September 30th
…problematic arguments We Happy Few makes about medication-based treatment of depression.
“The beauty of the conversations gramma has with her…
history
March 7th
…date sci-fi genre trope and its use in Mass Effect 2.
Troy Goodfellow takes a gander at some of the literary adaptations video games have tried.
James Madigan over at Gamasutra gives the most thorough and scientific reasoning why it’s best to stick to your friend’s list.
The boys over at the Experience Points podcast discuss the use of examining the history of video game design as lessons for the future.
G. Christopher William over at Popmatters says, “Sorry Dante, but your princess is in another castle.”
Nick from Before Game Design examines Battlefield: Bad…
September 12th
…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 [mirror] 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.
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November 7th
…and and the narrative and aesthetic information it provides. The premise of his argument is that its designer was more concerned with creating an experiential game rather than creating a dramatic arc through its narrative.
Jorge Albor writes about players who are attempting to recreate the world of Middle Earth on their Minecraft server, carving out a fictional history with pixellated bricks.
Bitmob features a trio of new posts this week. First up, Greg Kasavin examines the narrative design of Limbo [mirror]. Although he ultimately enjoyed it, he failed to find meaning in the game’s story. Kasavin asserts,…
November 25th
…and in the process reflects on her own relationship to magic and witchcraft over the years.
“It was 1995 – I didn’t really want to learn world history or geography; I wanted to break curses and hang out with witches. I’m just a sorceress who happens to be a millennial.” Possibly my favourite writing to come out of the release of Pokémon: Let’s Go! …
Just for Fun
February 24th
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- Gamasutra: Emma Rausch’s Blog – Finding mono no aware in American video games Emma Rausch studies distinctions between–and overlap within–the ways in which Japanese and American games contextualize tragedy and loss.
- The Curious Case of Doctor Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine | Fanbyte Blake P traces the weird history of Puyo Puyo‘s localizations in order to make sense of the shifting relationship between American and Japanese cultural (and marketing) preferences.
“If later Puyo Puyo games reflect a “Japanization of American pop culture” then this puts Mean Bean Machine in an awkward position. Is it a
…
March 24th
…such as industrialization, capitalism and modernization. While the history of colonialism is deeply intertwined with all three of these, I feel quite strongly that they are different concepts.”
Storied Successes–and Failures
Ubisoft and Marshall McLuhan be damned, the medium is not always the message–or at least not the whole message. What your game and your story have to say matters, and is always informed on some level by politics and ideology. That goes for self-important “auteurs”, too. On the bright side, KoToR 2 gets some love this week! Please enjoy these three great articles.
- The…
May 26th
…Pitfall II: Scene 1: The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 LeeRoy Lewin demystifies industry “crashes” past and present and proposes as an alternative that we’ve all really been having a decades-long Normal One over our inability to meaningfully hold capitalism accountable.
“Revising the history around the game crash matters because otherwise what remains is corporation-worship that puts a magnifying glass on profit margins while disguising human effort and lives.” Two selections this week examine two examples–past and present–of the need under patriarchy to carve out and defend spaces for women …
Evening the Odds
June 16th
…parts, makes for a stronger whole.”
Seedy Projects
Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the Big Games at E3 this year, and given CD Projekt’s troubled history with trans issues, lots of players are understandably concerned about how the final game will represent trans characters and trans bodies. That being said, what the company says and does in the present matters just as much, and two authors this week have a lot to say about some of the current promotional material for the game.
- Transphobic Ad in ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Represents Cyberpunk at Its Worst | Daily…
June 30th
…mechanical tropes in games.
“Every discovery recorded in your ship’s log is a crucial piece of information in unraveling the history of the Nomai and the solar system. Every suggested location yields a story and every story yields an answer. The log system is effective, and even if I do miss something, the game helpfully marks which areas still have more information to offer. The terror of space…