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killing

October 19th

…Carolyn Petit notes the game does poorly by its women characters, killing off many and damseling a woman warrior.

Over at Loser City, Jake Muncy digs deeper into the game’s innovative enemy AI system and how its potential is squandered on the narrative’s thematic contradictions:

[O]rcs don’t quite fit into the world Tolkien created. They don’t fit into the order of the world that Gandalf describes to Frodo, where mercy is absolutely right and redemption is always an option — however distant a one. Tolkien’s world is, after all, based irrevocably in his Catholic sensibilities; his non-Lord of…

October Roundup: ‘Masks’

…short, tell us about how masks effect a game, a player, and the culture.

Luke Pullen kicks begins at his blog, The Conversation Tree, with a look at how power armour shapes identity in three of Bungie’s first-person shooters: Marathon, Halo and Destiny, among several other examples. Pullen discusses how exterior protection subsumes the wearer, dehumanizing them into a killing machine:

The mask is a weapon of mass destruction, a monstrous cybernetic zombie.

…

You kill because you have been programmed to. ‘Honour’ is a fantasy constructed as a hidden form of discipline. The…

Now Accepting Submissions for TYIVGB 2014 Edition

…(2005) –The Lester Bangs of Video Games by Chuck Klosterman (2006) –Ludonarrative Dissonance by Clint Hocking (2007) –Taxonomy of Gamers by Mitch Krapta (2008) –Permanent Death by Ben Abraham (2009) –Video games can never be art by Roger Ebert (2010) –The Pratfall of Penny Arcade – A Timeline (aka Debacle Timeline) by Unknown (2011) –Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line by Brendan Keogh (2012) –Tropes vs. Women in Video Games by Anita Sarkeesian (2013 to present)

2. Any pieces that are an excellent example of larger trends surrounding the most talked about games of…

Our TYIVGB Methodology

…Keogh’s book on Spec Ops: The Line, Killing is Harmless, and Leigh Alexander and Kirk Hamilton’s Final Fantasy VII letter series.

For the rest of the first starter list, I read through all the TWIVGBs of the past year. I pull out all the links I remember throughout the year and any further links that seem of interest for the year roundup. Previously, I read all of the featured links, but this was time-consuming and my current method creates pretty much the same starter list in a much shorter amount of time.

The Second List

The second…

December 14th

…for This Year in Video Game blogging, you must submit by email!

Also, in case you missed it: StoryBundle has brought back the very first videogame bundle, which includes Ralph Baer’s Videogames: In the Beginning and Brendan Keogh’s Killing is Harmless.

Feeling in the writing mood yourself? Consider participating in this month’s Blogs of the Round Table while there’s still time!

Finally, we’re thankful for the support of your readers. We reached some important funding milestone recently, and we’ve got some great things planned for 2015, so if you aren’t already a supporter, please consider becoming one!

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This Year in Videogame Blogging: 2014

…titled Killing is Harmless.

Zoya Street also released a new book this year, Delay, looking at energy mechanics common in social and mobile games. His digital magazine, Memory Insufficient, also continued publishing into its second year. We highlight the Asian Histories issue in particular, because it led to e:\>_, an e-zine designed “to create a richer, more nuanced understanding of the social histories of gaming in Asia.”

Critical Distance’s own Alan Williamson completed a second year with his Five out of Ten digital magazine. The zine has collected issues 6 through 10 in a Year Two bundle. Williamson…

January 18th

…is far from over as it leaves a wake of orphans in its path.

Reference This

Our own Mark Filipowich likes Brendan Keogh’s book Killing is Harmless more than Spec-Ops: The Line, even though it’s totally Coppola’s seminal film Apocalypse Now and by extension Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness novel.

Wait, that’s it for this section? OK, moving on!

Identity Report

Jessica Conditt offers a multi-faceted look at the representation of black gamers, from the troubling lack of prominent black voices…

“The games industry is hurting badly as a creative medium in terms

…

January 2015

…Andress also discusses the landscape and tone of the game in context of the accurate history, as well as why the Ubisoft may have opted to put the player in a counter-revolutionary position.

Next, our own Cameron Kunzelman and his friends play Minecraft but, in doing so, set up a few rules for themselves that establish the context of their play (see? Are you dazzled?). In this first episode you can hear Cameron and friends go over their standing standing rules: no killing animals, and “if someone builds a thing, don’t mess with it.” As they play…

Episode 23 – Books Fight Boss

…game, Shadow of the Colossus.

We talk about where the idea for BossFightBooks came from, how their publishing system works and what he’s looking for in both authors and pitches to continue providing a variety of voices, styles and games.

http://www.critical-distance.com/podcast/Critical-Distance-Confab-episode-23.mp3

Direct Download

SHOW NOTES

BossFightBooks

Ludologica

Fuck Videogames

Rise of the Videogame Zinesters

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

Some Thoughts on Darius Kazemi’s Jagged Alliance 2 and my own Killing is Harmless

Opening Theme: ‘Close’ by The Alpha Conspiracy

Closing Theme: ‘Wishing Never’ by The Alpha Conspiracy

…

May Roundup: ‘Plans’

…complex systems, but he admits that he never sees his plan through in multiplayer games like Killing Floor 2, where he so expects to fail that he frequently leaves teammates behind:

To me, the concept of a plan is an ideal: a theoretical perfection that rarely survives the first spanner in the gears. When the first things start to go awry, my reflex is to reposition, reconsider, and survive. I am a great survivalist, but I will invariably get everyone around me killed.

I have a friend like you, Taylor, and let me just say that…