Search Results for:

Papers, Please

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

July 30th

…had to create a narrative design that would make the player chose non-cooperation intentionally.”

Plugs

  • DiGRA ’17 – Proceedings of the 2017 DiGRA International Conference | DiGRA In academic writing, this year’s papers presented at the DiGRA conference are now available to all online.

Subscribe

Critical Distance is community-supported. Our readers support us from as little as one dollar a month. Would you consider joining them?

Learn more

Contribute

Have you read, seen, heard or otherwise experienced something new that made you think about games differently? Send it in!

Contact us…

November 5th

…recast “simplicity” as minimalism. To acknowledge that not everything this shambling culture moved away from points to some kind of necessary, futuristic improvement.”

Plugs

  • Critical Distance Confab – Minisode 15 – Horror Games Mark II | Eric Swain brought us a new podcast minisode this week, with a halloween theme.
  • cfp | call for papers The OneShot project looks like a good opportunity for anyone making games as essays.

Subscribe

Critical Distance is community-supported. Our readers support us from as little as one dollar a month. Would you consider joining them?

Learn…

Where to Pitch

…

First Person Scholar: Academically-focused games criticism site that welcomes features, book reviews, series pitches. Contact: Steve Wilcox.

Press Start: Peer-reviewed scholarly journal devoted to game studies. Research papers, book reviews, and other work from current/recent academics of all levels and multiple disciplines. Contact: Samuel Poirier-Poulin.

Memory Insufficient: Online publication on game design history and digital material culture, founded by Critical Distance’s Third Senior Curator. Contact: Zoyander Street.

These are some outlets that have done a good job of nurturing people new to games writing.

Haywire Magazine: Games criticism site intended to help new writers. Contact:

…

Braid 10th anniversary Critical Compilation

…blogs I’ve stumbled upon that have doubled as class assignments. This is coupled with a number of academic papers in various fields that have focussed on Braid, which shows at the very least that it’s a game that people have been willing to do a lot of thinking about.

Braid is made of Interesting Components

Some of the best (favourable) writing on Braid comes from authors investigating just one aspect of Braid’s design. William of Me & My Puzzles made a short video celebrating Braid’s minimalist puzzle design, which always clearly shows the player what the problem is…

November 11th

…Special Issue: Call for Papers – First Person Scholar Jess Marcotte, Special Issue Guest Editor & Betsy Brey, FPS Editor-in-Chief are looking for submissions for a special issue on queer game studies! In the interest of disclosure, I work for FPS!

  • Postmortem: You Are Jeff Bezos | Unwinnable Kris Ligman reflects on hitting a cultural nerve of the moment with their recent runaway itch.io hit where you spend all of Jeff Bezos’ fucking money. In the interest of disclosure, Kris is Critical Distance’s financial officer.

    • Subscribe

    Critical Distance is community-supported. Our readers support us from as

    …

    August 9th

    …the American South.

  • Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) | Imaginary Papers, Issue 3 Troy L. Wiggins reads past the stereotyping to arrive at who Barret really is.

    • “We’re both Black men enraged at how discrimination, classism, rampant ecological assault via unchecked capitalism, and state violences have stolen the lives of our people, tried to keep the rest of us shackled, and terribly reduced the lifespan of the planet. These are all massive enemies. Each of them alone could exterminate us, but in tandem, they’re a universal threat. We, both of us, have to stand up for…

    Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D | Critical Distance: Keywords in Play, Episode 1

    …continue to thrive in an ongoing way and how can we look at games in terms, especially of mechanics, as a way to extend teachings about science, about traditional ecological knowledge, about ways of continuing on?

    Darshana: There’s recently a paper that’s come out by Rhett Loban and Tom Apperley, they say that many digital games are about eurocentric values at play. Do you see that kind of critique as resonating with what you are talking about there?

    Elizabeth: Absolutely, right down to mechanics! One of the very first papers I had ever written when I was in…

    Agency: Thi Nguyen | Keywords in Play, Episode 10

    …this because I feel like the Twitter impulse in my brain all the time when you’re stuck in something like a grading system. That’s the opposite. It’s trying to get you to spend your entire life stuck in one narrow system. One of the papers I’m reading right now, the way I put it is I’m worried that with things like Fitbit and Twitter, what you’re doing is outsourcing the process of value deliberation, you’re letting like Silicon Valley set what you care about, about exercise or set what you care about communication. Because the point of these technologies is,…

    May 2nd

    …and implications at play when we talk about weapons and combat in games.

    • THEY’LL LEAVE YOUR BRAINS ALL OVER THE PLACE – DEEP HELL Skeleton tracks the trajectory of firearms in games towards fetishization, finding an apex in BLACK where the verisimilitude of the gun porn produces an ironic sense of abstraction that papers over the consequences, implications, and raw jingoism at play in this game and all games like it.
    • Auto-Battle Is the Best Version of Combat in the New ‘NieR Replicant’ | VICE Dia Lacina finds that the secret to appreciating the spectacle in overly-technical

    …

    May 9th

    …has to offer to an increasingly eco-conscious world.

  • In Other Waters (2020) | Imaginary Papers, Issue 6 Lisa Yin Han visits an alien ecosystem that makes a break from survival and colonialism in favour of weaving philosophical and allegorical truths about our relationship with the environment.

    • “So often, games set in extraterrestrial locales formulaically prompt players to terraform and commit simulated acts of violence to survive. In Other Waters makes a critical intervention, challenging the currently popular farming and survival game genres, which largely rely on extraction and colonization in their game mechanics.”

    You…