fans of the series. The supposedly preposterous thing here and the reason it’s being presented as a curious twist of nature is people are glad they don’t have to buy a game from a franchise they’ve come to enjoy. They’re pleased to be able to write it off. It means they can move on to the next enormous franchise, as if a Metacritic score is the magic word to break their curse.
[Hi, my name is Ada and I'm an addict...]
§
How Modern Language Breaks Scrabble | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
[An interesting aside to how language breaks Scrabble is how high-level Scrabble play is so divorced from regular Scrabble playing that is barely the same game. How else could an American who doesn't speak French win the French national championship?]
§
What Makes a Good Video Game Companion? ? RagnarRox • Game Design++
[Awesome design document. Companion Cube for the win! Although I would like to question some of the assumptions in the video, the one concerning utility especially. But still, it is a tool for the toolbox.]
§
The internet is full of people speculating on whether they caused a certain event to happen in Stanley or whether it was poor chance.
These events serve to unsettle and disorient the player. They make it so that you’re never sure if you’ve fully explored the game and fully understood what is going on or if it has another surprise waiting for you the next time you start it up. By making the edges of the game vague, The Stanley Parable prevents you from getting comfortable and keeps you in a state of wonder.
[The strength of Playable Teaser is similar - in keeping the horizon of possibilities fuzzy.]
Showing posts with label Stanley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanley. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Crit Shit 18th december
§SWEDISH
Lösningen är inte att göra våldet i äventyrsspel mer realistiskt och känslomässigt laddat. Lösningen är att inse att det går att göra äventyrsspel utan att vada i blod. För någonstans måste spelutvecklare lära sig att konflikt sällan är lösningen på ett problem. Det brukar snarare vara orsaken.
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16065
§
”Proteus” är nämligen, precis som ”Bioshock Infinite”, ett spel som ställer sin värld i centrum. Men till skillnad från ”Bioshock Infinite” gör det en poäng av att inte låta någonting komma mellan världen och spelaren. Alla system som normalt tävlar om din koncentrationsförmåga är helt bortstrippade."/.../
Bioshock Infinite” vill vara ”Proteus”, men istället reducerar det sin värld till en kuliss ju längre vi spelar. Det blir aldrig någonsin bättre än den magiska, första blicken av Columbia. Det ger oss en glimt av någonting vackert och egensinnigt och sen låter det oss slösa bort resten av vår tid med att hänga i krokar, åka linbana och skjuta ihjäl människor.
/.../
Ett verk som ”Bioshock Infinite” borde inte vara designat för folk som vill leka. Det borde vara spännande och intressant snarare än roligt. Utmanande intellektuellt snarare än spelmekaniskt. Bärande på sjukdomsinsikt istället för beroendeframkallande feedbackloopar. Det borde problematisera sina karaktärer istället för att förvandla dem till svartvita stereotyper. Varför förutsätter man att spelare inte är mottagliga för sådana värden i spel? Varför antar man att de är dumma, naiva, knappt läskunniga, ständigt på jakt efter en stunds förgänglig underhållning? Varför tror man att de inte klarar av att inse storheten i Columbias värld om de inte betraktar den från ett vapensikte?
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16010
§CLIPS
Incentive Systems and Politics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa-vQ0L77LY
§
Errant Signal on The Stanley Parable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiCLKmEAa1I
§
The Importance of Modding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvNzj0GVMDI
§
Interviews with people from the business
http://criticalpathproject.com/
§
On Contrast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyzYGPAqSw
§METAL GEAR SOLID
Let's Analyze Metal Gear - The Hexagon Motif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn9dfDheSSo
§
Metal Gear Rising is, politically and philosophically, absolutely 100% a Metal Gear title, and it’s enthusiasm to show that it is makes it possibly the most thematically blunt Metal Gear ever made.
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2013/12/quick-notes-on-metal-gearrising-how-you.html
§GONE HOME
I began to query my experiences in order to disentangle the strange contradiction of a company making the kind of game that I dearly want to be made, but that I could not enjoy in its intended form. I wanted to know what made my first experience of it so unpleasant, and why it never quite worked for me as a narrative. This investigation turned out to shed light on some wider issues of interest.
/.../
My problem with Gone Home is related to the literary versus genre divide, except in games we must deal with both functional genres (FPS, adventure, RPG) as well as fictional genre.
/.../
Indeed, it is by waving the flag for this ideal that the game tries to convince you it has something challenging to say about its moral precepts, which alas it doesn’t since it never seriously engages with its ‘opposition’. The game (knowingly?) relies upon you sharing its values for its narrative appeal – which would be what you’d expect in most genre fiction. It’s a long way from what is expected in literary fiction, though.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/gone-home-and-the-constraint-of-genre.html
§THE LAST OF US
Uncharted is adolescent, TLOU is adult, say they.
In truth, TLOU is naught but a grown up Uncharted.
/.../
To top it off, your short-term ludic goals are supplemented with long-term activities in levelling up Joel and his weapons. And true to form, their thinness fail to conceal their purpose at distracting you from the game’s insecurities.
/.../
The writers of Naughty Dog still live within cutscenes – this is where the bulk of the plot occurs, where the characters most vividly interact. TLOU, like Uncharted, divorces narrative from gameplay, as mandated by the idiom: here is a shooting segment, here is a puzzle segment, here is a walking segment, here is a cutscene.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/the-ladder-of-us/
§
In depth on The Last of Us Part 3: The Highlights and Low Points of the Narrative
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvZLnpBA1mM
§
[The Walking Dead & The Last Of Us]... are works of Neo-Romanticism.
http://complicatethenarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-romantic-dead.html
§DESIGN
The worse things in a game can become, the better it feels when you beat it.
And then I wonder why I don’t want to play more Dishonored. And I think the reason comes from Arkane’s own admission that the game is a power fantasy. In some ways, games are better when they are – and this is a peculiar-sounding phrase – a vulnerability fantasy.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/23/games-are-best-when-things-go-wrong/
§
I'd argue that Metro 2033's failure to communicate it's intentions not only doesn't hinder its point, it *is* the point.
/.../
If Bioshock is trying to make the point that unchecked greed leads to the destruction of the thief as much as the victim, it only supports this up to a point. The player consumes just as much Adam and ammo following the selfless route as the selfish. Metro 2033 looks good in this light: quieter, more meditative, waiting patiently for you to learn what you've been doing wrong all these years. It's a game that could only have come from an eastern European development culture whose holy grail is absolute simulation as opposed to absolute cinematic integrity, where implementing ideas that a player may never experience is not a failure but the defining characteristic of interactive media.
http://exitwarp.blogspot.se/2010/10/novus-homo-thoughts-on-metro-2033.html
§QUEER
Would it Matter if Master Chief Were Gay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPVjgTG1Rqg
§
Looking at Dys4ia, LIM, Howling Dogs, and Mainichi, the differences in design is so apparent, that being developed by queer women is the least interesting thing about them. Yet, that’s how they are packaged, and the only time they are allowed to be highlighted.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/not-a-monolith/
Society has taught us that the female voice is the most trustworthy.
/.../
Cara Ellison already breached this topic last year in her article “Mother’s Legacy: Engendering AI in Video Games,” stating that the terror stems from an instinct to see the female as the mother, the fear coming from seeing your mother as your “own worst enemy.” “Videogames use this idea of the controlling mother figure to play with us, to scare us,” she stated. “She’s meant to be caring, protective and helpful but she often turns out a bitch from hell.”
/.../
When we hear GlaDos in the beginning of Portal, we have to listen to her. We trust her despite the seedy undertones of her tests, and when she ultimately betrays us, we are let down and disturbed. SHODAN is the same way, especially in System Shock 2, when she uses the voice of one of the female survivors to lure you to her lair and gain your allegiance. You’ve been manipulated both times into believing that this voice is your chance for survival when in actuality, it doesn’t care about you.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/glados-stanley-parable-and-evil-female-ai/
§OTHER
What this discussion highlights is the strange inter-disciplinary space we now find ourselves within, where each research domain has its own specialty but where the mythologies that are effective within each domain can be different without contradiction.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/neuromythology-for-game-design.html
§BONUS
HULK BELIEVES WE DON'T WATCH MOVIES JUST TO SIT THERE AND HAVE THE "BELIEVABILITY METER" GO UP AND DOWN. WE DON'T WATCH FILMS TO AVOID BASIC TRUTHS IN THE NAME OF THE CONSTANT SEARCH FOR THAT INDESCRIBABLE "SOMETHING ELSE". WE WATCH FILMS BECAUSE THEY FEED OUR SOULS. THE CINEMA OF MORALISM HAS ALWAYS HAD REAL VALUE TO US AS A CULTURE.
/.../
MEANING CLOUD ATLAS IS AT ONCE HIGHLY STYLIZED GRANDEUR, BUT IT TRULY MANAGES TO FEED YOUR SOUL. HULK KNOWS THAT SOUNDS FLOWERY. HULK KNOWS THAT THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE MAY FEEL THE EXACT SAME WAY...
YOU JUST HAVE TO EMBRACE THE CONCEIT.
http://badassdigest.com/2012/10/08/fantastic-fest-review-cloud-atlas-david-foster-wallace-and-the-cinema-of-mo/
Lösningen är inte att göra våldet i äventyrsspel mer realistiskt och känslomässigt laddat. Lösningen är att inse att det går att göra äventyrsspel utan att vada i blod. För någonstans måste spelutvecklare lära sig att konflikt sällan är lösningen på ett problem. Det brukar snarare vara orsaken.
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16065
§
”Proteus” är nämligen, precis som ”Bioshock Infinite”, ett spel som ställer sin värld i centrum. Men till skillnad från ”Bioshock Infinite” gör det en poäng av att inte låta någonting komma mellan världen och spelaren. Alla system som normalt tävlar om din koncentrationsförmåga är helt bortstrippade."/.../
Bioshock Infinite” vill vara ”Proteus”, men istället reducerar det sin värld till en kuliss ju längre vi spelar. Det blir aldrig någonsin bättre än den magiska, första blicken av Columbia. Det ger oss en glimt av någonting vackert och egensinnigt och sen låter det oss slösa bort resten av vår tid med att hänga i krokar, åka linbana och skjuta ihjäl människor.
/.../
Ett verk som ”Bioshock Infinite” borde inte vara designat för folk som vill leka. Det borde vara spännande och intressant snarare än roligt. Utmanande intellektuellt snarare än spelmekaniskt. Bärande på sjukdomsinsikt istället för beroendeframkallande feedbackloopar. Det borde problematisera sina karaktärer istället för att förvandla dem till svartvita stereotyper. Varför förutsätter man att spelare inte är mottagliga för sådana värden i spel? Varför antar man att de är dumma, naiva, knappt läskunniga, ständigt på jakt efter en stunds förgänglig underhållning? Varför tror man att de inte klarar av att inse storheten i Columbias värld om de inte betraktar den från ett vapensikte?
http://www.blogemup.se/?p=16010
§CLIPS
Incentive Systems and Politics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa-vQ0L77LY
§
Errant Signal on The Stanley Parable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiCLKmEAa1I
§
The Importance of Modding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvNzj0GVMDI
§
Interviews with people from the business
http://criticalpathproject.com/
§
On Contrast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyzYGPAqSw
§METAL GEAR SOLID
Let's Analyze Metal Gear - The Hexagon Motif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn9dfDheSSo
§
Metal Gear Rising is, politically and philosophically, absolutely 100% a Metal Gear title, and it’s enthusiasm to show that it is makes it possibly the most thematically blunt Metal Gear ever made.
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.se/2013/12/quick-notes-on-metal-gearrising-how-you.html
§GONE HOME
I began to query my experiences in order to disentangle the strange contradiction of a company making the kind of game that I dearly want to be made, but that I could not enjoy in its intended form. I wanted to know what made my first experience of it so unpleasant, and why it never quite worked for me as a narrative. This investigation turned out to shed light on some wider issues of interest.
/.../
My problem with Gone Home is related to the literary versus genre divide, except in games we must deal with both functional genres (FPS, adventure, RPG) as well as fictional genre.
/.../
Indeed, it is by waving the flag for this ideal that the game tries to convince you it has something challenging to say about its moral precepts, which alas it doesn’t since it never seriously engages with its ‘opposition’. The game (knowingly?) relies upon you sharing its values for its narrative appeal – which would be what you’d expect in most genre fiction. It’s a long way from what is expected in literary fiction, though.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/gone-home-and-the-constraint-of-genre.html
§THE LAST OF US
Uncharted is adolescent, TLOU is adult, say they.
In truth, TLOU is naught but a grown up Uncharted.
/.../
To top it off, your short-term ludic goals are supplemented with long-term activities in levelling up Joel and his weapons. And true to form, their thinness fail to conceal their purpose at distracting you from the game’s insecurities.
/.../
The writers of Naughty Dog still live within cutscenes – this is where the bulk of the plot occurs, where the characters most vividly interact. TLOU, like Uncharted, divorces narrative from gameplay, as mandated by the idiom: here is a shooting segment, here is a puzzle segment, here is a walking segment, here is a cutscene.
http://normallyrascal.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/the-ladder-of-us/
§
In depth on The Last of Us Part 3: The Highlights and Low Points of the Narrative
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvZLnpBA1mM
§
[The Walking Dead & The Last Of Us]... are works of Neo-Romanticism.
http://complicatethenarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-romantic-dead.html
§DESIGN
The worse things in a game can become, the better it feels when you beat it.
And then I wonder why I don’t want to play more Dishonored. And I think the reason comes from Arkane’s own admission that the game is a power fantasy. In some ways, games are better when they are – and this is a peculiar-sounding phrase – a vulnerability fantasy.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/23/games-are-best-when-things-go-wrong/
§
I'd argue that Metro 2033's failure to communicate it's intentions not only doesn't hinder its point, it *is* the point.
/.../
If Bioshock is trying to make the point that unchecked greed leads to the destruction of the thief as much as the victim, it only supports this up to a point. The player consumes just as much Adam and ammo following the selfless route as the selfish. Metro 2033 looks good in this light: quieter, more meditative, waiting patiently for you to learn what you've been doing wrong all these years. It's a game that could only have come from an eastern European development culture whose holy grail is absolute simulation as opposed to absolute cinematic integrity, where implementing ideas that a player may never experience is not a failure but the defining characteristic of interactive media.
http://exitwarp.blogspot.se/2010/10/novus-homo-thoughts-on-metro-2033.html
§QUEER
Would it Matter if Master Chief Were Gay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPVjgTG1Rqg
§
Looking at Dys4ia, LIM, Howling Dogs, and Mainichi, the differences in design is so apparent, that being developed by queer women is the least interesting thing about them. Yet, that’s how they are packaged, and the only time they are allowed to be highlighted.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/not-a-monolith/
Society has taught us that the female voice is the most trustworthy.
/.../
Cara Ellison already breached this topic last year in her article “Mother’s Legacy: Engendering AI in Video Games,” stating that the terror stems from an instinct to see the female as the mother, the fear coming from seeing your mother as your “own worst enemy.” “Videogames use this idea of the controlling mother figure to play with us, to scare us,” she stated. “She’s meant to be caring, protective and helpful but she often turns out a bitch from hell.”
/.../
When we hear GlaDos in the beginning of Portal, we have to listen to her. We trust her despite the seedy undertones of her tests, and when she ultimately betrays us, we are let down and disturbed. SHODAN is the same way, especially in System Shock 2, when she uses the voice of one of the female survivors to lure you to her lair and gain your allegiance. You’ve been manipulated both times into believing that this voice is your chance for survival when in actuality, it doesn’t care about you.
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/articles/glados-stanley-parable-and-evil-female-ai/
§OTHER
What this discussion highlights is the strange inter-disciplinary space we now find ourselves within, where each research domain has its own specialty but where the mythologies that are effective within each domain can be different without contradiction.
http://blog.ihobo.com/2013/12/neuromythology-for-game-design.html
§BONUS
HULK BELIEVES WE DON'T WATCH MOVIES JUST TO SIT THERE AND HAVE THE "BELIEVABILITY METER" GO UP AND DOWN. WE DON'T WATCH FILMS TO AVOID BASIC TRUTHS IN THE NAME OF THE CONSTANT SEARCH FOR THAT INDESCRIBABLE "SOMETHING ELSE". WE WATCH FILMS BECAUSE THEY FEED OUR SOULS. THE CINEMA OF MORALISM HAS ALWAYS HAD REAL VALUE TO US AS A CULTURE.
/.../
MEANING CLOUD ATLAS IS AT ONCE HIGHLY STYLIZED GRANDEUR, BUT IT TRULY MANAGES TO FEED YOUR SOUL. HULK KNOWS THAT SOUNDS FLOWERY. HULK KNOWS THAT THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE MAY FEEL THE EXACT SAME WAY...
YOU JUST HAVE TO EMBRACE THE CONCEIT.
http://badassdigest.com/2012/10/08/fantastic-fest-review-cloud-atlas-david-foster-wallace-and-the-cinema-of-mo/
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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