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The Stanley Parable

November 16th

…that you’re making the new bad TV.”

Elsewhere, Jason Rice weaves together Sleep No More, The Stanley Parable, The Walking Dead, and player performance, looking toward the future of interactivity.

 

SOMETHING YOU ALREADY KNEW BUT THAT SCIENCE HAS NOW CONFIRMED

According to a new study by the Queensland University of Technology, playing video games improves children’s emotional, social, and psychological well-being. The study also finds that playing video games together as a family can help build stronger family bonds.

More at GamePolitics.

BIG GUNS

With new consoles comes the

December 8th

…staff involved, it should only take a couple of years.

Ludodecahedral Blog Labyrinth

On his blog Fortress of Doors, Lars Doucet – inventor of the term ‘procedural death labyrinth’ – goes into more detail about the term. Meanwhile, Chris Bateman critiques the exploratory life labyrinth Gone Home. Also on the subject of Gone Home, Dan Cox feels like a ghost when he plays it (warning: story spoilers from the outset).

Carli Velocci has an interesting piece on Kill Screen about narrator gendering in Portal, The Stanley Parable and more, taking a slightly broader approach to Cara Ellison’s…

February 9th

…you know what you get for your hard-earned cash,” in his words.

Making Sense

For The Atlantic, Ian Bogost references the stoic chaos of Flappy Bird as evidence of games as grotesqueries at which we flail in existential pursuit of order and beauty. Having reveled in the deaths of billions in Plague Inc., Nick Dinicola reflected on how terrifying the nature of puzzles can be, for the delight of intellectual stimulation and sense of overcoming a challenge so easily masks the horror of one’s actions.

Alex Duncan discussed metafiction and The Stanley Parable. Gaines Hubbell addressed a…

October 4th

…MOBAs, this week analyzing the play maps and tactics in the ‘big three’ of the genre: DotA 2, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

There were quite a few pieces this week on The Beginner’s Guide, the new title by The Stanley Parable creator Davey Wreden, but I am holding onto them until I play through it myself. I don’t usually do this — I’ve just come to accept spoilers go with the territory in this job — but I’ve tried my darnedest to follow the essays without knowing the content of…

October 11th

Hello everyone. Are you having a good Sunday? I was just beginning to celebrate the cooler temperatures when suddenly my city was struck with another heat wave, so at the very least I hope you’re having a slightly more temperate weekend than me. Welcome to This Week in Videogame Blogging!

The Beginner’s Guide

Discussion on The Beginner’s Guide, from The Stanley Parable co-creator Davey Wreden, has begun to trickle in. I say ‘trickle,’ but really what I have for you here is half of a Critical Compilation already. Whatever you may think of it as a work,

Episode 35 – Camp’s Signal

…as the “logjam” created by trying to reconcile different facets of his personal approach to criticism.

http://www.critical-distance.com/podcast/Critical-Distance-Confab-episode-35.mp3

Direct Download

SHOW NOTES

Errant Signal

Half-Life

Commentary – Half-Life

Errant Signal – Mirror’s Edge

Errant Signal – The Stanley Parable

Errant Signal – Gamification

Errant Signal – “Keep Your Politics Out of my Video Games”

Errant Signal – Hotline Miami (Spoilers)

Errant Signal – (Spoilers) Fallout 4 and Role Playing

Errant Signal – The Beginner’s Guide (Spoilers)

Errant Signal Patreon

Opening Theme: ‘Close’ by The Alpha Conspiracy

Episode 40 – Games literary studies on Youtube

…specific title. We talk about that original class, the struggle of keeping up a schedule for a hobby, and the pleasure that teaching and video making have given him.

SHOW NOTES

Games as Literature YouTube Channel

Games as Lit. 101 – Syllabus

Games as Lit. 101 – Literary Analysis – Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Games as Lit. 101 – Literary Analysis – Bioshock

Games as Lit. 101 – Literary Analysis – Gears of War Trilogy

Games as Lit. 101 – Literary Analysis – The Stanley Parable

Gaming Symposium YouTube…

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

July 30th

…resistance against this carceral rhetoric. If the dungeon equates the imprisoned to the monstrous, then pieces like howling dogs, Begscape and With Those We Love Alive ask us to inhabit the skin of the monstrous, the grotesque, the pitiable. The empathy is with the kobolds hiding and scurrying, the gelatinous cubes crawling the corridors.”

Intentionality

Finally, I was startled to find these two pieces that both consider intentionality as a part of game design thinking, but in completely different ways.

  • The Stanley Parable, Dark Souls, and Intended Play – YouTube (Video: auto-captions) Dan Olson looks…

Dark Souls

…forces (him) into nonsensical loops of actions”. Michael Thomsen asks if “a 100-hour video game (is) ever worthwhile”, a question Erik Kain refutes.

Dan Olson’s video “The Stanley Parable, Dark Souls, and Intended Play” explores Dark Souls’ capacity to anticipate confrontational player “misbehaviour”, and how its permittance of divergent approaches acts an an essential part of the text.

For the Problem Machine, “the simple extraordinary elegance of the estus flask is often overlooked.”, and the “beloved balance of the game rests” on this healing mechanic.

The interplay between Dark Souls’ systems often makes them…

Calling for Critical Compilations!

  • Portal and Portal 2
  • P.T.
  • Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2
  • Spelunky
  • The Stanley Parable
  • The Walking Dead (Telltale)
  • The Witcher trilogy
  • We’ll consider pitches for games outside this list, but these are the ones we’re considering high priority right now!

    CALL FOR PITCHES NOW CLOSED. Thank you to everyone who submitted!

    Many thanks to our generous Patreon donors for helping us to promote features like these! If you want to support Critical Distance’s continued mission to promote and preserve good games criticism, consider adding your pledge!