Search Results for:

ludonarrative dissonance

November 15th

…spoiler warnings are impeding criticism!) I think Burch is reaching for the excellent term ‘Ludonarrative Dissonance’.

Trenk Polack elaborates on the his own response and feelings towards the ‘No Russian’ level, examining it within the wider context of the game’s plot and it failed to achieve the desired response from him.

For “No Russian” to work, I have to buy into the premise fully. I have to know that what I’m doing is vile but necessary. I have to have Vic Mackey’s conviction that what I’m doing is the right thing to do, as hard as it

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August 29th

…simplification of both content and design to show how inane the bare bones interaction of that game really is.”

Michael Clarkson looks at Nier and ‘the curious case of Kaine’; “So here you have it: a character who basically compiles every single sexist trope in JRPG character design into a single body.”

Eric Swain at The Game Critique argues in defence of Ludonarrative Dissonance.

Brendan Keogh of Critical Damage writes about ‘Feeling Every Punch’ a follow-up to his ‘Player Privilege’ post, looking at the interesting amount of overlap between the real and virtual worlds:

the

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December 5th

…by Scott Juster, who writes about straight-faced games which merely peer over the fourth wall instead of breaking it down. It’s an article that talks about the ludonarrative dissonance in games like BioShock and the Uncharted series and how these games address incongruancies.

Adam Ruch has written the second part of his “Metanarrative of Videogames” article on the FlickeringColours blog. He questions the industry’s focus on the “win state” in games [mirror], and asks why they can’t strive to evoke a wider variety of emotions from players beyond that.

Salman Rushdie weighs in on videogames and the future…

This Year In Video Game Blogging 2010

…ludonarrative dissonance instead of resonance.

One of the most well imagined and well-explained critiques/theories of the year has its own site, ‘Squall is Dead‘, explaining the few Lynchian aspects of Final Fantasy VIII in the context of the whole.

Joshua Casteel wrote one of the most moving pieces of the year at the Point Magazine. From his point of view as a former Abu Grab prison guard and a real modern warfare veteran, he writes his take and experience on Modern Warfare 2 [mirror]. A gripping piece of writing that doesn’t pull any punches.

During the year…

November 27th

…their ludonarrative dissonance–in this case, the friction between reductive combat systems and the larger sociopolitical worlds these games claim to inhabit. And while Lager notes that Skyrim appears more finessed than many others in this regards, he does add:

Of course […] you still get the stupid things like guards telling you to be careful around the mages guild even though you, in fact, run it, or that you can still be a murderous psychopath yet still invited to save the world. So, while still flawed and stories aren’t particularly branching – there’s progress there, especially when it’s

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Now Accepting Submissions for TYIVGB 2011 Edition

…pieces that fit some or all of the criteria below.

1. Any piece of writing that really sticks out in your mind. Something that weeks, even months after it’s published stays with you because it was influential or important. Pieces that get cited to this day. Examples from previous years include:

Ludonarrative Dissonance by Clint Hocking (’07)
Taxonomy of Gamers by Mitch Krapta (’08)
Permanent Death by Ben Abraham (’09)
No Cheering in the Pressbox by A.J. Glasser (’10)

2. Any pieces that are an excellent example of a larger trends within…

August 26th

Just the facts today, ma’am. It’s time for This Week in Videogame Blogging.

Let’s start at the scene of the crime– war crimes, that is, where Ken Hannahs muses at Gameranx about the ludonarrative dissonance of modern “counter-terrorism” games actually performing the many acts one is supposed to be ideologically opposing:

Perhaps this is what living in a post-9/11 world is for Americans. Perhaps modern military tactics have become so clandestine as to have become impossible to discern from the very thing we are fighting against. These are our military heroes in videogames: men who break

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Now Accepting Submissions for TYIVGB 2012 Edition

…a whole just because they’re that influential or important. Pieces that get cited to this day. Examples from previous years include.

The New Games Journalism by Kieron Gillen ‘05
Ludonarrative Dissonance by Clint Hocking ‘07
Taxonomy of Gamers by Mitch Krapta ‘08
Permanent Death by Ben Abraham ‘09
Video games can never be art by Roger Ebert ‘10
The Pratfall of Penny Arcade – A Timeline (aka Debacle Timeline) by Unknown ‘11

2. Any pieces that are an excellent example of a larger trends within the conversation from critical community surrounding…

August 2013 – ‘What’s the Story?’

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Five out of Ten: Storytellers

For all the focus on game stories – press obfuscation of plot, spoiler warnings, post-release analysis – do they really matter that much? We have always played games that allowed us to create the stories in our own minds, and recent titles like Pivvot show we don’t need a compelling story to have a great game.

Although ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ usually refers to the tension between the narrative elements of a game and the actions it has our character perform, maybe the real tension should be our feelings towards the existence of the

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September 22nd

…the conceit of dream levels in game, not simply for being a lazy contrivance, but for reusing the same mechanics as the rest of the game. And at Errant Signal, Chris Franklin hits the nail on the head regarding game critics’ widespread misinterpretation of ludonarrative dissonance. If I may editorialize for a moment, I hope the nail Franklin is hammering here is the last one necessary to seal that damn term’s coffin.

Elsewhere, on Eurogamer, Simon Parkin offers a heartstring-tugging look inside Final Fantasy XIV‘s troubled relaunch.

And on the Jace Hall Show website, Jacqueline Cottrell has struck…