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mass effect

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October 21st

…wonder why there is such a glaring blind spot ignoring fantasy sports. Why have we not turned our critical gaze onto these immensely popular, and truly fascinating game systems? Chuck Klosterman recently wrote for Grantland about the effect of fantasy sports on sports fandom, but that is for a largely sports-focused publication. Are fantasy sports not effectively videogames?

SNEAK KINGS

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running an excellent little letter series on the stealth genre, with contributions from Andy Schatz, Raf Colantonio, Patrick Redding and Nels Anderson.

WHEN WILL SENPAI NOTICE ME

If you have not…

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July 26th

…‘bad’ player behavior (like save scumming or “turtling”), they aren’t in fact creating a worse problem. And lastly, Deus Ex designer and amiable uncle-type Warren Spector has made his Gamasutra Expert Blog debut with a friendly ramble on why Telltale’s games may not meet his definition of “game,” but they’re no less magic.

There’s a China Doll in the Bullpen

Developer Richard Rouse III argues that both game developers and games journalists fetishize the practice of crunch, to dangerous effect:

In the worst cases our tendency to fetishize and brag about overwork allows teams to be

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March 5th

…in Horizon Zero Dawn.

  • Ghost Recon Wildlands draws from the real-life cartel war | Waypoint Robert Rath explains the real-world parallels between Ghost Recon Wildlands and Mexico’s drug war.

    • Talking to Grillo, you get the sense of how often he’s seen real violence—execution-style slayings, massacres, battles—run through newspaper presses, film cameras, and stereo speakers. He knows that one game more or less won’t ultimately change this conflict, the best it can do is teach through osmosis.

    Health Bar-riers

    • The Invaluable Rise of the Talking Simulator | Waypoint Joe Donnelly examines the Talking…

    March 18th

    …that engenders instant nostalgia and “blissful naivety”.

    Rhetoric

    In the aftermath of the White House meeting with game developers, three critics look at the relationship between games and violence.

    • How Video Games Are Funding Gun Manufacturers // HeavyEyed – YouTube (video: subtitles) Heavy Eyed refers to a 2013 Simon Parkin piece on the business relationships between games and weapons brands, bringing his work up to date in dialogue with recent games and political responses to mass shootings.
    • Opinion: There’s a Huge Problem With Fighting the Anti-Video Game Debate With a #NotAllGames Mentality – IGN…

    December 13th

    …to understand the strengths of its historical storytelling.

  • No Man’s Sky: Through A Screen, Dully – GlitchOut Oma Keeling plays No Man’s Sky and finds that it’s more than retro in its sci-fi stylings–it’s a game out of time, with nothing to say.
  • Learning Tetris | Unwinnable Diego Nicolás Argüello writes about rebuilding and recovery–via relationships, via self-reflection, via Tetris Effect.
  • Dead Things Matter Too, Abzû – Venoms. Die. Twice. E. meditates on death, rebirth, and the phenomenology of the ocean in Abzû.

    • “To play Abzû is to remove oneself from the tension that…

    April 23rd

    Welcome back readers.

    We’ve got some good stuff earmarked for you this week, with writing spanning time periods, game genres, and industry trends. Let’s dive right in.

    This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

    Public/Private

    This week we open with a hybrid section bringing together concerns of industry and community across different topics.

    • Crowbcat, The Kuleshov Effect, and Insincere Games Criticism The Tax Collector Man deciphers a rhetorical playbook for outrage farming.
    • Games and Online Harassment Hotline, Take

    …