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Year Walk

Leon Xiao | Keywords in Play, Episode 15

…in the UK will be lower than the 95.6% disclosure rate that we observed in China last year. Another second research question that we studied was whether loot box prevalence rate has changed in the last two years. We have a previous study from 2019 conducted by Zendle et al., which found that the loot box prevalence rate was 59% on the iPhone platform in the UK. Loot boxes have received a lot of backlash since that time, many players are realizing that these mechanics are problematic and arguably predatory. And we have also had media reports of certain companies…

February 6th

…Play The Past blog, Roger Travis talks about ‘Emergent gameplay, bardic style’.

And at Gamasutra, Simon Parkin looks back on Dante’s Inferno one year from release.

At the new blog ‘The Gwumps’, Richard Dillio has realised that he’s growing old, primarily because it’s been ten years since Baldurs Gate 2 came out. I have some seriously fond memories of that game, and it’s one with some really clever features to boot. Here’s Dillio:

…the set-up here is pretty clever: the game has just made side-quests an integral part of moving forward, by attaching the mundane but

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November 11th

…Chmielarz of The Astronauts poses that gameplay must die, and we must be the ones to kill it:

If we understand gameplay as something that a challenge is a crucial part of, then none of these moments features any gameplay. You just walk, or swim, or ride a horse, but that’s it. You cannot die. You don’t make choices that have any long term consequences. No skill is involved.

There is no gameplay.

In other words, certain things worth remembering from certain video games are not what these video games are all about.

That’s fucked

…

November 25th

…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…

October 27th

…in Los Santos as condemning a person to a slow death and eventual end by one’s own hand.

AAA

Kimberley Wallace put out a new piece published by Game Informer about how confronting despair can influence a reading and ultimately the ending choice in Beyond: Two Souls.

Paul Haine looks at running in games and how the culmination of elements in Remember Me finally made him slow down and walk to the benefit of the game and his enjoyment.

Also, a brand new work from the highly reclusive author – first in a long while I…

October 5th

…Williams has penned something of a living epitaph for the outgoing Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine’s seven-year-old MMO which now appears to be entering the last stage of its life cycle.

From Your Gate to God’s Ears

Rab Florence — yes, that Rab Florence — offers a passionate appeal to those sincerely interested in criticizing games journalism:

Okay, okay, look. Are the games press too close-knit, too cosy with each other? Absolutely. Are they too cosy with game developers? Absolutely. Do they circle the wagons when they get criticised? Absolutely. You’re right. You’re right.

[…]…

January 25th

…are game screenshots art?

While we’re on the topic of weighty academic matters, Games Criticism dot org has a new collection of essays up from all sorts of people! On the other end of the spectrum, Abnormal Mapping collects a few small games and writes them up. Xanadu Engine is a tumblr dedicated entirely to Kentucky Route Zero. Elizabeth Simins has a Tumblr categorizing games by whether they can have queer relationships or not.

Stephen Beirne wants to walk all over “walking simulators” as a term for a certain genre of games, and go with “phantom rides”. Personally,…

August 16th

…of asexuality in games. Meanwhile, in Aevee Bee’s ZEAL magazine, developer and games educator Robert Yang muses on the way we model bodies in games, in which their dynamism (or possibly, embodiment) is frequently overlooked:

Animations are essentially flipbooks; when we flip through the individual pages or frames quickly, we create the illusion of motion. Computer animation helps automate this process by taking human-authored “keyframe” poses and generating the “in-between” frames, or even entire animation sequences through motion capture. Then game engines loop through these sequences of poses to transform bodies along predictable trajectories. When you walk in

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02: Danger

…it. I’ve had a lot of conversation with Rory Frances, ZEAL bee and comics artist, about how we kind of thought we needed to seek out stuff to traumatize us? This stuff was absolutely what you’re talking about, Gita; totally irresponsible with the emotions of the audience, transparently manipulative, and with no good or higher intention.

I don’t do this to myself any more — I wanna watch like, Steven Universe now. I don’t have an immediate answer to why I intentionally hurt myself watching Genocyber and Ninja Scroll as a thirteen year old, but I think part of…

Metroid’s Samus Aran

…I was excited to discover that Metroid‘s Samus Aran was a woman. But as the years passed, I realized that in many ways, Samus is handled problematically.

Amanda Lange, writing for her blog, describes Samus’s initial appeal, as well as one way Samus drifted away from those early portrayals:

It’s true there was a Samus I loved and a Samus I now love much less. I idolized not just Samus Aran, but the Samus defined by Captain N Comics and the NES instruction manuals. In my mind, she wore her armor in part to hide her identity from…