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multiplayer

May 9th

…derogatory stereotypes.

Emily Short, in her ‘Homer in Silicon’ Game Set Watch column, writes about “Character Creation and Fallout 3”. She suggests a radical re-thinking of the process of character creation, saying:

I would make different and more interesting choices if, instead of doing character-building in a clump at the beginning, that process were more gradual.

Fraser Alison at Red Kings Dream writes about multiplayer online Halo [dead link, no mirror available], relating a particular first-hand experience with ageism.

On Friday, Jim Rossignol had a bit of a think about the nature of DLC…

Just a quick one this week, as my country heads to an election and I spent all day at a polling booth spruiking for a grassroots organisation unaffiliated with any party. But that’s neither here nor there; it’s time for This Week In Videogame Blogging.

First up, and right from the very tail end of last week, Ashelia at Hellmode looks at her ‘darker competitive side’ [dead link, no mirror available]. A thing I’d like to see more of: writing, analysis, criticism of multiplayer gaming.

At The Last Metaphor Benjamin Garratt writes about ‘choices, entertainment, Pynchon’ [mirror]

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January 23rd

Another busy week for videogame blogging (when is it ever not?) so we’ve got a nice haul here for your reading pleasure.

First up, Jaime Griesemer of Bungie has started writing about design [mirror], and largely multiplayer design: initially its drafts for larger arguments, but they’re still well worth reading. Here’s a definition of “affordance” [mirror] that borrows from philosopher Martin Heidegger, and here’s a definition of balance that says true and lasting balance is nigh-impossible [mirror].

Tracey Lien wrote this week for Gamasutra about grassroots game activism, including the Australian efforts to get an R18+ rating

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March 27th

…absurd to American audiences, this plot was incredibly provocative from the perspective of the Mexican government.

Do you remember the real-time, asynchronous multiplayer, browser-based space strategy game Neptune’s Pride? Joel Goodwin of the Electron Dance blog was part of a cadre of videogame bloggers who jumped into a game about a month ago and who has now written up the experience. Here’s the index page for the series, and this is how it kicks off, in the part titled ‘Sartre was right’:

Jean-Paul Sartre famously opined, “Hell is other people.” Actually he opined “L’enfer, c’est les…

June 5th

…is a love letter to the things that don’t exist anymore; little me, little Charlotte. I cannot read maps anymore; I managed to grow up with no sense of direction. I live in a place where nothing is green, where everything is ordered chaos, the hollow voices tell me nothing, and I turn in circles like a compass who wants north, or like a girl who wants her father.

And lastly Destructoid’s knutaf creates a classification of multiplayer experiences.

Don’t forget you can send suggestions every week to Ben through email or the Critical Distance twitter account.

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November 20th

…for videogame genres unfairly impoverishes their expressive range. In particular he poses this scenario:

If SimCity had come out after Starcraft, would it be criticized for representing a city-building sandbox? Would it be panned for having no competitive multiplayer aspect? It is, after all, a strategic game (in fact, I would argue that the layers of strategy outclass those of most RTS games that came after it) and it plays out in real time. But RTS means one very specific thing now: little buildings that make little men that kill other little men faster than another person can

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December 11th

…having to carefully distance itself with irony or hyperbolic absurdity. But, more importantly, Stalker is a example to designers that there is also scope to do shooters differently on a mechanical level. They do not have to be linear rollercoasters, nor multiplayer menageries. They can be slow. They can involve wandering. Even contemplation.

Adrienne Shaw speculates on the existence of a “charmed circle” of gaming sociability, using sexual taboos as an analogy. Elsewhere, Karen Bryan riffs off Jesper Juul’s book A Casual Revolution to address the book’s implications in RIFT.

Aaron Matteson pays tribute to the childhood…

March 25th

…on the island, it makes very little effort to create a sense of embodiment.”

Meanwhile, thatgamecompany’s latest PSN release, Journey, has garnered some interesting responses for its singular aesthetic and themes. Jamie Love praises the game’s unique take on multiplayer:

Journey cuts […] to the raw source of motivation and hope we find in others, to the fact that our existence on its own is not enough to necessitate that we continue for our own sake. Certainly we live for ourselves to project strength and obey the demands of our DNA, but beneath that skin, we always

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May 13th

…for playing the game, I just wound up playing less. That was the path of least resistance. For a while I used Foursquare to kind of gamify gym attendance, but that didn’t work either. Some asshole named Pierre kept snaking me for the mayor prize. I was sure he was cheating somehow.

Josh Bycer has a list of five ways to bring the survival horror genre back from the dead. And Nightmare Mode’s Dylan Holmes appears to find games fatal in another way– namely, the unlock strategies of certain multiplayer games, and how these break the game.

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October 14th

…Studies journal, Carly A. Kocurek takes us on a look back at 1976’s Death Race, “the United States’ first video gaming moral panic.” In doing so, she asks a pretty pointed question: why do some kinds of violence get a stamp of approval in our consumable media, and not others?

Speaking of the provocative, Danielle Riendeau sat down with artist-activist-provocateur-professional-troll Johannes Grenzfurthner (whom I also had the pleasure of shaking hands with at IndieCade– and playing Massively Multiplayer Thumb War with) regarding 2012’s Arse Elektronika, “the world’s first sex-positive, sex-focused gaming conference.”

But if you’re saying to yourself,…