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killing

April 7th

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DESIGN MATTERS

Straddling the two games above, Paul Tassi of Forbes wonders if we aren’t oversaturating games with ultraviolence: “I have nothing against killing in games. It’s just that as video games continue to evolve as storytelling vehicles, this idea that the main protagonist has to kill HUNDREDS of people per game is starting to seem a bit odd.”

On Gamasutra, Leigh Alexander hosts a roundtable with Andrew Plotkin, anna anthropy, Emily Short and others on the building renaissance of interactive fiction.

Leigh Alexander also popped up this week on Polygon with Quintin Smith, bringing us

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April 14th

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HEY! LISTEN!

It’s strange to think we may be heading into a leg of critical discourse for games where academic mainstays like book reviews become common again, but that’s just where things seem to be going. Shaun of Arcadian Rhythms recently reviewed Brendan Keogh’s Killing is Harmless and First Person Scholar’s Danielle Stock reviewed Ivan Leslie Beale’s Video Games for Health.

First Person Scholar is turning into a hot new pub, now that we think of it. This article by Rob Parker on voluntary player constraints –featuring Mattie Brice’s Pokemon Unchained, among others– is a good read.

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May 19th

…that established indies may not be in the best position to promote other independents. Elsewhere, Michael Brough concurs:

[H]ere’s the deeper problem with putting the responsibility of lifting up newcomers on those who are already successful in the field: even if they’re completely willing to take risks on things that might not pay off, they’re only interested in things that interest them. The gaps where things are really getting missed you don’t even see, because they’re not things you personally care about.

THE EXCITING WORLD OF WEB PUBLISHING

First Person Scholars’ Jason Hawreliak interviews Killing is…

June 30th

…Sean Sands got in on the act with this narrativization of a play of Crusader Kings II.

As a side note, this stuff makes me miss Bit Creature. Someone find James Hawkins some venture capital.

GAMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Slaus Caldwell recently logged into his wife’s Mass Effect 3 multiplayer account and got to experience first-hand the torrent of misogynistic trashtalk women players face on a daily basis.

Quintin Smith turned up on Kotaku in recent days decrying videogames’ overreliance on killing and win/lose states, saying that it’s stifling the medium. He offers some alternatives befitting his…

Now Accepting Submissions for TYIVGB 2013 Edition

…it or keep seeing it brought up. 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 –Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line by Brendan Keogh ’12

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

March 2nd

…murdered up-close and personal before, but this was different. This wasn’t murder or even combat; this was a mercy killing. I wasn’t prepared for the look of actual human pain on my buddy’s face, or for him to literally grab the barrel of my gun and pull it to his face, practically begging me to put him out of his misery.

Alice Kojiro has two recent pieces that I want to highlight, the first on Alice: Madness Returns and the second on Chrono Cross‘s Dead Sea.

Leigh Alexander, Quinns, and Jesse Turner collaborated to put together an…

July 20th

…and victimized throughout its five-part arc.

New Cartographies

At Killing of a Goldfish, Jesse Mason has set out on an ambitious historical game criticism project oriented around Magic the Gathering, viewing its early expansion sets in the context of their release.

Meanwhile, at Medium, Zoya Street continues to do important scholarship translating from Japanese-language games criticism. Here, he draws upon Nobuki Yasuda’s framework for ‘omoshiroi’ (‘fun’ or ‘interesting’) and ‘tanoshii’ (‘enjoyable’) to ask what role, exactly, ‘fun’ (and semantics thereof) should play in discussions of games.

New Paths

If this article by Kirk McKeand at…

August 24th

…heavily-armed police and criminals. It’s a war game in a different skin, something that should probably disturb us more than it does.

His concern is that Hardline equates police with soldiers and cities with warzones.

Meanwhile, in an article for the Paris Review, Kevin Nguyen is disquieted by how nonchalant the game appears to be toward police violence: “Simply put: as a cop in Hardline, you have the choice of killing people or not. The decision is entirely dependent on your mood.”

More Conflict

Mike Joffe investigates the relationship between conflict minerals and electronics on…

Nier

…the idea of morally justified killing: “That’s why I made Nier a game revolving around this concept of ‘being able to kill others if you think you’re right,’ or ‘everyone believes that they’re in the right.’”

Back in 2010, Justin McElroy gives a brief post on why Joystiq will not be giving a full review of Nier, based largely on his troubles with the game’s fishing mini-game. I’m including this here not because it provides any particularly useful insight on Nier (except perhaps a point in the favor of the argument that its side quests are deliberately designed poorly),…

October 5th

…happening. As an ultra-powerful white dude, you use fear and extreme acts of violence to manipulate an enemy’s behavior, destroy its militaristic structure, and ultimately gain control of it in the form of living bondage despite being outnumbered by the thousands. Really, chew on this: This is a video game about a spurned man terrorizing an entire foreign culture, literally killing, branding, torturing and enslaving hundreds of living beings. And really they’re only tangentially connected to the man’s real enemy: another ultra-powerful white dude.

While we’re on the topic of Lord of the Rings, over at Paste Ian…