Archive for April, 2009
Anna Anthropy on Games
This will be the second time I’ve linked to something involving Anna Anthropy (a.k.a Aunti Pixelante), but I think she’s got a particularly different take on games and play than what we usually hear. I feel this (too short) interview highlights some of that:
The videogame medium is being held hostage by a small group of [...]
JG Ballard, Boredom, And The Violent Promise Of Videogames – Offworld
Jim Rossignol, Editor of RPS and writer-extraordinare, wrote a fitting farewell tribute to the late JG Ballard on Offworld today. In it, Rossignol eloquently examines Ballard’s effect not only on his own creativity, but on that of contemporary culture and the consumerist society Ballard saw growing around him.
The future would be boring, said Ballard. Our [...]
Episode 2 – Descent into Dissonance
This week on the CDC Podcast we discuss Bioshock and narrative dissonance. Join us as we attempt to wrap our heads around the subject and come up with the definitive answer to the question “How do we define narrative dissonance?” You don’t need to go to GameFAQS or Youtube to discover the ending of this [...]
What should games cost?
Recently, Amazon.com purchased one of the larger game portals, Reflexive Arcade. As part of the integration, Amazon chose to lower the prices on all the casual arcade games to $9.99. This angered publishers , causing PopCap and others to pull their games from the portal.
Jeff Tunnel (founder of Garage Games, and currently at Push Button [...]
April 26th
This Week in Videogame Blogging, 65 die in a tragic Tetris accident in NYC, and Hard-casual also get the scoop on the Fallout: New Vegas protagonist!
In slightly less tongue-in-cheek happenings, Jim Rossignol, one quarter of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, noted that “Locked Door” was close to the biggest article ever published on RPS. It’s certainly well [...]
‘Imagination Lost’ – The Artful Gamer
Chris at The Artful Gamer writes about the recently released browser-based game ‘Legends of Zork’. He examines it from the perspective of someone who played the original as well as stepping into the shoes of a newcomer to the ‘Zork’ universe and ascertains that Legends of Zork “is the expression of the generational gap we [...]
Games As the Next Avant-Garde
Darius Kazemi, of Tiny Subversions, recently posted his transcription of a GDX talk given by Ian Schreiber on “Duchamp, Pollock, Rohrer: Games as the Next Avant-Garde”. In it Schreiber posits that a greater understanding of the twists and turns underlying Art History would benefit those game developers wishing to push the medium further. He says that the contemporary dichotomy between those lauding [...]
Episode 1
Welcome to Episode 1 of the Critical Distance Confab. The CDC podcast is a weekly discussion with a cast drawn from an irregular pool of videogame bloggers and contributors to the Critical Distance website. We discuss issues of design, culture, art, and the industry viewed through the lens of videogame criticism.
In this, the first of [...]
Braid
Since Braid was recently released on PC, now is a wonderful time to organize the discussion that took place last fall following the game’s initial release on XBLA. Organizing the dispersed conversation and criticism that surrounded Braid will allow those experiencing it for the first time to catch up and add their own thoughts, as well as encourage others to take a second look at the game with the added benefit that, ahem, a bit of critical distance affords.
Vertical Spaces in Level Design
Rob Hale’s discussion of a Damnation making-of video raises a very interesting point. The top down diagram that most levels emerge from does not lend itself particularly well to creating rich vertical spaces. It’s possible to create verticality after the fact, but rarely is it significantly navigable. I’ve personally wrestled with this when designing tabletop RPG [...]
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