There’s a slight change to the format for Blogs of the Round Table: this month, we’ll be extending the submission process over May and June as I’ll be on holiday in June.

Somewhat appropriately since I’ll be sunning it up in the real world and enjoying the Devonshire coastline, our new topic is ‘One With Nature’:

Where videogames once had ‘levels’ like jungles, an ice world, lava world etc. their environments increasingly resemble real-life: players can now explore whole islands or peninsulas and even make their own worlds and ecosystems.

What’s the most convincing natural world you have explored? What unexpected encounters have you had in a simulated ecosystem? What can games do with environments and nature that the real world cannot?

Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @critdistance and @AGBear with the #BoRT hashtag. Given the length of the submission period, you are strongly recommended to send me an email so they don’t get lost.

Don’t forget the Rules of the Round Table:

• Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic.
• Your blog does not have to be in English. If you submit a German piece I’ll try my best to read it; if it’s another language I’ll find someone else.
• If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a suitable warning at the start. Use your common sense.
• You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published, paywalled or available for free. We will need a transcript for paywalled content to be approved.

Every month, I read the old BoRT roundup before I write the new one – partly to use the same template, partly so I don’t use the same jokes. Last month I wrote about Easter eggs, but I am still eating those eggs! My seven year old self is shaking his chocolate-smeared head in disappointment.

This month’s BoRT roundup comes to you from a train to Scotland, where I wrote my entire submission on an iPad in an hour.

April’s theme was ‘VINPCs’:

“Non-player characters, or NPCs, make up the bulk of interactions in many games. Sometimes they provide a mere resting place for a bullet, other times some canned dialogue, but increasingly they’re becoming more sophisticated companions capable of being worthy party members or even love interests.

This month, we’d like you to talk about a memorable experience with an NPC. It can be a good or bad one, as long as it’s worth talking about! Alternatively, if you can’t think of any memorable experiences, what aspect of a game’s systems get in the way of good NPCs?”

‘Cunzy1′ at That Guys a Maniac has managed to keep the same Omastar from Pokémon Fire Red to Black 2, which is particularly impressive given the number of times Nintendo have changed their transferring technology. Can anyone better this? Is it possible to take a Pokéman all the way from Red to X and Y? Can you do it with one that isn’t rubbish like Omastar?

Cody Steffen is sorry to WWE referee Earl Hebner for virtually assaulting him in Smackdown games over the years. As he points out, this isn’t that different from real WWE matches. Then again, if you wanted a truly realistic WWE game the players would get a script before each match and you could compete to win or lose according to that script. You’d get more points for not breaking kayfabe.

… this is actually a really good idea.

Mark Filipowich examines Oracle in the Batman: Arkham games, a character who interacts with Batman even though she’s never on-screen. Mark makes a really interesting point that Oracle fulfils the same role as a helpful spectator, whether that’s a friend or partner. Since Batman is a pretty lonely guy, the Oracle character is a welcome inclusion in the game.

With NPCs in games become so advanced they practically play the game for us, Jed Revita (or as my iPad wants to call him, Jed Revitalise) feels like he’s the inanimate object. He discusses A Mind Forever Voyaging, a game where the player is a cameraman passively observing events. It reminds me of when I used to play Atomic Bomberman on the PC, but it was too hard to play alone, so I’d just watch the AI play itself in one big screen saver. Are other games in danger of becoming the same?

Edward Smith had a memorable experience hanging out with Jenny in The Darkness after he found his own name on the apartment mailbox. The seemingly banal experiences of every day life can be more compelling than overt fantasy, a subject also tackled by Jordan Erica Webber’s ‘Blood, Births and Backsides’ in the new issue of Five out of Ten. Come on, you knew I’d get a link in here somewhere.

Nick Degens argues that good NPCs should react to the player, which seems obvious enough, but there’s a big difference between some canned dialogue when you bump into a towns person and the shopkeeper in A Link to the Past who bumps you off if you steal from him. He also mentions Fable III, which is an interesting comparison because I thought its crowds demonstrated both and best and worst of the modern NPC: reactive and multi-faceted, yet also repetitive to the extreme and obviously fake.

Finally, some Irish guy wrote about Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite and whether her relationship with the player is a convincing one. I think people are going to be talking about Infinite for years, but perhaps not in the way Irrational intended.

And that’s us for the month! Join us early next week for another instalment of Blogs of the Round Table.

Final plug: if you haven’t read any issues of Five out of Ten yet we’ve also introduced a Triple Pack of our first three issues at a discounted price. There are loads of pieces by Critical Distance staff, so you’re indirectly helping the site by feeding its contributors. That and it’s a damn good read.

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It’s April! Many videogame fans are on a post-PAX or GDC comedown: I’m recovering from watching the entire Indiana Jones saga over the Easter weekend. Will this be the month when Blogs of the Round Table nukes the fridge? It’s Critical Distance‘s 4th birthday this month, so let’s hope not.

This month’s topic is ‘VINPCs’:

“Non-player characters, or NPCs, make up the bulk of interactions in many games. Sometimes they provide a mere resting place for a bullet, other times some canned dialogue, but increasingly they’re becoming more sophisticated companions capable of being worthy party members or even love interests.

This month, we’d like you to talk about a memorable experience with an NPC. It can be a good or bad one, as long as it’s worth talking about! Alternatively, if you can’t think of any memorable experiences, what aspect of a game’s systems get in the way of good NPCs?”

If you’d like some inspiration for this month’s topic, I’d recommend reading ‘Plus Five to Diplomacy’ by Bill Coberly in Five out of Ten #1. Otherwise, just go play Bioshock Infinite. If you just want to laugh at something, here’s a clip from The Simpsons Kris sent while I was writing this post.

Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @critdistance and @agbear with the #BoRT hashtag.

Don’t forget the Rules of the Round Table:

• Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic.
• Your blog does not have to be in English. If you submit a German piece I’ll try my best to read it; if it’s another language I’ll find someone else.
• If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a suitable warning at the start. Use your common sense.
• You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published, paywalled or available for free. We will need a transcript for paywalled content to be approved.

Go forth and BoRT! No, not you, sorry. I was talking to the other person named Bort.

I have taken a break from stuffing my face with Easter eggs to bring you this month’s Blogs of the Round Table roundup. Actually, that’s not true: I have a white chocolate Lindor hanging out of my mouth by the wrapper. Rather than describe the delicious mouthwatering goodness, let’s get on with the show. March’s theme was “Female Role Models”:

"Who is your female videogame role model? It could be a favourite character that you relate to, a developer or writer whose work you admire.

If you don’t think that any character meets the role model criteria, then how can games better portray female characters?"

Rachel Helps pays tribute to women indie game developers who inspire her. Some you’ll have heard of, some you won’t, like an unusual box of assorted chocolates. If you like what you see in this curated selection, you should also check out the website Dames Making Games.

Amanda Lange looks at eight women in games she loves, from obvious choices like Samus Aran and Chun-Li to contemporary options like Chell from Portal and Bayonetta. Every time someone uses the ‘B word’, I have the urge to play Bayonetta. A bit like when someone mentions eating chocolate and… excuse me for a second.

Over at the Border House, Samantha Allen says it’s time for more female protagonists, citing GTA V and Assassin’s Creed IV as just two examples of mega-franchises that have once again shirked female leads (although the Assassin’s Creed III spin-off Liberation has a female protagonist). You’d think the triumphant return of Lara Croft (despite unrealistic sales targets) would be enough to inspire other developers to bring women to the fore. Something something chocolate eggs.

Joseph Miller learned something from Aerith Gainsborough: the nature and virtues of sacrifice. I wonder if most players learned that, when it comes to levelling characters in RPGs, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. (Sorry.)

BONUS ROUND: in the second issue of Five out of Ten, you’ll find features on gender stereotypes in gaming and Silent Hill’s portrayals of misogynist stereotypes. Plus eight other mind-boggingly brilliant features.

That’s it for this month! I guess we were all distracted with GDC, PAX and other similar acronyms. Blogs of the Round Table will be back tomorrow with April’s thrilling instalment- see you then!

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This month we’re having a very special edition of Blogs of the Round Table. Don’t worry, it’s not like those episodes of Fresh Prince that tried to warn you off taking drugs: we’re running a series of features for Women’s History Month.

March’s theme is “Female Role Models”:

“Who is your female videogame role model? It could be a favourite character that you relate to, or a developer or writer whose work you admire.

If you don’t think that any character meets the role model criteria, then how can games better portray female characters?”

We want a wide variety of experiences this month: I’ll accept developer interviews (including podcasts and video features) this month as well as the usual written delights.

Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @critdistance and @agbear with the #BoRT hashtag.

Don’t forget the Rules of the Round Table:

• Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic.
• NEW SUPER EXCITING RULE! Your blog does not have to be in English. If you submit a German piece I’ll try my best to read it; if it’s another language I’ll find someone else.
• If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a warning at the start of the essay. Use your common sense.
• You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published or available for free.

It’s been at least six months since I wrote about Bayonetta, so I’m looking forward to this one. Get writing!

I’ve been staring at a blank flashing cursor for the past five minutes. I have no idea what to write. Luckily lots of other people knew what to write, so I can just describe their work instead. It’s Blogs of the Round Table!

February’s theme was Reflecting Reality:

“Fantasy or reality? Simulation or silliness? There’s a place in gaming for both documentary and drama, fact and fiction.

We hear of games becoming ever more ‘realistic’, but maybe they’re just becoming ? Which is a more desirable style for games to adopt? Which tells us more about the world? Which do you prefer?”

Nate Paolasso, who really needs a better online handle than “imtheman2013”, argues that the closer video games get to reality, the more we can understand ourselves. More than settling into uncanny valleys, games need more emotional realism too. I guess that’s more a problem of writing than technology; are you listening, David Cage?

Jed Revita thinks realism in gaming is a lie, and what games should really strive for is verisimilitude i.e. believability. It’s a good point which touches on why I named the topic ‘Reflecting Reality’: a reflection can never be real by definition, but it can certainly be warped and misleading.

Nick Degens sees realism as an artificial carrot on a stick: the connections we made to game characters from the 16-bit era were no less than those of today, and maybe more depending on whether you were an adult, child or unfertilised egg at the time. Could the pursuit of realism act as a barrier to making those connections, where our mind used to so readily fill in the gaps?

Psepho wrote a blog, deleted it, then wrote another one and this is a link to that second blog. He compares the death of Vincent in Pulp Fiction (err… spoiler warning, I guess) to the violence of Hotline Miami and how these two works offer a more authentic portrayal of real-world violence through their immediacy and irrevocability. I didn’t get a chance to read the mysterious first blog, but the second one is well worth reading.

Nate Andrews throws a curve ball with a discussion of Rock Band’s living dolls and the realism of avatars. Here, characters are an idealised version of ourselves: we can add ‘fat’ that doesn’t fatten, much like Xbox Live avatars and Miis where the closest you get to a ‘realistic’ depiction is shading the bags under your eyes.

John Brindle wants to dismantle the holodeck, writing that game spaces are actual places: more than representations of reality, they are real in their own right. This reminds me of a discussion in a Split Screen podcast we haven’t released yet, and when I made up the word ‘digic’ to illustrate that even the most realistic of games are always digital fictions. I was making a crap joke as well – this is a BoRT roundup after all – but I wonder if John’s declaration to smash the reality facsimile engine throws the baby out with the beautifully-rendered bathwater.

Shane Liesegang, a game designer with Bethesda Studios, talks about the art of Skyrim and games as works of impressionism rather than realism, where design is painted in broad brush strokes. By the way Shane, Bethesda still owe me a cheque for my Skyrim review. (That was a joke.)

Zoya Street has provided an excerpt from their book Dreamcast Worlds about photorealism in Shenmue. Shenmue is one of the most extreme examples of digital realism, down to having the right weather from that period in 1986. Don’t forget to pre-order the book if you like that article!

Ansh Patel argues for the realism of feelings and experiences evoked by games, rather than their environments, as an area where games should focus. As the philosopher Morpheus once said, “the mind makes it real”, and I’m almost certain he was talking about videogames.

As my mouse cursor hovered over this roundup’s ‘Post’ button, Peter Shafer sent me a link to his look at the Uncanny Valley of gameplay. The author attached this description: “Some jackass said Deadly Premonition was better than Heavy Rain”. And you know what? I’m so sleepy I’m just going to leave it at that.

What’s the modern equivalent of “stop the presses!” “Edit the WordPress post!”, I guess. Joseph Miller has a detailed look at realities within games. I liked the section on ‘magic objects’: in Call of Duty only certain objects are interactive, while in Super Mario World more or less everything is interactive, which heightens its relative realism. Perhaps this explains why bugs can be infuriating, or even comical.

And… that’s it! That’s all we’ve got this month. Unless I missed out on another submission. I’ve already added five since this was first published, so that’s not out of the question.

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Don’t forget to add the BoRT Linkomatic 5000 to your blog. Just embed the following code on your blog’s page:

<iframe type=“text/html” width=“600” height=“20” src=“http://www.tinysubversions.com/bort.html?month=February13” frameborder=“0”></iframe>

And you’ll get this:

Now I’m off to immediately write March’s topic. See you there.

We need a theme tune for Blogs of the Round Table. A jazzy big band fanfare. The red velvet curtains peel back and the spinning spotlights flare in the direction of… a giant projection screen with this website on it. “It’s Blogs of the Round Table… yeah!”, someone purrs seductively. Not me, though. I’m rubbish at singing.

This month’s theme isn’t about love or Valentine’s Day, because we did that last year. This month’s theme is Reflecting Reality:

"Fantasy or reality? Simulation or silliness? There’s a place in gaming for both documentary and drama, fact and fiction.

We hear of games becoming ever more ‘realistic’, but maybe they’re just becoming more intricate fantasies. Which is a more desirable style for games to adopt? Which tells us more about the world? Which do you prefer?"

Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @critdistance and @agbear with the #BoRT hashtag.

Don’t forget the Rules of the Round Table:

• Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic.
• If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a warning at the start of the essay. Use your common sense.
• You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published or available for free.

I’m going to get to work on this theme tune. You get writing. Let’s make this the biggest month ever for Blogs of the Round Table.

This month’s Blogs of the Round Table received the biggest response ever: a cavalcade of contributions so intimidating, I can feel my wrists hurting in mere anticipation of the impending writeup. “Don’t do it Alan”, the sentient tendons whisper, but that would be a disservice to all of the writers who took part. Also, I’ve already written this paragraph and so may as well finish. Here we go.

January’s theme was Challenge:

“The past few years have seen a resurgence of challenging games: Dark Souls, Spelunky, FTL: Faster Than Light, XCOM: Enemy Unknown to name but a few. Do you think videogames have more value in providing a stern challenge for the player to overcome, or does difficulty serve to alienate and deter potential players, impeding their potential for inclusiveness?

Alternatively, write about the greatest challenge you have overcome in a game (this can be a personal or emotional challenge rather than one of dexterity).”

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Gods and Demons

Jeremy Voss isn’t a fan of challenging games, instead praising the ‘God mode’ offered by older shooters like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D as a way to explore these worlds without fear of death. The problem I’ve always had with God mode, noclip and friends is that they allow you to reach places you were never meant to visit, find those places empty or unfinished, breaking the illusion of the game’s world.

Brett Douville looks back on his fifteen years in the games industry, the challenges of the past and the prospects of the future. It’s interesting to read about the difficulties of programming games rather than playing the finished products, also detailed in an interview with Brett on the Bethesda Blog.

Daniel Lipson totally cheated at Final Fantasy VII by letting someone else defeat the Demon Wall. It’s alright though, because he can beat it himself now. In the age of YouTube, it’s possible to watch incredible feats of skill (apparently some people can actually complete Ninja Gaiden!) but nothing can match watching a friend beat a challenge in person.

Oscar Strik argues that the endless reloading and fruitless interactions of videogames are our own Groundhog Day. Interactions and battles become puzzles with finite solutions to be discovered by repetition, and “if the real world doesn’t work this way, why then should games?”. But who wouldn’t want to be Bill Murray in that film, freezing time for forty years so he could save lives and learn French with the torturous cost of hearing Sonny and Cher every single morning?

Give Me Challenge or Give Me Death

Donald Conrad has bucked the trend by playing Demon’s Souls rather than Dark Souls, offering a good explanation of why the Souls games are appealing if you’ve not played one yet. Since I spend a lot of time on Twitter, I just assume everyone is constantly playing Dark Souls.

Nate Paolasso draws a distinction between the deliberate trial-and-error pacing of Dark Souls and the lightning reactions of Super Meat Boy. Are all these blogs going to be about Dark Souls? Is every blog about Dark Souls? Is this the game that launched a thousand Tumblrs? Paolasso states games “that lack challenge are simply not worth playing”, but it’s just not true people! Ever played Rez?

Tom Battey is sick of meaningless death in games like Far Cry 3, and I know how he feels. I recently finished Uncharted, a game with worse checkpoints than Berlin in the 1960s, and they really do detract from your enjoyment. I disagree with Battey’s assertion that “games that aren’t challenging are dull”, though. Ever played Journey?

Sinclair Target is also a proponent of the “challenge is fun” school of games philosophy. To be honest, a piece containing the sentence “Dear Esther isn’t really a game” and using the anti-description ‘gameplay’ is a good way to troll your humble curator, but I can acknowledge the argument that challenge is a useful way to analyse mechanics- separating Bayonetta from Barbie, if you will.

Ben Hallett thinks the consequences of failure in XCOM and Dark Souls separate them from the inconsequential Civilization V and Arkham Asylum, for example; these consequences give them more in common with difficult online games like Counterstrike.

Let’s Talk About Games That Aren’t Dark Souls

Jackson Lango makes the compelling argument that The Walking Dead has moral difficulty, where the pressure comes in justifying our decisions, but without excluding players in the way mechanical challenges do. There’s also the traditional pressure of having to kill zombies before they eat you, of course, but Walking Dead has the tension of consequence where the situations in Oscar Strik’s aforementioned blog piece do not.

Nick Degens reaches a similar conclusion: that challenge can also rely on the affective state of the player, such as in horror games or the ‘psychological shooter’ Spec Ops: The Line. Some of the difficulty in Mass Effect comes from the torture of choice (or “die Qual der Wahl” as I heard it in high school), even when the consequences of choice are obvious.

Mark Filipowich sees difficulty as a glue that holds narratives together, whether it’s Luke piloting an X-Wing down the Death Star trench or Link snagging Ganon in the groin with a hookshot. Winning does feel good, and beating a hard challenge feels better for some, but I still don’t see why the existence of ‘Hard’ mode precludes the existence of ‘Easy’ mode as well.

Also, since when did Medium Difficulty look so snazzy? Great job with the redesign.

Mark Filipowich… wait a minute, he’s written two blog posts! In the second, he talks about the virtues of persevering with the weaker character Agnes in Final Fantasy Tactics. Investing time and effort into a character also increases our emotional investment with them.

Joseph Miller also talks about Final Fantasy Tactics, but calls difficulty “a limited expressive tool”, at least in the context of the games he wants to make which are about other feelings than “fiero” and “grip” (those are going into my lexicon).

Christopher Floyd has completed PGR3 on Platinum: we mere mortals should remain humble in the presence of a true thumb warrior. Even if PGR3 was utterly lacking in personality, its courses still had character – none more so than the Nordschleife.

Psepho wrote about the ‘accessible challenge’ of Super Hexagon, the magic of muscle memory and when the word “begin” becomes “again” through repetition. Have we all played Super Hexagon by now? You really should. It’s ace.

Peter Shafer challenges himself to be a pacifist in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, living with the consequences of his augmentation choices.

Taking It Easy-ish

Cha Holland confronts the all-too-real challenges of Dinner Date, a bizarre role-playing game where you play the subconscious of a man being stood up. I watched the trailer for the game since I’d never heard of it before. Is that what the inside of a person’s head really sounds like?

Jordan Erica Webber plays games on Easy, without shame. I’m glad someone took the bait on the topic of inclusion: challenging games are exclusive and elitist by necessity, and I’m not sure that’s what the medium needs right now.

Last but not least, some guy compared the ‘Nintendo Hard’ Jet Set Radio to its easier sequel. Difficulty isn’t enough to ensure satisfaction: games need a sense of reward to match, and it’s not just hard games that can be truly rewarding.

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Wow, what a month. Massive thanks to everyone who submitted a piece for BoRT this month, especially our new contributors.

If you’ve participated, don’t forget to add the BoRT Linkomatic 5000 to your blog. Just embed the following code on your blog’s page:

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If you have trouble embedding the Linkomatic 5000, let me know on Twitter and I’ll try my best to help.

It’s 2013! A new year and a time for resolutions, and I’m not talking about ‘1080p’ here. New Year’s Resolutions can be fun and inspiring, but there’s a balance between setting a formidable challenge and an unrealistic goal. Videogame players are no strangers to challenge of course, and that’s the theme of this month’s Blogs of the Round Table – Challenge.

"The past few years have seen a resurgence of challenging games: Dark Souls, Spelunky, FTL: Faster Than Light, XCOM: Enemy Unknown to name but a few. Do you think videogames have more value in providing a stern challenge for the player to overcome, or does difficulty serve to alienate and deter potential players, impeding their potential for inclusiveness?

Alternatively, write about the greatest challenge you have overcome in a game (this can be a personal or emotional challenge rather than one of dexterity)."

Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @critdistance with the #BoRT hashtag, or tweet me @agbear. Don’t forget the Rules of the Round Table:

• If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a trigger warning at the start of the essay. Obviously, no hate speech etc. Use your common sense.
• Your article does have to be connected to the topic. We’ll let you know if we think it’s too tenuous.
• You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published or available for free. Write early and often!

Happy New Year! Whatever your resolutions are, make sure one of them is to write for Blogs of the Round Table!

It’s winter! Or at least, it is where I am. As we enter one of the coldest winters in British history (according the hyperbolic mainstream media), it’s hard to think our southern hemispheric friends will be enjoying the sunshine and not lamenting its absence.Whether you’re curled up by a roaring fireplace or lazing by a smouldering barbecue, I hope you enjoy this month’s Blogs of the Round Table.

November’s theme was Origins. I had my own origin experience when I launched my new videogame culture magazine Five out of Ten, and if you thought I wasn’t going to plug it here then I’m sorry to disappoint you. The first issue features the work of our own Kris Ligman and friend-of-CD Brendan Keogh. The theme is ‘New Horizons’, which you might remember was the BoRT theme for September. It’s like bonus BoRT! Buy a copy! It’s the perfect Christmas gift for that special someone in your life.

Anyway, on with the show…

Origins

“Like it or not, our early years in life are formative. The people we meet and the experiences we share influence the course of our lives. Why should the video games we play be any different?

What are your earliest memories of gaming? How do you think your childhood (or childish adulthood) experiences of gaming have influenced your life, if at all? Are there any game origin stories that reflect your own?”

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Christopher Floyd writes about the multilingual wonders of Sega manuals. While American and Japanese game manuals (remember those?) were presumably wafer-thin, European manuals were case-bursting tomes. Either way, it’s a shame that manuals have been reduced to controls stamped on a card, as they were great to read on your way home from the store (remember those?)

Mike Schiller had an Atari 2600 and remembers imagining lumps of misshapen pixels as Pac-Man, football players and ET – the latter a bit misshapen by design, of course. He talks about the arcane magicks required to load a game on the PCJr: it’s interesting how far we have come in the age of one-tap downloads, but also how basic computing knowledge is being eroded as devices are simplified. Is that a good or bad thing? That’s probably a topic for another BoRT…

A poignant moment with Qbert in Wreck-It Ralph made Matt Krehbiel cry. This is a meditation on ‘gaming for the sake of fun’ – put away your pitchforks, academics – and it’s got a picture of ET if you didn’t believe my joke in the last paragraph. Seriously, he’s got a face like a melting scab.

Michelle Baldwin talks about how early games required more imagination. Is that part of the reason why they linger in the mind more than modern releases? This imaginative requirement, Michelle argues, fostered a creative streak that has influenced her life and career.

George Blott often prefers to watch games rather than play them. Now he watches web streams rather than acting as a live audience- because he spends his time making games rather than playing them.

A blogger mysteriously known as ‘TifaIA’ regards Final Fantasy IV as the most important game of their childhood. It’s really interesting to read about a game I’ve never even played before (the only FF I’ve ever finished is XIII, sorry), especially one that is influential on so many levels for at least one player.

Finally, a more personal origin story from myself for Five out of Ten about Ecco the Dolphin, writing my first real piece of games work and growing up as a gamer.

Thanks again to all of our contributors: great to see new faces… err, avatars every month.

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We’re going to take a break this month as we’re working on some Critical Distance end-of-year festivities. BoRT will return in January – see you then!