Critical Links 3/12

§§§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?]

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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.

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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.

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Hideo Kojima or (The Art of Meaningful Game Mechanics)

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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

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Game Maker's Toolkit - Super Mario 3D World's 4 Step Level Design

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Miyamoto on World 1-1: How Nintendo made Mario's most iconic level

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Really Freakin' Clever - Super Mario Sunshine

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Let's Review Mario Maker Fan Levels. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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The Weirdness of Super Mario EXPLAINED! | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios

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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!]
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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).

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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...]

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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?]

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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.]

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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.]

14/4

No Place for Hideo


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Sometimes when I play with someone new to games, they’ll ask me ‘How did you know that was the solution?’ and the answer is simply because I’ve been here before. On the surface it looks like skill, but in reality it’s a sign that we’ve learned to be obedient. A lifetime of playing games has taught us to be followers, and it is now a major factor in slowing down innovation and experimentation in games.
/.../
Researchers in Copenhagen and New York have both looked at building point-and-click adventures with replayable puzzles that redesign themselves each time you play, for instance. Others have looked at giving RPG characters emotions that affect how they behave in battle, protecting their loved ones, becoming distraught if they see close friends die.
/.../
`Core’ gamers are a tamed breed – companies know how they think, what they want, and how to make them feel like their needs are being met. They are the people who never ask why a door can’t be opened, they never ask why Mass Effect characters can only die in cutscenes, they never explore the same conversation tree twice expecting new dialogue. At the start of this piece I talked about playing with people newer to games, or the people who are routinely made to feel embarrassed for playing ‘casual’ games, and how it can seem that they make strange decisions that break the conventions we would never dare to. This is not a reflection on them for playing without preconceptions – it should be a reflection on us, as people too entrenched in what games are to be able to think about what they could be.


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The desperate situation in which the denizens of Hyrule found themselves seems to be a result of their own belief. They waited for a hero when none were forthcoming, dooming themselves with blind faith. Despite enacting this same familiar fairy tale journey, Wind Waker takes this warning to heart. It’s a fairy tale against fairy tales, showing reverence for received stories even as it warns that they should not be blindly trusted.
/.../
The final scene shows Link and Tetra (back to her old piratical self) embarking on a journey to find a new life and new land among Wind Waker’s endless seas. Link rides on his old red boat, but its magic is gone. It’s still a vessel but no longer a guide binding him to a predetermined path. This time, Link’s in the lead, and the stories these kids tell will be their own.
/.../
By letting go of the past and its recurring players, the King, our storyteller, breaks the recurring Zelda cycle and frees them from its grasp.

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This is the nine most popular posts on Electron Dance.


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Errant Signal - Life is Strange (Spoilers)


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Romance in Games - Can We Play with Lasting Relationships? - Extra Credits


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Made-up Game Awards

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Resogun Post Mortem Part 1


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Extra Credits - Four Realistic Predictions - What the Future Really Holds for Games


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Mario 3D World Review


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From Bioshock to Portal, twenty-first century games have emphasized the antagonistic relationship between the player and the game world that that player occupies, indicating the illusory nature of player choice and decision making in gaming.
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Device 6, of course, certainly has its own own unique vibe among the sea of “games about games.”
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This may be the ultimate solipsism of video games, the promise that each one of us can be a hero, that each of us is, in fact, Prince Hamlet, whether we chose to be or not, as we save the world or the princess, thanks in part to our own unique effort—an effort taken on by hundreds and thousands of players who feel uniquely chosen themselves. And that’s the rub. That’s the recognition that Device 6 provides the player and that differentiates it from the other “games about games.”


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Although I had been interested in EVE and its stalwart community prior to reading about what has come to be known as “gaming’s most destructive battle ever,” it wasn’t until I saw game-maker CCP erect a physical monument in Reykjavik for those lost in battle that I got hooked. That was the first time I had seen any physical commemoration of an in-game event by any game company.
/.../
This white paper, subtitled "A Comparative Analysis of Real Structural Social Evolution with the Virtual Society of EVE Online," enumerates the ways in which the development of a social infrastructure within New Eden mirrors that of “real-life” civilizations. In the analysis, the authors credit the need for the Council of Stellar Management since the political development of the society of EVE has surpassed the point of tribal and stratified structures, reaching a point of complex social hierarchies and government institutions that designate a civilization status.


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A Brief History of Graphics