§§§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 community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Saturday, November 1, 2014
1/11
The second kickstarter project I backed (the first was A House in California, made by Jake Elliott of Kentucky Route fame) was Hadean Lands. Now, four years later, it's finally here. And I'm not going to play it. It's simple, really - the game is mainly a puzzle game, with very little story and very much heavy puzzle solving. I'm just not into that game of game. Ok, I loved Plotkins Dual Transform even though it basically had no story, but it was short, and experimental, and had a wonderful atmosphere. This game seems to be very long and very heavy. So yeah, sometimes you just have to pass up on games.
This week I've been playing Dragon Age 2 and some horror games, but more on those next week when I do a write-up!
§ARTICLES
I see people walking toward me, but they’re not really people, just strange aliens that don’t quite cohere into any particular shape when I get close. That’s what marks Bernband: nothing makes any more sense as you get closer to it. It’s stranger than that: the further away things are, the clearer they seem. There’s a night that covers the world and gives everything an enveloping calm.
http://thiscageisworms.com/2014/10/21/on-bernband/
§
articles about games, in the end, still garner much less traffic and general interest than other cultural phenomena. serious discussion that happens in the videogame sphere is largely disregarded as niche and unimportant in broader cultural conversations - much to the frustration, by the way, of those of us who do see games' ubiquity and value. and so, in the absence of larger serious cultural attention, the boy genius rules as king.
http://ellaguro.blogspot.se/2014/10/embracing-new-flesh.html
§
The trouble is I am find myself getting a little tired of this kind of subversion. The game looks like a shooter and the player can do nothing except shoot. Now you might point out that the player has another option - do nothing. It is in doing nothing that enlightenment can be found.
/.../
If the player cannot inhabit the role on offer, the game collapses into a system and meaning and metaphor are lost. But this is as much an issue of game education as it is acting.
/.../
A developer who chooses to subvert conventions, thinking that the results will be in the higher metaphorical level, may find players accusing them of being exploitative. The reason is the developer has broken the compact. The player has adopted the role they were supposed to, but the developer has used familiar labels to do quite different things. Now when I press a button in the lift for the basement, the building explodes. The system has been deliberately corrupted.
http://www.electrondance.com/your-game-isnt-as-clever-as-you-thought/
§
What I’ve realized during my time engaging with the online community surrounding games media and development is that minoritized voices often only get visibility and resources when they are talking about their pain.
/.../
I am more than my pain. I am more than my pain. I am more than my pain.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/more-than-my-pain/
§
Persona 3’s protagonist is a supernatural other, a messianic figure capable only of departing from their own realities and connecting to the feelings of others. The PC is a series of masks, but these masks are more than a costume for others to look at, the PC is a reflection of those that speak to them, the masks look outward and see the world in different ways. The PC’s masks are the source of their divine empathy.
http://big-tall-words.com/2014/10/30/masks-upon-masks/
§
Could there be a viable concept of ‘player rights’, and if not, are there any grounds for legally restricting games?
/.../
It is not that players have rights so much as it is that players have responsibilities – and not least of all, to themselves.
http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2014/10/can-players-have-rights.html
§INDIECADE
http://blog.brendanvance.com/2014/10/24/notes-on-indiecade/
http://www.mattiebrice.com/dispatches-from-indiecade/
Friday, March 7, 2014
7/3
§DESIGN
In short, the concise approach’s predictability, intuitiveness, and designer control are both strengths and weaknesses. Predictability of response reduces frustration, but means the player is seldom surprised. Intuitiveness makes the game easier to learn, but keeps the player from attempting unorthodox solutions. Control means that the designer can keep the game progressing in a manner consistent with the design vision, but means as well that the game can never exceed what the designer imagined, have its systems truly come to life.
http://problemmachine.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/verbosity-and-concision/
§
13 Cutscene Tropes Holding Back Interactive Storytelling
http://playersdelight.blogspot.se/2014/02/13-cutscene-tropes-holding-back.html
§
Dumb fun is for everyone, even if you've never picked up a controller. It brings the seasoned pro down shoulder-to-shoulder with the bumbling newbie, and there's something really satisfying about that.
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/02/octodad-cluminess-in-gaming.html
§
Errant Signal - Thief (1998)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIhEtXPGzgs
§COMMUNITY
Are Angry Fanboys Bad for Games? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ9YozVtUag
§VR
Swap Genders with Oculus Rift, Get Empathy
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/swap-gender-with-oculus-rift-get-empathy?utm_source=gravityUS
§
Zelda VR: The Legend Of Zelda remade for Oculus Rift
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEXrNuw_J0Y
§
Who Are the 10 Best NPCs of All Time? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rAQ_SJ1wls
§QUEER
When we pushed him on why this made any real difference to him at all he relented with:
“Look, if I am going to get into anything in my games then either I want to be the person or I want to feel validated in my desire to fuck them. How am I supposed to get my jollies thinking about Ellen Page in EPS 2014 if she was with a girl? Err… actually, now that I think about it-”
www.arcadianrhythms.com/2014/02/breaking-news-ellen-page-simulator-2014-cancelled/
§
As the game is called Broken Age, it’s not surprising that many of the themes in the game revolve around a broken, dystopian society. The Hunger Game-esque Maiden’s Feast involves sacrificing the town’s maidens in order to both save the town and save the maidens’ families from certain embarrassment. But, Vella is having none of it.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4660
In short, the concise approach’s predictability, intuitiveness, and designer control are both strengths and weaknesses. Predictability of response reduces frustration, but means the player is seldom surprised. Intuitiveness makes the game easier to learn, but keeps the player from attempting unorthodox solutions. Control means that the designer can keep the game progressing in a manner consistent with the design vision, but means as well that the game can never exceed what the designer imagined, have its systems truly come to life.
http://problemmachine.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/verbosity-and-concision/
§
13 Cutscene Tropes Holding Back Interactive Storytelling
http://playersdelight.blogspot.se/2014/02/13-cutscene-tropes-holding-back.html
§
Dumb fun is for everyone, even if you've never picked up a controller. It brings the seasoned pro down shoulder-to-shoulder with the bumbling newbie, and there's something really satisfying about that.
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/02/octodad-cluminess-in-gaming.html
§
Errant Signal - Thief (1998)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIhEtXPGzgs
§COMMUNITY
Are Angry Fanboys Bad for Games? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ9YozVtUag
§VR
Swap Genders with Oculus Rift, Get Empathy
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/swap-gender-with-oculus-rift-get-empathy?utm_source=gravityUS
§
Zelda VR: The Legend Of Zelda remade for Oculus Rift
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEXrNuw_J0Y
§
Who Are the 10 Best NPCs of All Time? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rAQ_SJ1wls
§QUEER
When we pushed him on why this made any real difference to him at all he relented with:
“Look, if I am going to get into anything in my games then either I want to be the person or I want to feel validated in my desire to fuck them. How am I supposed to get my jollies thinking about Ellen Page in EPS 2014 if she was with a girl? Err… actually, now that I think about it-”
www.arcadianrhythms.com/2014/02/breaking-news-ellen-page-simulator-2014-cancelled/
§
As the game is called Broken Age, it’s not surprising that many of the themes in the game revolve around a broken, dystopian society. The Hunger Game-esque Maiden’s Feast involves sacrificing the town’s maidens in order to both save the town and save the maidens’ families from certain embarrassment. But, Vella is having none of it.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4660
Saturday, February 1, 2014
1/2 Crit Links
In 2012 I realized videogames were holding me back, artistically speaking. Or rather: my tunnel vision focus on videogames as "my" medium was holding me back.
/.../
Every medium is imbued with the exact same amount of possibility: it’s like the density of the Real Line. The density of the Real Line between 0 and 1 is infinite, as is the density between 0.2 and 0.4, which is the same as between 0 and 100, etc.
You can always drill down, and there will always be more to discover about a medium.
http://tinysubversions.com/fuckvideogames/#slide1
§DESIGN
Chess has problems.
Not for most of us, perhaps - not for the bluffers and the fudgers and the seat-of-the-pants players who prod a path through matchups in which each side's strategy is a winsome, wobbling comedy of errors. No, chess has problems at the grandmaster level. Those people who really love chess, that devoted few who have given their lives to it and for whom chess really should be a great game? They're not getting a great game - and they haven't been getting one for a while.
Chess, it turns out, has been in a bit of a rut for some time.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-03-chess-2-the-sequel-how-a-street-fightin-man-fixed-the-worlds-most-famous-game
§
Extra Credits: Affordances
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc
§
DOET [Design of Everyday Things] judges the user’s needs most important, and her perspective most valuable. It is about the apotheosis of the user; it makes her into God, and with holy might it strikes the fear of Her into objects and those who make them.
/.../
DOET, alongside all the important research around it, culminated in something called User Centered Design, a philosophy in which “user error” does not exist and programmers are sad.
/.../
This school teaches that if it’s not fun (or at the very least quick and painless) to be taught about some feature, we shouldn’t include it; that clarity is better than complexity; that elegance is better than messiness; that one button is better than two. It teaches that the purpose of a game is to explain itself to you, and that somewhere in the act of explaining lies that game’s intrinsic value. We have thereby converted the scariest, most contentious question of all (what should this thing be?) from an artistic decision into a design decision.
/.../
Our belief in clarity and elegance, though it has yielded spectacular results, is not the very best way to make videogames; it may not even be a particularly good way. We suffer from the bar we’ve set for ourselves and the burdens we place upon designers. We are wrongly convinced, even in the critical community, that works like Problem Attic are unworthy of attention solely because they prioritize different features and challenge players in a way we deem to be unfashionable.
/.../
I plan on thinking much harder about how I evaluate potential game features. “Because then the user doesn’t have to think” or “but how do we teach that?” should not be trump cards in every single argument about whether to include stuff. It’s easy to turn everything into a neat little design decision, but making a few more artistic ones would be better in the long term for users and for my sanity
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BrendanVance/20140106/208092/The_Cult_of_the_Peacock.php?print=1
§
At its worst a backstory driven piece can seem soulless and lonely, as the player wanders desolate locations from which all the other humans have already fled.
But there’s also an argument to be made that the backstory mystery is one of the most natural possible shapes for interactive literature.
/.../
The problem I have with it in Gone Home is that this interaction style enforces the distance and lack of agency that is backstory’s chief defect, and it does so without offering much of value in exchange. The player’s task is purely ergodic, methodically working through every explorable space, even though this is a story about understanding and insight, not about effort and dedication.
/.../
Hypothetical reading is most interesting if the reader is likely at first to form incorrect hypotheses.
Gone Home misguides the player initially, but it does so in a way that is completely orthogonal to the actual substance of its story.
/.../
Nor does Gone Home let the reader take an active role in guessing and testing the guesses. One may form hypotheses about the relationships between the people in the house, why they are absent now, and where they have gone. But there is nothing the player can do that can either ask additional questions about these issues or hazard a guess at the answer. The exploration can’t be directed by the player in such a way that it elicits more information of the kind the player is most interested in; it can only be performed systematically and with a greater or lesser degree of thoroughness. Where in the house would you go to express, or investigate, the suspicion that the mother is having an affair?
The house, I felt, was a distraction, the 3D exploration a red herring.
http://emshort.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/reading-and-hypothesis/
§
Gone Home tells a great romance story, but it tells a particularly brilliant video game romance story because it finds a way around all these problems; you’re not part of the romance. By placing the player outside that relationship, Gone Home can develop a romance that feels realistically nuanced.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/177701-gone-home-is-the-best-romance-video-games-can-offer/
§
Half the men who got the number of the girl on the scary bridge tried to call her up. Only about 12 percent of the ones on the blase bridge in the control group made use of those same digits. Also, remember those stories the subjects were asked to make up about the ambiguous picture? Those who did so while swaying slightly back and forth over the Capilano River were much more likely to come up with narratives involving sex.
/.../
I think this explains why certain games get overrated.
Or at least certain aspects of games. Take the first season of The Walking Dead for example.
http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2013/12/fake-feels-and-free-passes/
§
The Importance of Quiet Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCxR__N0_is
§
Fast-paced choices and moral quandaries are the most prominent feature of The Walking Dead, but they seem to have no real consequences. Why did this game receive approximately all of the awards in 2012 if its main selling point is used so inconsequentially? I suggest that the most important aspect about this game is not the many difficult choices it offers the player – it’s the illusion of choice the game constructs
/.../
The decisions you make in The Walking Dead don’t change what happens, they change how it happens.
Your actions determine what kind of person Lee is, how he reacts to certain situations, and how the other characters see him. You could almost say The Walking Dead is an RPG: Is Lee a failed family-man who sees Clementine as his second chance? Is he short-tempered and violent? Or does he keep a clear head and talks his way out of hairy situations? Does he regret what he did? Is he a cynic or a wide-eyed idealist? Will the other characters be his friends, or just his companions? Is there even any coherence between what he does and what he says? Maybe he doesn’t talk at all, which is really stupid but really funny. It doesn’t change the overarching story, but all of this and much more is up to you.
/.../
The Walking Dead is not about choices, it’s about decisions. It’s about making the right decision in a world where everything goes wrong. It’s about doing what you think is right, even when faced with absolute despair, even though all hope seems lost, and even though this bleak world doesn’t give a single fuck about your decision. But you have to do it. For Clementine.
http://ontologicalgeek.com/clementine-will-remember-all-of-that/
§QUEER
Diary of a Western Videogame Protagonist:
Day 1 – I got a haircut today. It’s a lot shorter now but not working class short, not army short. Back at home, Sarah said that she liked it, that she could see herself playfully gripping tufts of my hair during sex. I said, “Why don’t we test that hypothesis?” and she obliged. God, I love her so much. If anything were to happen to her, I swear…
Day 2 - Sarah’s dead. And just one day after our scene of mildly erotic domestic bliss, too. To mark my loss, I refused to shave today. Shaving would somehow cheapen her passing. And besides, revenge is a dish best served scruffy.
http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=11663
§
One could read in Shadow a sexual politics in which the innate goodness of human-born-humans is counterpointed with the monstering of a man-made, non-human person. Without the involvement of sexual reproduction in their creation, gender becomes irrelevant precisely because the creature is unnatural. That this character became a villain is unfortunate, because it supports a conservative idea that morality relies on a heteronormative reproductive context. I prefer to see Homunculus as a queer anti-hero: a person who has very limited survival strategies, and opts to fight for their own existence at the expense of other people. Queer anti-heroes are unable to solve their problems using brute force or economic privilege, and must manipulate what advantages they do have with skill in order to get what they want. The hero must, in response, do the same.
Histories of gender & sexual diversity in games, Issue three June 2013, Gender in the shadows, Zoya Street
§
So, why do all but one of the females need to be warriors? The problem for me is, in the context of this whimsical game, I can’t really identify with a warrior-type character. The female characters in Rayman Legends simply aren’t as fun for me because they aren’t as whimsical and fun as their male counterparts are allowed to be. Not that there is anything wrong with playing a warrior in certain games or contexts (or, I guess, with playing a lovesick fool), but it just doesn’t work for me in this particular game. I would rather play a character like Rayman who is described as “always raring for a fresh adventure to save the world;” or Sir Gilbrax, “a very famous knight.” Out of the thirteen playable male characters only one, Raynesis, is described in a threatening manner similar to the warrior princesses: “A desperate case in need of serious anger management.” But, one threatening male character still leaves me twelve whimsical male characters to choose from.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4447
§
In the first part of this study of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, I questioned whether the Bechdel Test was the best benchmark for judging whether or not a piece of media had something to offer in terms of good female characterization. Is the Bechdel Test enough, or does even this bare minimum set the bar too low?
In this second part, I’ll be looking at some of the games’ other character, particularly Clementine, in an effort to delve deeper into the presentation of women in a game praised for its characterization and narrative strength.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4492
§
Long story short, I can see genre and contextual reasons that lead designers in some areas (like fighting games) to make broad-brush design choices that engage ethnic, gender, and sexual stereotypes. http://www.chaoticblue.com/blog/2014/01/shes-got-the-look/
§VIDEOS
Final Bosman
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/ur6ce9/the-final-bosman-nobody-finishes-video-games
§
Do You Think eSports Should Allow A.I. Teammates? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hkMhng4q74
§
Nintendoomed? A look at Nintendo's financials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ho5Y-Yw8g
§
Final Bosman
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/7j4yfw/the-final-bosman-xbox-friends-with-benefits
§
Composing The Banner Saga
http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/ntly7e/backtrack-composing-the-banner-saga
§
Why Comcast's 300GB Data Cap is Bad for Gaming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD8eqTIzjZM
§
Are Virtual Worlds Real or Fake? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiEu5wMoEDs
§REVIEWS
Errant Signal - The Novelist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VThsdoxwgc
§
Tim Schafer didn’t really give us what we said we wanted, which was an old school point-and-click adventure game. He gave us something better, a modern LucasArts game. He looked past our words to our intent and gave us a game that represents what we really wanted, not just what we thought we wanted.
www.popmatters.com/post/178507-the-beautiful-simplicity-of-broken-age/
§
Ice Pick Lodge seems to be reaching back into childhood to seek a resolution to very adult problems, the problems of memories that we don’t want to confront or that we think that we can simply hide out long enough from.
At some point, the game seems to argue, we need to be brave like children and make a run for it—even if that run might allow us to to be seen, to be found out for what we truly are.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/178042-knock-knock-the-terrors-of-self-exposure/
§
Knock Knock is primarily an intellectual experience not an emotional one, which already makes it a poor horror game, but then it also fails to express anything intellectual because its central means of communication, the hide and seek puzzle mechanics, are awful.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/178712-puzzles-arent-scary-in-knock-knock/
§COMMUNITY
Thoughts on Games Writing and Community Involvement
http://big-tall-words.com/2014/01/08/thoughts-on-games-writing/
§
Among the many elephants in the games criticism room, our relationship to academia is one that threatens to stomp on others the most often. It’s presence comes out in numerous ways, but most usually on methods of analyzing games and the craft of writing criticism. This month there seems to be a resurgence of it, so I want to spill some thoughts on how it effects me and some things I’d like to see develop.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/the-diy-of-games-criticism/
§
In the coming year, I want to see discussion and experiments on constructive, passionate uses of anger for social justice and change. I want people to express themselves honestly and without the degradation of others. We have our journals, our personal friends who understand us to be petty with. This doesn’t need to be an artificially happy place, but I’d like it to be somewhere no one is afraid to speak their mind and learn. I hope people who disagree with me contact me and let me know what they think, because I am ready for a change for the better, whatever it is we decide, as a community.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/on-anger/
§
What I want to dig into, and outline to respect, is the experience that Kim Delicious describes here in response to anti-toxicity articles. It’s a conflict between legit anger, anger that is cathartic and deserved, and understanding that it will wall off communication and education to another person. It shows where being an activist and simply existing as a minority identity blur.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/on-civility/
§MAGAZINES
The Arcade Review: Issue 1
http://arcadereview.net/main/?p=281
§PROFILE
I first encountered the unmistakable style of Stephen Murphy, aka thecatamites, back in 2009 with the hand-drawn adventure game Paul Moose in Space. Since then you may well have stumbled across any one of the otherworldly experience that he has provided on tap, like Space Funeral, Murder Dog IV: Trial of the Murder Dog, and The Pleasuredromes of Kubla Khan.
http://indiegames.com/2014/01/just_who_is_thecatamites_anywa.html
/.../
Every medium is imbued with the exact same amount of possibility: it’s like the density of the Real Line. The density of the Real Line between 0 and 1 is infinite, as is the density between 0.2 and 0.4, which is the same as between 0 and 100, etc.
You can always drill down, and there will always be more to discover about a medium.
http://tinysubversions.com/fuckvideogames/#slide1
§DESIGN
Chess has problems.
Not for most of us, perhaps - not for the bluffers and the fudgers and the seat-of-the-pants players who prod a path through matchups in which each side's strategy is a winsome, wobbling comedy of errors. No, chess has problems at the grandmaster level. Those people who really love chess, that devoted few who have given their lives to it and for whom chess really should be a great game? They're not getting a great game - and they haven't been getting one for a while.
Chess, it turns out, has been in a bit of a rut for some time.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-03-chess-2-the-sequel-how-a-street-fightin-man-fixed-the-worlds-most-famous-game
§
Extra Credits: Affordances
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc
§
DOET [Design of Everyday Things] judges the user’s needs most important, and her perspective most valuable. It is about the apotheosis of the user; it makes her into God, and with holy might it strikes the fear of Her into objects and those who make them.
/.../
DOET, alongside all the important research around it, culminated in something called User Centered Design, a philosophy in which “user error” does not exist and programmers are sad.
/.../
This school teaches that if it’s not fun (or at the very least quick and painless) to be taught about some feature, we shouldn’t include it; that clarity is better than complexity; that elegance is better than messiness; that one button is better than two. It teaches that the purpose of a game is to explain itself to you, and that somewhere in the act of explaining lies that game’s intrinsic value. We have thereby converted the scariest, most contentious question of all (what should this thing be?) from an artistic decision into a design decision.
/.../
Our belief in clarity and elegance, though it has yielded spectacular results, is not the very best way to make videogames; it may not even be a particularly good way. We suffer from the bar we’ve set for ourselves and the burdens we place upon designers. We are wrongly convinced, even in the critical community, that works like Problem Attic are unworthy of attention solely because they prioritize different features and challenge players in a way we deem to be unfashionable.
/.../
I plan on thinking much harder about how I evaluate potential game features. “Because then the user doesn’t have to think” or “but how do we teach that?” should not be trump cards in every single argument about whether to include stuff. It’s easy to turn everything into a neat little design decision, but making a few more artistic ones would be better in the long term for users and for my sanity
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BrendanVance/20140106/208092/The_Cult_of_the_Peacock.php?print=1
§
At its worst a backstory driven piece can seem soulless and lonely, as the player wanders desolate locations from which all the other humans have already fled.
But there’s also an argument to be made that the backstory mystery is one of the most natural possible shapes for interactive literature.
/.../
The problem I have with it in Gone Home is that this interaction style enforces the distance and lack of agency that is backstory’s chief defect, and it does so without offering much of value in exchange. The player’s task is purely ergodic, methodically working through every explorable space, even though this is a story about understanding and insight, not about effort and dedication.
/.../
Hypothetical reading is most interesting if the reader is likely at first to form incorrect hypotheses.
Gone Home misguides the player initially, but it does so in a way that is completely orthogonal to the actual substance of its story.
/.../
Nor does Gone Home let the reader take an active role in guessing and testing the guesses. One may form hypotheses about the relationships between the people in the house, why they are absent now, and where they have gone. But there is nothing the player can do that can either ask additional questions about these issues or hazard a guess at the answer. The exploration can’t be directed by the player in such a way that it elicits more information of the kind the player is most interested in; it can only be performed systematically and with a greater or lesser degree of thoroughness. Where in the house would you go to express, or investigate, the suspicion that the mother is having an affair?
The house, I felt, was a distraction, the 3D exploration a red herring.
http://emshort.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/reading-and-hypothesis/
§
Gone Home tells a great romance story, but it tells a particularly brilliant video game romance story because it finds a way around all these problems; you’re not part of the romance. By placing the player outside that relationship, Gone Home can develop a romance that feels realistically nuanced.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/177701-gone-home-is-the-best-romance-video-games-can-offer/
§
Half the men who got the number of the girl on the scary bridge tried to call her up. Only about 12 percent of the ones on the blase bridge in the control group made use of those same digits. Also, remember those stories the subjects were asked to make up about the ambiguous picture? Those who did so while swaying slightly back and forth over the Capilano River were much more likely to come up with narratives involving sex.
/.../
I think this explains why certain games get overrated.
Or at least certain aspects of games. Take the first season of The Walking Dead for example.
http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2013/12/fake-feels-and-free-passes/
§
The Importance of Quiet Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCxR__N0_is
§
Fast-paced choices and moral quandaries are the most prominent feature of The Walking Dead, but they seem to have no real consequences. Why did this game receive approximately all of the awards in 2012 if its main selling point is used so inconsequentially? I suggest that the most important aspect about this game is not the many difficult choices it offers the player – it’s the illusion of choice the game constructs
/.../
The decisions you make in The Walking Dead don’t change what happens, they change how it happens.
Your actions determine what kind of person Lee is, how he reacts to certain situations, and how the other characters see him. You could almost say The Walking Dead is an RPG: Is Lee a failed family-man who sees Clementine as his second chance? Is he short-tempered and violent? Or does he keep a clear head and talks his way out of hairy situations? Does he regret what he did? Is he a cynic or a wide-eyed idealist? Will the other characters be his friends, or just his companions? Is there even any coherence between what he does and what he says? Maybe he doesn’t talk at all, which is really stupid but really funny. It doesn’t change the overarching story, but all of this and much more is up to you.
/.../
The Walking Dead is not about choices, it’s about decisions. It’s about making the right decision in a world where everything goes wrong. It’s about doing what you think is right, even when faced with absolute despair, even though all hope seems lost, and even though this bleak world doesn’t give a single fuck about your decision. But you have to do it. For Clementine.
http://ontologicalgeek.com/clementine-will-remember-all-of-that/
§QUEER
Diary of a Western Videogame Protagonist:
Day 1 – I got a haircut today. It’s a lot shorter now but not working class short, not army short. Back at home, Sarah said that she liked it, that she could see herself playfully gripping tufts of my hair during sex. I said, “Why don’t we test that hypothesis?” and she obliged. God, I love her so much. If anything were to happen to her, I swear…
Day 2 - Sarah’s dead. And just one day after our scene of mildly erotic domestic bliss, too. To mark my loss, I refused to shave today. Shaving would somehow cheapen her passing. And besides, revenge is a dish best served scruffy.
http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=11663
§
One could read in Shadow a sexual politics in which the innate goodness of human-born-humans is counterpointed with the monstering of a man-made, non-human person. Without the involvement of sexual reproduction in their creation, gender becomes irrelevant precisely because the creature is unnatural. That this character became a villain is unfortunate, because it supports a conservative idea that morality relies on a heteronormative reproductive context. I prefer to see Homunculus as a queer anti-hero: a person who has very limited survival strategies, and opts to fight for their own existence at the expense of other people. Queer anti-heroes are unable to solve their problems using brute force or economic privilege, and must manipulate what advantages they do have with skill in order to get what they want. The hero must, in response, do the same.
Histories of gender & sexual diversity in games, Issue three June 2013, Gender in the shadows, Zoya Street
§
So, why do all but one of the females need to be warriors? The problem for me is, in the context of this whimsical game, I can’t really identify with a warrior-type character. The female characters in Rayman Legends simply aren’t as fun for me because they aren’t as whimsical and fun as their male counterparts are allowed to be. Not that there is anything wrong with playing a warrior in certain games or contexts (or, I guess, with playing a lovesick fool), but it just doesn’t work for me in this particular game. I would rather play a character like Rayman who is described as “always raring for a fresh adventure to save the world;” or Sir Gilbrax, “a very famous knight.” Out of the thirteen playable male characters only one, Raynesis, is described in a threatening manner similar to the warrior princesses: “A desperate case in need of serious anger management.” But, one threatening male character still leaves me twelve whimsical male characters to choose from.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4447
§
In the first part of this study of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, I questioned whether the Bechdel Test was the best benchmark for judging whether or not a piece of media had something to offer in terms of good female characterization. Is the Bechdel Test enough, or does even this bare minimum set the bar too low?
In this second part, I’ll be looking at some of the games’ other character, particularly Clementine, in an effort to delve deeper into the presentation of women in a game praised for its characterization and narrative strength.
http://www.samanthablackmon.net/notyourmamasgamer/?p=4492
§
Long story short, I can see genre and contextual reasons that lead designers in some areas (like fighting games) to make broad-brush design choices that engage ethnic, gender, and sexual stereotypes. http://www.chaoticblue.com/blog/2014/01/shes-got-the-look/
§VIDEOS
Final Bosman
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/ur6ce9/the-final-bosman-nobody-finishes-video-games
§
Do You Think eSports Should Allow A.I. Teammates? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hkMhng4q74
§
Nintendoomed? A look at Nintendo's financials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ho5Y-Yw8g
§
Final Bosman
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/7j4yfw/the-final-bosman-xbox-friends-with-benefits
§
Composing The Banner Saga
http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/ntly7e/backtrack-composing-the-banner-saga
§
Why Comcast's 300GB Data Cap is Bad for Gaming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD8eqTIzjZM
§
Are Virtual Worlds Real or Fake? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiEu5wMoEDs
§REVIEWS
Errant Signal - The Novelist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VThsdoxwgc
§
Tim Schafer didn’t really give us what we said we wanted, which was an old school point-and-click adventure game. He gave us something better, a modern LucasArts game. He looked past our words to our intent and gave us a game that represents what we really wanted, not just what we thought we wanted.
www.popmatters.com/post/178507-the-beautiful-simplicity-of-broken-age/
§
Ice Pick Lodge seems to be reaching back into childhood to seek a resolution to very adult problems, the problems of memories that we don’t want to confront or that we think that we can simply hide out long enough from.
At some point, the game seems to argue, we need to be brave like children and make a run for it—even if that run might allow us to to be seen, to be found out for what we truly are.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/178042-knock-knock-the-terrors-of-self-exposure/
§
Knock Knock is primarily an intellectual experience not an emotional one, which already makes it a poor horror game, but then it also fails to express anything intellectual because its central means of communication, the hide and seek puzzle mechanics, are awful.
http://www.popmatters.com/post/178712-puzzles-arent-scary-in-knock-knock/
§COMMUNITY
Thoughts on Games Writing and Community Involvement
http://big-tall-words.com/2014/01/08/thoughts-on-games-writing/
§
Among the many elephants in the games criticism room, our relationship to academia is one that threatens to stomp on others the most often. It’s presence comes out in numerous ways, but most usually on methods of analyzing games and the craft of writing criticism. This month there seems to be a resurgence of it, so I want to spill some thoughts on how it effects me and some things I’d like to see develop.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/the-diy-of-games-criticism/
§
In the coming year, I want to see discussion and experiments on constructive, passionate uses of anger for social justice and change. I want people to express themselves honestly and without the degradation of others. We have our journals, our personal friends who understand us to be petty with. This doesn’t need to be an artificially happy place, but I’d like it to be somewhere no one is afraid to speak their mind and learn. I hope people who disagree with me contact me and let me know what they think, because I am ready for a change for the better, whatever it is we decide, as a community.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/on-anger/
§
What I want to dig into, and outline to respect, is the experience that Kim Delicious describes here in response to anti-toxicity articles. It’s a conflict between legit anger, anger that is cathartic and deserved, and understanding that it will wall off communication and education to another person. It shows where being an activist and simply existing as a minority identity blur.
http://www.mattiebrice.com/on-civility/
§MAGAZINES
The Arcade Review: Issue 1
http://arcadereview.net/main/?p=281
§PROFILE
I first encountered the unmistakable style of Stephen Murphy, aka thecatamites, back in 2009 with the hand-drawn adventure game Paul Moose in Space. Since then you may well have stumbled across any one of the otherworldly experience that he has provided on tap, like Space Funeral, Murder Dog IV: Trial of the Murder Dog, and The Pleasuredromes of Kubla Khan.
http://indiegames.com/2014/01/just_who_is_thecatamites_anywa.html
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