You’re reading this week’s edition of This Week in Videogame Blogging, which is kind of the whole purpose of Critical Distance. I’ll be taking over curation duties from Kris Ligman this week to bring you another fresh pile of good reads for you to peruse during your commute or from the comfort of wherever it is you like to read profound, and well-written articles about videogames.

Firing off the edition is an article by Jonathan McCalmont on Arcadian Rhythms, who writes about the stylistic differences between the original UFO: Enemy Unknown by Microprose and XCOM: Enemy Unknown from Firaxis.

Next up is an article by John Brindle on Gameranx who probes the sexual politics of the Hitman franchise and its latest execution, Hitman Absolution. The article “reveals the secret sexual urges of the bald penis-head assassin,” said Brindle in his e-mail to us.

Also on Gameranx is Phil Owen, who takes a closer look at the narrative structure and storytelling of Treyarch’s latest foray into the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops 2.

Concluding the trio of entries from Gameranx this week is an article by Declan Skews, who tried to get his mother into gaming with Journey.

Communicating the passion, the beauty; the romance of games to non-gamers is a task that can oftentimes seem impossible. How do you explain the draw of sneaking down a corridor, slowly losing your sanity, in Amnesia? What’s so appealing about repeatedly dying and becoming frustrated with Dark Souls? Why bother to learn new and confusing button configurations to play Uncharted, when you could just pop Indiana Jones into the DVD player? How do you explain to someone why it’s fun to massacre wave upon wave of seemingly helpless bad guys?

Elsewhere on the blogosphere, Brett Douville reflects upon his fifteenth anniversary of the day he joined the games industry and made programming his livelihood. It’s an insightful read from one of the minds behind Skyrim and Fallout 3.

Claire Hosking shares her thoughts on Halo 4‘s Cortana, who in contrast with other bloggers, believes that it’s unfair to judge the character based on the size of her breasts. She writes about the ‘fun/worthiness’ dichotomy that’s often invoked against women characters with certain body types, as if attractiveness is an indicator of downmarket design.

The ever prolific Maddy Myers writes about harassment in nerd spaces, and how she wants to encourage more people to talk seriously about their experiences in the gaming community and other male-dominated spaces.

On First Person Scholar, Steve Wilcox in his essay titled “Ludic Topology” criticizes the linearity of videogames, in relation to Far Cry 3—a game, which in itself, is an attempt to criticize the very mechanics of linear gameplay.

At the Radiator Design Blog, Robert Yang writes about the queer feminist agenda for games in 2013. He lays out the problems faced by the new progressive movement with some suggestions on how apathy—even from those who face constant persecution—needs to be overcome.

And last but not least is an article by Hamish Todd, who delves deep into a modern classic and praises the brilliance of Half-Life‘s barnacles.

The barnacle can do horror, action, and even comedy. It can assist you and puzzle you. To do all that, an object needs to have some pretty fundamental stuff in its design.

That’s it for this week. Remember to send in your submissions via our email contact form or by @ing us on Twitter.

I spent my week watching the Desert Bus for Hope 6 charity drive, which finished up this week. The Desert Bus crew managed to raise $442,204.15 over the course of 152 non-stop hours for Child’s Play. If there was ever a sign of goodness in the world, it’s the sight of so many people willingly making fools of themselves for over six straight days to help the quality of life of children in hospitals. May all involved have a restful weekend of recovery. If you missed the show, you can catch most of the highlights on their youtube channel and check out the event flickr page.

Onto This Week in Video Game Blogging.

A new blog came to my attention and in reading through Specs + Headphones’ archives I found these two pieces worthy of note from earlier in the year. First, an examination of the games design in Final Fantasy XIII. And second, a piece spotlighting the video games that explore the social impacts of technology and how they show it.

Now for this week’s business.

Helen Lewis of The New Statesman published a piece asking where all quality video game criticism was outside of the usual news/preview/review cycle of most mainstream gaming sites. To be fair her focus was looking for penetration into mainstream outlets on radio and television, but did so in a way that to anyone not acquainted with Critical-Distance or the critical culture in general (i.e. the majority of The New Statesman’s readership) it would seem like there was nothing there at all and they were missing nothing, reinforcing the mainstream status quo view of video games and those who play them.

Of course the internet lost its collective shit. Though we did much better than usual. Eerily relevant is this piece from Impossible Mansion by J. Chastain on a major hurdle in gaming for those that haven’t grown up with the medium and what it says about the people who put up with it. In addition, L. Rhodes of Culture Ramp wrote a subtle rebuke of her piece “Why are we still so bad at talking about video games?” stating, “Despite that lede, the author, one Helen Lewis, never answers the question, and never makes a very concerted pass at looking for why.” He was also nice enough to point out the great irony of the day.

This week might be the single greatest boon for long form game criticism I’ve seen since I’ve started doing this.

Brendan Keogh has finally released his book, Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line, for purchase. If you like criticism and want to see it properly supported and hopefully allow the medium to take one more step forward, buy it. It is available until December 21st for $2.99 and then on will be $4.99. If you want to pay more, Brendan says it would be more than appreciated. You can read an excerpt on Kotaku or check out the critical compilation we republished earlier this week.

Additionally, our own Alan Williamson has launched his own online quarterly magazine focusing on long form criticism, Five Out of Ten, this week as well. The inaugural issue features pieces from our own Kris Ligman, previously mentioned Brendan “does he ever sleep” Keogh, freelance critic Lana Polansky, Bill Coberly of Ontological Geek and Alan Williamson himself. It is available for purchase now.

At Unwinnable, Jill Scharr looks at Giant Sparrow’s PSN game The Unfinished Swan and they ways it defies conventions and perception by placing you in an all white world. At the same site Cara Ellison bears her heart out “To the Games I will Never Finish: A Love Letter.”

No. Videogames are a hazy cocoon in which I can work out where my passion and hurt comes from: as if in therapy, I wrap myself in remembering them. Videogames are something that I participate in, am active in. They are intrinsically part of my romantic life, my sex life – any life in which I have been around people or loved people or been upset with them. There is rarely a time when I have not associated the men that I have loved with their favourite game, or by the act of my playing a certain game when I am in love with them, or the act of lending a game, talking about a game, the game that in between sex you play together, like foreplay.

There has never been a time where I have not associated someone I loved with how they played a game. Relationships are life co-op.

To cry, to cry over a keyboard. That is a thing.

Patricia Hernandez appeared on RockPaperShotgun, to write about Fallout 2 in their Gaming Made Me series. It is a powerfully personal piece on how she grew disillusioned with the American dream and the game that was responsible for it. I would insert a quote, but I’d end up copy pasting the whole thing.

Over at Nightmare Mode a trio of articles caught our eye. First, Jordan Rivas calls the depiction of religion in games awful for both the non-religious and religious alike. Then Merritt Kopas talks about using games in the classroom to help the students understand the systems behind the oppression rather than anecdotal stories in film or books. And a rabbi, a rabbit and a robot walk into a bar in Jonas Kyratzes’ conversational discussion on stories in games.

At Medium Difficulty, Adam Maresca does “A Thoroughly Modern Reading of Revolution X” a game featuring Aerosmith from the SNES. Supposedly. Maybe. Moving on. Medium Difficulty also gave us “An Ode to Stanley & Esther” by Miguel Penabella. Due to the similar structures of The Stanley Parable and Dear Esther, I’m surprised nobody has written a piece of comparative criticism before.

Our David Carlton wrote a lengthy piece going point by point everything Dragon Age II does right with regards of stepping away from the RPG norm. He also has a piece on Super Hexagon where he compares learning the game to the similar struggle of learning to read.

Joseph Bernstein in his Black Ops 2 review at Kill Screen calls the game “An atrocity exhibition.” He tries to examine his feelings towards the game in the larger cultural contexts and why most won’t ever bother.

Meanwhile, Kyle Derkson at Push Select Magazine says, “If heroes actually exist, being one must be hell.”

Ben Milton writing for The Ontological Geek, asks “Are rules art?”

Brendan Keogh continues his A Sum of Parts series on Binary Domain by looking at the gimmick that his the trust system and how integral to the game. Robert Rath concludes his look at Conflict Minerals in the gaming industry by explaining the progress and the setbacks.

Cameron Kunzelman writes “On Final Fantasy VIII” in twelve points on what it’s about and what it does. There are also lots of screenshots.

Mary Goodden at God is a Geek, wrote a character study of Francis “York” Morgan from Deadly Premonition and how the game connects to Lynch’s works Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive.

Jordan Rivas has a post about Skyrim and Self Deception.

We, gamers, are perhaps the most skilled self deceivers on the planet. That in and of itself is not good or bad. We can only ascertain it’s value or danger as individuals, because it will vary from person to person. We have to measure the result by how we use this skill.

Leigh Alexander is at it again with a letter series, only this time with Quintin Smith on Gamasutra. They discuss Dyad.

Mattie Brice talks about the strange new iOS phenomenon Boyfriend Maker at The Border House.

Daniel Joseph has posted this video that, in his words, “addresses the political ramifications of the shift in production of videogames for oppositional froups known as ‘Counterpublics.’”

Edge has a piece on the opera level of Hitman: Blood Money that has some interesting class and performance implications.

And speaking of Hitman, remember that whole kerfuffle with the stripper nuns being killed in the Hitman: Absolution trailer several months ago. Well Carol Pinchesfsky of Forbes decided, now that the game is out, to interview an actual former stripper. If nothing else, it’s entertaining.

Thank you for reading. I hope all our American readers had a lovely Turkey Day. As always, please submit any links you find to our email or @ message our twitter account.

Searching…searching…searching…file found. Accessing…now initiating TWIVGB #172.

Begin. If you liked last week’s interview with our own Kris Ligman, L. Rhodes of Culture Ramp continues his series of interviews on the coming-of-age of video game journalism (also known as the Ludorenaissance) with Kill Screen founder Jamin Warren.

Initializing – Vander Caballero’s Papo y Yo

First up, Yannick LeJacq’s review of the game on Kill Screen looking at the nature of addiction explored in the game. Then at Medium Difficulty, Kyle Carpenter sees Papo y Yo not as a function of escapism, but a game about escapism. And finally Denis Farr, writing for Gameranx, takes a different approach and looks beyond the personal story to see it as a post-colonial narrative.

Export – Discussion of Violence

Having been asked for a quote in a Kotaku piece Robert Yang realized he wrote too much in response to their question. As a result he felt his position was not accurately represented, so he posted his full response to “Do you think shooters take themselves too seriously?”

Marjorie Jenson at Unwinnable, find the lack of critical thinking towards violence rather than the violence itself keeping her and her students from becoming gamers.

My gamer-adjacent students could love games – even become gamers – if videogames taught them how to think critically about violence.

…

My students argue that excessive, realistic death and torture will desensitize gamers. While the link between desensitization and mimicry is tenuous at best, I do believe that media affects people. Well-crafted books, films and television shows change how people think and feel. The thoughts and feelings elicited by media alter how people treat one another.

Jeff Wheeldon writes about “The Myth of Redemptive Violence” at Push Select Magazine by looking at our need for heroes who solve their problems through violence, from the Babylonian creation myth to Christianity through modern video games.

Jordan Rivas explores growing up in a post-9/11 world and how the media embraced the narrative set by the politicians, in particular the Splinter Cell series. A stunning piece of New Games Journalism as he describes the connection the games had on his view of the real world of the war on terror.

Samuel Sattin, using a recent experience with a friend’s child and Uncharted 2, explores the possible necessity of violence in our make believe, saying:

I saw the glee in Charlie’s eyes that day.  He’d begun to detach himself from the discord surrounding him in his daily life, disappearing into a less concrete world. Sometimes I just worry that if children can’t decide on the boundaries between reality and fantasy for themselves once in a while, they’ll become convinced that dark urges are only fit for real life, where the realm of make-believe is rarely welcome. And that would be truly frightening in my opinion. A genuine cause for concern.

Then Jim Ralph invokes the Bard, at the Ontological Geek, in his description of a game he hasn’t yet played, but has read about (Spec Ops: The Line) and wonders if that isn’t the reaction that the developers wanted from their player base.

Finally, a Video Game Morality Play by Andrew Vanden Bossche in choose your own adventure style.

Trigger warnings in next section’s pieces for discussions of rape, sexism and harassment.

Marc Price calls the upcoming Feminist Frequency video series, “Anita Sarkessian’s Joan of Arc Moment.” Which may be a little myopic, but I fear is a bit too accurate.

Published in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media this week is Anastasia Salter & Bridget Blodgett’s piece entitled “Hypermasculinity & Dickwolves: The Contentious Role of Women in the New Gaming Public.” It is a retread of last year’s debacle with a good dose of academic analysis thrown in.

Trigger warning end.

1010011010

Kyle Carpenter looks into why Cards Against Humanity works.

Essentially, CAH offers “offensive play,” a chance to indulge in exposing those aspects of Western culture which have been made hidden, taboo, offensive – and, consequently, made funny – without fear of damage. To play Cards Against Humanity is to enter an instant community based on ridicule, where everyone involved has agreed to participate and everyone is in on the joke. In a sense, these are racist and sexist jokes with the benefit of a safe word, the agreement that nothing on the cards is meant seriously and that no-one will carry the game forward into their day-to-day lives.

Jackson W. Ryan calls “Malaria the Invisible Wall of Far Cry 2,” lamenting that Ubisoft made up a disease with a ready treatment rather than gone full on with malaria.

Chris of Scripted Sequences asks, “Is a Scary Game Scarier If You Don’t Know How to Play?” He says that lacking experience with WASD controls only serves to make a game like Amnesia: The Dark Decent even scarier.

Emily Payton explores her inner Lynch in looking at the dream like qualities of Deadly Premonition.

Input Satire

Michael “brainy gamer” Abbott skewers general complaints about service from gamers by entering the rhetoric into real life shops.

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Stu Horvath at Unwinnable has “Sympathy for the Universe” where he writes about giving life to fictional characters, avatars, Adam and God himself.

C:/Miscellaneous

Damien McFerran’s Crippled by Nostalgia: The Fraud of Retro Gaming. He asks if it’s the gameplay that makes hardcore gamers go back to vintage games or something else? Hint: He posits it might be something else.

Carol Borden’s The Plague of the White Knight. After playing Max Payne 3, Bioshock 2 and Halo 3 she is tired of the trope of the “White Knight Savior” and the “Save The Cheerleader, Save The World” goal of storytelling so prevalent in games.

Zolani Stewart’s An Exploration of “Whore of The Orient.” “Context is everything,” he begins as he goes on to weigh the good and bad of the title and surmises that it will fall to the final product. Here’s hoping.

Access – “And now for something completely different”

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had a rather disturbing reading of Pac-Man this week. Saying, “It’s like Kafka wrote a Lovecraft story.” Visuals are included.

Initiate self-destruct. 5…4…

Please send any and all recommendations of links you have written or stumbled across to our Twitter or our email. Also, September isn’t over yet and there is still time to write for Blogs of the Round Table. Thank you for…

Another week for us to present the best in game writing from around the web, another This Week In Video Game Blogging.

First, earlier this month we have the release of the 7th issue of Ctrl Alt Defeat magazine. Of particular interest is Brendan Keogh’s piece on video games as comfort foods and our own Kris Ligman’s essay on hording in Skyrim.

Fernando Cordeiro at Nightmare Mode describes the living reality of San Paulo, the crime and the collective mentality that leads to it. Along with that he describes the view Brazilians have of Americans culminating into his personal reaction to Max Payne 3 in “The Ugly Paulistano.”

The Extra Credits guys released two videos, last week and this week, examining Journey step by step as a prime example of the Hero’s Journey. Meanwhile, Bruno Dion wrote a reply on Medium Difficulty to Steven Poole’s argument that Journey messed up its own ending.

Charles Wheeler, the writer of The Rules on the Field blog, writes “QWOP and Simulation Design” in two parts.

Another two parter, this time by Rampant Coyote on “Advancing the Role of Role-Playing” in video games, what they’ve done and where they can go.

Now come some back and forths.

Tom Bissel wrote another excellent essay at Grantland, this time on the new Heart of Darkness adaptation, Spec Ops: The Line in 13 distinct thoughts. Not everyone was impressed, however, Gobi at Fuyoh sees something fundamentally off in they way Bissel critiques calling them rather fuzzy and full of surface level critiques behind the wonderfully constructed prose.

Stephen Totilo asked several designers and academics the question ‘what makes a good video game‘ on his search for his own answer. Eric Zimmerman, one of the people Totilo asked, wrote his own response to elaborate on his quotes.

By all accounts the Game Masters exhibit in Melbourne, Australia is a rousing success and Daniel Golding goes into detail in his review of it for Game On. Two weeks ago, Alois Wittwer went to a panel featuring Warren Specter at the exhibit and writes on his own feelings towards player agency in games and given player’s reaction to it that it might be all right to restrict players a little.

Ian Bogost hypothesizes that in light of the OUYA earning, as of me writing this, $4.77 milllion that Kickstarter may not be an investment or pre-order, but just another form of entertainment.

Speaking of Bogost, Zynga. Matt Carey looks at Zynga’s slot machine game as a sort of metaphor for the company’s products as a whole and that investors are starting to get wise to game design.

Chris Batemen at ihobo writes about “The Thin Play of Dear Esther” and contextualizes some of the absurdity in determining whether or not it is a game because none of these objections helps to understand the play of Dear Esther.

Robert Yang looks at various heist games in honor of him recently attending BLDGBLOG/ Studio-X event on bank design. He takes it to the next level of “How does it affect the way we design video games and levels about heists. How should be we abstract the heist?”

Jonas Kyratzes reflects on his early decision of what name to release his games under at a time when indie wasn’t a word and he could be argued to be the one who coined the term. It is about creating a persona to present as much as it is about creating games.

Jim Ralph at Ontological Geek explores the grammar of video games and how much of it is in the present tense and uses Dark Souls to highlight how it takes advantage of this.

David Auerbach at N+1 wrote “The Stupidity of Computers” as they try to parse out our language to help us find information and how we in the end bring ourselves down to the machine’s level to get what we want. Beware: this is really long.

Walter Garrett Mitchell writes “Alfred Hitchock Would Make Great Games” for the Escapist looking at auteur theory and thankfully as some of the misconceptions people have in what it means and applying it.

Speaking of auteur, the Eurogamer has a look at Chris Crawford and the hard times he’s had ever since his infamous Dragon Speech in ’92 that signified him leaving the industry.

Simon Ferrari has finally put up new content on his blog, this time in the form of a new podcast “The Review” (which apparently wasn’t a name being used by anyone) with himself and Charles Pratt talking about a single game.  The inaugural episode is them talking about Spelunky.

And finally, for Unwinnable, Jenn Frank’s “I was a Teenage Sexist.” Read it.

Don’t forget every week we take submissions via email here and on twitter here. I’m out.

Step right up, step right up! Solid Selling Swain here to show you the deal of a lifetime! You are not going to find any wares better than what you see here. I have testimonials a mile long that you’ll find none better. For it is This Week In Video Game Blogging.

But before I get to show you the new goods, I have heard the complaints and I am here to tell you about the recall from the manufacturer. Kill Screen has issued an apology for the lack of forethought that went into the previous week’s piece by Michael Thomsen on the Hitman trailer.

And for those still a little wary, let’s get all the bad news out of the way up front: Chris Hornbostle of the Quarter to Three has published a full explanation of ‘What happened to 38 Studios.‘ Good? Good.

Now– Onto those great alchemists, Dylan Holmes and Tom Auxier of the Nightmare Mode, who have done it again with two new scrolls to help you understand your way through the troubled art of business and the serious business of art, first by showing you how the greatest FPS of this generation failed to find an audience and then how surrogate ruins the otherwise grand Diablo 3.

Ah, no no. You want something more substantial, something more meaningful, something more political? You are in luck, madam! Thanks to a shipping error I have an abundance of just such a thing from Medium Difficulty. I have a Kyle Carpenter unpacking of the polemics of Tentacle Bento and examining all of the unsaid assumptions of such a thing. Also, a certain Megan Townsend bit on where Harvest Moon goes wrong with female representation. But far more bombastic is this Adam Maresca piece on the violence on display at E3. You might call it a trip into the heart of darkness. He certainly does.

No, wait come back. I have more. So if that doesn’t interest you. Something fresh perhaps. The Ontological Geek has a new site and they have christened there new abode with two new spectacular works just this very week. Bill Coberly on the probably (read definitely) deserved nostalgia of Baldur’s Gate the first and Hannah DuVoix’s dive into the player’s relation with the various PCs in games.

I see you sirs and madams are coming around to this old barker. Then perhaps something a might more mainstream to further slake your eyes. A duo of Kotaku pieces may perhaps: Kate Cox’s “E3 Makes Me Really Appreciate the PAX Ban on Booths Babes” and Patricia Hernandez’s “Committing Genocide in Pokemon Helps Me Shape Who I Am.” I believe the origin of such vintages speak for themselves.

And let us not forget the ever faithful, ever constant producer that is PopMatters. For you consumers your weekly haul included G. Christopher Williams talking about ‘Alan Wake’s Women‘ from the newest installment of that franchise and Nick Dinicola closely examining the superior writing of Max Payne 3, by looking at what is largely missing from the dialogue.

Writing for Gamasutra, editor Kris Graft gives up on writing an E3 puff piece and focuses on a single theme, the disillusionment with the AAA video game industry.

Meanwhile, Julian “rabbit” Murdoch wrote for Gamers with Jobs about his experience with the ultra fun game of Johann Sebastian Joust. Finally, a great use for those Move controllers.

I jest, I jest. (*cough*)

Now, I know to all you fine customers out there that this may seem a little tiny itsy bitsy bit like nepotism and that’s because it is, but NEVERTHELESS is what I present to you a supreme work by our very own Kris Ligman. My lady, do take a bow. It is a piece about game maps and game territory as formed by the environment and how it is shaped and enriched by other players.

And over here, I have the esoteric, the cerebral, the theory analysis. Charles Wheeler knows The Rules on the Field as he does an East/West comparative analysis of the game show Ninja Warrior. In addition, Alex Curelea explains, scientifically, why Diablo 3 is less addictive than Diablo 2. But, wait there’s more. Get both of those and I’ll throw in Eric Schwarz’s Critical Missive piece on the attempts to fix currency in games.

Yes, good sir or madam. I see you’ve been eyeing this little bauble. That is a very rare Darius Kazemi write up. You must have a poet’s heart within you to seek it out. For it chronicles the strange journey he had undergone with his magical Metaphor-a-Minute.

And let us not forget the every popular criticism of criticism. The Leveling Criticism of Craig Bamford is about a certain Gamespot interview on the new upcoming Medal of Honor game. The developer wanted it both ways, it’s art and just a game. Mr. Bamford calls this out.

And let us not forget my most exotic ware. I traveled beyond the horizon, you might say I had Gone to Strange Country just to bring back this piece, by the man known as Andre Lavigne. He writes about how the level design contributed to the racism and botching of the anti-colonial sentiment of Resident Evil 5. Be careful you read this once in only a thrice quarter green moon.

But of course I save the showstopper for last. The most easily digestible. Extra Credits is back on their A game by looking at the concept of Hard Boiled in video games and it often goes so wrong.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your time and patience. I know something from my wares must of caught each and every one of your eyes. I accept all links, payable to our email or by our twitter. The lovely Kris or Ben will take your orders and…What’s that officer? Yes. Yes, of course I have a peddler’s license. I am a legitimate businessman. No I don’t have it on me, I’m in the middle of a shtick. No I will not come with you I have business…g-g-get your hands off of me. Run for it guys, the jig is up!

(Hope you all had a lovely E3.)

I can’t think of a clever intro. It’s This Week In Video Game Blogging.

The recently released Katawa Shoujo has garnered a lot of attention for how it came into existence and for it being a quality experience, something no one could have seen coming. Our own Kris Ligman says that Katawa Shoujo could be accused of many things, but cynicism is not one of them. And given where it came from, that is something. Know Your Meme, meanwhile, is heading off comments about the people saying “I’ll never meet a girl like that” countering with “You’re doing it wrong.”

Michael Peterson at Project Ballad writes extensively on Persona 3 and how the game presents the concept of free will.

Richard Clark writes a response at Christ and Pop Culture about one person’s reaction to Settlers of Catan who said the game is “fundamentally antithetical to Christian vision and existence.” Clark responds: “Perhaps the #1 rule of approaching a game rightly is as follows: take it seriously, but keep your perspective.”

Lana Polansky writes a review of Oíche Mhaith for KillScreen - it’s an indie game about a girl in an abusive home, and how it conveys the utter destruction of a little girl.

Matthew Schanuel, the Ontological Geek, examines Deus Ex: Human Revolution from the perspective of its mythic roots, borrowing from both the story of Icarus and Genesis.

Matthew Armstrong at The Misanthropic Gamer has just finished Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. He writes about how the game has granted him “a new appreciation for Castlevania‘s current state of affairs in today’s gaming landscape.” He thinks the fact it does not stick to formula should not be held against it.

Petros of Sparta at A Blog of Random Things, writes “What I would have changed: Twilight Princess.” Going over what was fundamentally off about the game and how it could have been great and innovative instead of the stagnant entry of the series.

Eric Schwarz of the Critical Missive blog is back again, this time writing about Rage and multiple design missteps it takes.

Rowan Kaiser in his weekly Joystiq column on role-playing games turns his eye to the two most recent Fallout entries, comparing the different rhythms to the quest structures in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. The former is based on free form explorations whereas the latter was more stringent in its hub based structure. Meanwhile, at Insult Swordfighting, Mitch Krpata types out a series of “Rejected Endings to Fallout: New Vegas.”

Guest Blogger Apple Cider Mage posts “Let’s get rid of ‘slut plate’ forever” at The Border House. It isn’t about the skimpy armor of World or Warcraft, but the term itself.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, John Brindle of the Brindle Brothers talks about the moral psychopathy that Blizzard has continually displayed. They know they have a moral obligation to their community, but don’t seem quite capable or knowledgeable on how to execute their intentions.

From one company to another, Benjamin Jackson writes a piece entitled “The Zynga Abyss” for the Atlantic about games that treat players like rats in the Skinner Box, requiring little creativity. In a similar vein we have Jamin Warren at KillScreen focusing on Zynga’s practice of cloning games and the multiple factors that allow people to get away with it. Finally, Ian Bogost weighs in at Gamasutra comparing the Tiny Tower/Dream Tower cloning scandal to the myth of Bellerophon and Pegasus. Unpacking that essay could require an essay itself.

Shifting away from the specific toward more overarching themes, we have Pippin Barr giving a talk on what games are, how the boundaries are limiting and thankfully how they are now being pushed against. For some reason though, the video goes dark 17 minutes in.

At The Wall Street Journal, Conor Dougherty published a piece on the way some players are changing the way they experience games with pacifist runs. And Eric Lockaby talks about how critics and gamers are “Pretentious as Shit” when it comes to their snootiness towards difficulty and accessibility in games. Though I agree with the sentiment, I think ‘pretentious’ is the wrong word. Replace each instance with ‘jackass’ and it’s much more on the mark.

Joel Jordon from The Game Manifesto believes games are like music. He extols the inherent rhythm to a game’s actions, and sees similar qualities present in games from Dance Dance Revolution to Resident Evil 4 and Rayman Origins.

Alan Williamson of the SplitScreen blog looks at a quick history of cheating in games from the early cheatcode to modern hacking, to the publishers cheating gamers out of legitimately purchased content. To quote Williamson: “It’s hard for the modern gamer to be a cheater, but easy for them to feel cheated.”

On a similar subject, John Walker at Rock Paper Shotgun muses on the question of “Do we own our Steam games?” and discusses the issues around digital ownership that have yet to legally be answered.

We end with a few more responses to Raph Koster’s post “Narrative is not a mechanic“: Chuck Jordan questions whether Koster’s assertions are based in the fundamentals of what narrative and games are, or merely how it’s been done so far. And Mattie Brice in her PopMatters column outright contradicts him saying “Narrative Is a Game Mechanic.”

Witty closing remark. Hyperlinks to email and Twitter for submissions. Warm farewell!

Welcome one and all. It is my pleasure to be your guide today around the Gallery of Vidogame Blogging and Criticism from this week.  We have a bevy of word-pieces for you, so if you’ll just follow me through the gallery…

We start our tour at that weekly goldmine that is the PopMatters Moving Pixels blog. From last week we have Sean Brady who goes back to take a look at Chrono Trigger, explaining the importance of historical context when looking at a work. And from this week we have Kris Ligman looking at the concept of virtual patience in video games and Scott Juster’s look at Catherine‘s characters and messages, finding they hit a little too close to home.

Meanwhile on your right you’ll see Juster’s partner in crime Jorge Albor at the Experience Points blog  looking at the discussion coming out of Games for Change (G4C) and their “focus on “serious” and social impact games.” The discussion at present is around ‘What kind of change are we talking about here?‘

Now if you will look over here in the next room, we can see the great work that came out of Kill Screen this past week. James Dilks looks at the names of video games and what they convey about what is within, particularly the unusual case of VVVVVV. Brendan Keogh is behind a barrier of his own making as he realizes that, like Red from The Shawshank Redemption, he too has been institutionalized.  And Lana Polansky reviews indie game Rock of Ages and its tumultuous journey through time and Western art history.

In the ‘contemporary art corner’ over here are the submissions from the Bitmob writers collective. Sumo Attuqayefio has a short, but heartfelt piece on how Shadow of the Colossus helped him emotionally deal with his daughter’s cancer; Kate Cox asks ‘Why does the fear of death continue to be gaming’s greatest motivator?‘; and Rus McLaughlin says, ‘Games don’t have to be fun.’ It has, to my mind, a conclusion that perfectly sums up the argument:

Even if you didn’t exactly enjoy yourself at the time, you’ll probably look back and consider it a fun experience. Not because you enjoyed playing it…but because you enjoyed the result.

On the feature wall to your left we are proud to present two new pieces from our very own David Carlton at the Malvasia Bianca blog. Continuing on from last week’s puzzle talks, he focuses on Catherine here in ‘Rearranging mental blocks‘, and addresses the game more holistically in the aptly titled ‘Catherine.’

We are also most happy to present to you a brand new work in three parts from The Artist Formerly Known as L.B. Jeffries - Mr. Kirk Battle Esq. himself. The creator of these workds calls them the ‘MMO Judiciary‘ cycle, focusing on the upcoming legal complications as real money enters the MMO sphere and what companies can do going into the future.

If you will follow me into the next antechamber you can see two pieces of worthwhile news. To your left, Tracey Lien has a real piece of investigative journalism at Kotaku Australia, exploring the consequences  of ‘What Happens To Developers When A Studio Closes‘, counterpointed nicely by the challenging political overtones of GamePolitics’ ‘How a 14 Year-Old Girl Changed NHL 12.’ I believe this title speaks for itself.

Keep up, everyone, please keep up. We are now entering the Hall of Theory.

Here you will see Kate Cox’s piece ‘Win, Lost, or Fail,’ from the Your Critic is in Another Castle blog, about what video games are and what winning or losing has to do with it. Alongside the aforementioned work is a piece by a new artist on the scene - one ‘hellfire’, from the You Must Register blog, in which is discussed the general lacuna the author feels is present in the work of Gonzalo Frasca and Ian Bogost w/r/t more complex games like Planescape: Torment. On the wall opposing is Mike Birkhead writing for Gamasutra, and going into detail of the particulars of ‘What makes combat fun.’ Adjacent to Birkenhead is Critical Missive’s Eric Swartz talking about the annoying trope survival horror games use, which is that their poor controls are actually a feature. As you can see, our gallery is well and truly overflowing with works and the trustees of the gallery are having a fundraising drive to expand the Hall of Theory wing. You kind donations are generously appreciated.

Through this renaissance era archway is a little transitional alcove, installed within which is a piece by Brendan Keogh at his personal blog Critical Damage. He talks about the contemporary treatment and perception of scientists within two iOS games that seem to encapsulate the sentiment:

Personally, I find it all incredibly infuriating when I watch television and see creationism and evolution debated as equal ‘theories’, or when the secret agendas of a climate scientist’s peer-reviewed findings are questioned by an oil company, but that is not an area I’m an expert in or tend to write on. What I find interesting, however, is how this general attitude to the sciences permeates and is reflected in our cultural texts. In particularly, two videogames I’ve played and loved in recent months I think could be seen as emerging from this culture that has become obsessed with discrediting and deriding the sciences.

Now if you will follow me into The Room of Games, where we have a number of interesting pieces on individual games.

Here before us is another piece that was rescued from the archives by a diligent graduate student doing research for us. This week we are proud to present the work of Tom Bissell and his thoughts on Dead Island for Grantland. We are very fortunate indeed this piece has been spared the indignity of languishing undisplayed in the basement.

On the left wall are Randy Smith and Theoron Jacobs getting into a dialogue on what makes Sword & Sworcery so ‘awesomely cool‘, and it is brought to us by a generous grant from the Edge Foundation.

Tom Chick on the Quarter-to-Three wall describes what is off about Gears of War 3.

Late in Gears of War 3, someone will say, “Bloody hell, they found the UIR! It’s a Gorasni ship!” The line is delivered as if it’s something that matters, but Gears of War 3 hasn’t told me what a UIR is or who the Gorasni are. The line might as well have been “Bloody hell, they found the Boop-i-dee-bop! It’s a Whamble-di-dee ship!” It’s an example of how Gears 3 cares about itself far too much to be arsed to care about me.

Masterful.

Much has been said about the boss fights of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but in an impeccable display of creativity Nick Rudzicz at Newton64 decides to go a step further and fill in the blanks left behind by the developers.

On the far wall behind you, you will find the Erik Hanson Equality Scholarship winner Denis Farr’s roleplaying account of Pokemon: Fire Red as drag diva, made possible by the Gamers With Jobs.

And the centerpiece of the room – by emerging artist Nathan Grayson (so hot right now) – is a piece exploring Bastion‘s multitextuality and how it succeeds where many others fail. Grayson sees Bastion as a game about moving forward while simultaneously looking backwards, but curiously not at the same time.

This concludes the tour… but what? Oh yes. That…piece in the center of the room. Yes, it was a controversial inclusion by the museum director himself: some post-modernish rambling by Tim Robbins or whatever his name is from Action Button on The Sims Social. I really can’t engage with it, but certainly it is here for you if you like that sort of thing.

Now please feel free to browse around, I hope you have enjoyed the tour and we thank you for stopping by the Gallery of Vidogame Blogging and Criticism. Please feel free to direct your comments, suggests and recommendations to the Board of Trustees via twitter or email.

Seems everyone’s sick but me, so I will be taking control of Critical Distance this weekend to bring you TWIVGB. MWUHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Kirk Hamilton has been on fire recently. We don’t often link to reviews, but Kirk’s piece on L.A. Noire at Kill Screen isn’t the normal consumer review and goes the extra mile in expressing the existential dilemma the game made him feel. He also has a new column on Kotaku whose inaugural post compares the feel of playing a game to the rhythm of playing an instrument.

The PopMatters crew is also on fire this week. G. Christopher Williams writes about the fatalism of the noir genre, its very American sensibilities and how it comes across in L.A. Noire. Our own Kris Ligman decides to talk about the first Dragon Age for a change to look at its presentation of class and how in the end everyone always ends up a white middle class male. And finally Scott Juster looks at one of his favorite games of last year, Vanquish and why he would apply the ‘f’ word to it: fun. Extra thoughts here.

Daniel Golding at the Kill Your Darlings blog talks about his adverse reaction to telling people what he’s studying when asked:

My unwillingness to reveal my interest in videogames was partly based on the kinds of reactions I imagined I would get. Nobody wants to be the videogame guy. Or, more to the point, nobody wants to talk to the videogame guy. And, worse than that, I’m the videogame guy who thinks they’ve an interesting enough topic for a doctoral thesis. In dinner party stakes, I’m only a few steps up from the editor of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Philosophy or someone who writes Star Wars fan fiction.

Amanda Lange at her Second Truth blog takes a look at “What’s Social in ‘Social Games’?” She looks at the common complaints of the genre and see if they are true from the player’s standpoint.

“How should we judge indie games?” asks Northernlion at the Saving Progress blog by checking out three titles and the criticisms lodged at theme by reviewers.

Indiana Hamilton-Brown has a short interview with RPS critic and author Jon Rossignol about space and architecture in their roles in games.

Michael “Brainy Gamer” Abbott works on a reading of games as an existential expression of the nonself or as being the self of someone else and what they can achieve. Unless you like philosophical wank war by an Objectivist, I’d avoid the comments.

New game blogger Joel Jordon starts off The Game Manifesto blog with a big one. It’s on the theme of relationships in Portal 2.

Adam Ruch takes a look at the concept of canon in the medium of video games and what it means, because binaries only exist as possibilities before you chose one. Or to put it another way:

For example: Liara can romance either a male or female Shepard. Does this make her a ‘bisexual’ (in human terms, she’s attracted to both sexes and this has nothing to do with her own lack of definite gender)? Or is she simply (human) straight and attracted to a male Shepard in that case, or a (human) lesbian being attracted to a femShep? Given that it requires two fundamentally different playthroughs of the game to demonstrate her bisexual availability, is it fair to assume the same from one playthrough?

Paul Haine says “Jack Marston is a Prick, But That’s Probably OK.”

The wungergeek at Go Make Me A Sandwich blog weighs in that because Bayonetta is a fictional character you have to look at her creator because she can’t make any choices that many critics have ascribed her to making.

Writing for Gamer Dork, Chris Green theorizes that the new Lara Croft game, however good its intentions are, may just be exchanging one set of stereotypes for worse ones.

Here is a video of Chris Crawford talking to a class about “interactivity and the future of computing/games.”

Mike Schiller on his blog takes a gander at the concept of home as presented by Dragon Age II.

Leigh Alexander takes her turn at Rock Paper Shotgun’s Gaming Made Me series to take a look at one of earliest gaming experiences: Colossal Cave Adventure. It’s a lightly emotional read.

It hit me hard. Colossal Cave Adventure 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.

GDC is over and Ben is recovering from a hangover [Oh god I have no sense of balance - Ed.] so I’m picking this up for one more week. This is my actual one-year anniversary for starting to write TWIVGB.

Since Dragon Age 2 is being released next week, we start this round up with the bloggers looking back in preparation for the new one. Kirk Hamilton and Denis Farr look back at Dragon Age: Origins and what the new direction the sequel is taking could mean for the franchise. Denis continues writing about Origins over at GayGamer looking at some under discussed characters, Hespith and Branka. And Kris Ligman in her Miss Anthropy column at PopMatters expresses her appreciation over the first game’s creation of real characters and women she actually liked to play.

Also at PopMatters this week, Aaron Poppleton asks, “What is scary in Horror Games?” and looks at three different examples to see what makes each type scary. G. Christopher Williams contends that Bulletstorm fails to be camp since it doesn’t go far enough in making fun of stupid games, being too close to the truth of it. Nick Dincola continues to talk about the latest Medal of Honor, this time looking at what made the multiplayer such a disaster.

Maggie Greene, this week, found out she has become a chapter in a PhD dissertation and decided, since she is still alive unlike most sources, to create a few more sources, detailing in broad strokes her history at Kotaku, to help out in the research.

Brenda Brathwaite on her personal design blog transcribes her GDC rant from the section called Social Game Developers Rant Back. Simon Ferrari on his blog Chungking Espresso writes an “informal, uninvited rant” called “How to Write a Book About Games.” Also riffing off a GDC talk, Michael the Brainygamer Abbot talks about “Rollercoaster bias” of David Cage when it comes to his own work. And finally Tadhg Kelly explains the implications of the two revelations, which happened within minutes of each other of different sides of the city, between Satoru Iwata and Steve Jobs.

Rob Zacny has been playing War in the East recently and writes about how strategy games have become too much about systems and so little of the personalities that caused many of the mistakes in the real war. Meanwhile, Jonathan McCalmont has a post at Futurismic: “Seeing like a State: Why Strategy Games Make Us Think and Behave Like Brutal Psychopaths.” The title says it all, but here’s a taste:

Stripped of the moral fig leaf of historical context, Syndicate asked us to assume to role of a corporate CEO who used cybernetically enhanced slaves to battle rival CEOs for control over a virtual environment that enslaved the entire human race. For the first time, players were asked to embody not mythical beings or historical princes but ruthlessly exploitative capitalist tyrants. The fact that playing a corporation was no different to playing a god or a warlord merely served to drive home the moral message: You are a complete bastard.

J.P. Grant writing for Gamers with Jobs talks about the stats that video games keep track of and their usefulness to the gamer.

The three big critics that work at the Escapist Magazine, Yahtzee, James Portnow and Moviebob come together in a written round table to talk about the current console gaming environment.

Ben Villarreal writes a literary video game critique by looking at the Victorian literature influence and thematic similarities to the modern survival horror genre. Love this piece:

This area of interest began while I was first playing Resident Evil 5 in 2009. As I played it, I was struck with the number of plot similarities between it and Sir H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines — one of my favorite novels. Haggard epitomizes one of the most popular late 19th century British literary genres — the adventure story for boys. Many of its characteristics are found in Resident Evil 5 (and even Resident Evil 4): travel to a distant land, horrific events, exotic women, and treasure of some kind, all found on the route to “manhood.”

Mark B. at KokuGamer writes a call to arms to video game critics to start fixing the over inflated system of review scoring, saying it’s unhelpful and deceptive to consumers and harmful to the industry as a whole.

The Boston Phoenix’s Maddy Myers’ article on the Dickwolves controversy has gone up. She explains it for people who have no idea what it is all about and while it is may seem slanted, it is deservedly so.

Laura Michet at Second Person Shooter talks about the cost of art and how public art is paid for. She then suggests, maybe a museum fund some a public art game for display.

Justin Keverne writes about a “Framework for Systemic Storytelling” and a list of things that create believable characters and more important character interaction through systemic means.

Radek Koncewicz from Significant Bits looking at 20 level design lessons from Super Mario Brothers 3. For contrast, Tevis Thompson explains how Sonic the Hedgehog‘s recent failure may be because the design was never good in the first place.

Eric Schwarz at his blog Critical Missive explains the difference between open-world games and sandbox games and how size isn’t what really matters between the two.

On the surface, what makes these games might seem obvious: the sheer scale of the world and options available to the player. After all, most games of this nature in the past have featured immense scale when compared to more linear games. But looking a little deeper, that can’t just be what it is. Although the size of the world is especially a consideration in an open-world game, to say that sheer size is what makes such a game is foolhardy. After all, FUEL had the largest 3D game world in history, yet its design utterly failed to capitalize on the scale the technology was able to provide, nor did it manage to motivate players to continue through the game after the initial “wow” factor. No, the differences between open-world games and sandbox games are much different, and are largely due to the fundamental differences in design approach.

Matthew Gallant, back to writing at his blog The Quixotic Engineer, explors one of the best Team Fortress 2 multiplayer maps, ‘Steel’, and the dynamic ebb and flow it offers.

Kill Screen’s Kyle Chayka looks at how the abstract nature of the first arcade games, most notably Pong, and their artistic similarities to the abstract artists of the 1920s and 30s.

Paul Sztajer at Fabula ex Machina explores the differences between real-world and on-screen fun using metrics of Uniqueness, Unpredictability, Physicality and Storytelling.

And to wrap up on a lighter note, “The Many Faces of Tim Schafer.” (I was ordered to include this one. [A picture is worth a thousand words! - Ed.])

I know it’s late this week, so let’s get right into it.

There are two video essays this week. Continuing his series examining Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, TheGameLocker published the third part this week. At the Escapist Daniel Floyd in his weekly video essay examines a single choice in Mass Effect 2, the implications and how only video games can present this moral dilemma as it does.

Michael Abbott explores the backlash G4′s review of Metroid: Other M inspired because actual criticism had the gall to slip into the piece.

Kateri looks at how Dragon Age: Origins escapes the women in the fridge trope, by actively playing on it and making use of the character rather than have them be part of the furniture, saying:

“I felt it like a punch in the stomach. It helped that the voice acting was a masterpiece of subtle emotion, but more than that – it was all true. She had been a plot device, her pain mere emotional leverage to set my protagonist on his journey. I had barely given her a second thought since the game proper began, focusing on my “important” quests, my “real” party members. But in that moment, she refused to let me do that. Screw you, hero boy, she seemed to be saying to my PC, you were the lucky one. I was raped, and you got to use it to your own advantage and then forget about it. I have never had the luxury of forgetting about it. Every day that you were triumphing over evil and hunting for treasure, I had to remember it, and live with it, and carry on anyway.”

Stephen Slota looks at what survival horror can teach us about math over at School in 64-Bits.

L.B. Jeffries looks at the classic debate of adventure games Sierra v. Lucasarts with a critical look at where each stood with respects to the genre. Also at Popmatters, G. Christopher Williams looks at how we market our games versus how book publishers market their product and the effect the absence of a name has on our particular medium.

Roger Travis at his blog Living Epic calls Halo: Reach an Epic and the implications of what it means for a game to be a classical epic.

“We should not turn away from a fundamental problem here: I’m a guy on a sofa, not a Spartan giving his life to save humanity. Indeed, the very interactive nature of the practice of playing Halo tends to emphasize, rather than cover over, the enormous gap between pretending to be Noble 6 sacrificing himself and actually dying nobly: when the game ends, we’re still on the sofa.”

The New York Times magazine has an interesting article by Chris Suellentrop, in relation to Call of Duty and the US military. While at Game in Mind, Matt Kaplan looks at the recent controversy of being able to play as the Taliban in the most recent Medal of Honor as an exercise of a Jew on Team Nazi.

Brendan Keogh writing at his Critical Damage blog, looks at how Liberty City evokes a real living, breathing city from the perception of the three inhabitants you can play and how each one gives a wildly different view of the same game space.

At Video Game Theory & Language, Christian Iconography is looked at in Dragon Age: Origins by Jeffrey Jackson.

CLINT HOCKING is back to blogging, looking at convergence in media and in our culture.

Zoran Iovanovici at Gamasutra writes about the theme of centralized power in the Metal Gear Solid series and what it can teach us about our present world, concluding:

“That’s arguably the true magic of the MGS saga – it makes players ask some pretty big questions. And for good reason, too. With real world organizations like the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, the U.N., and WTO pushing for globalization, a global currency, a global court, and essentially a centralized New World Order; clandestine groups like the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg Group, and the Club of Rome calling shots behind the scenes; questionable global slush funds like the Red Cross hoarding money for unknown projects; and world threatening mega corporations like Monsanto seeking to control global food supply, the issues that MGS brings to light can hardly be glossed over.”

Sean Beanland goes back in time to play the first two Diablo games and examines the strangeness of some of their design choices, even among other rougelikes.

Chronoludic’s Mike Dunbar writes about Pathologic and the concept of death and disease therein.

And a post I never would have thought possible in the last decade, Charge Shot looks at Duke Nukem Forever, its history and the world that left it behind.