Core Souls
From Software (yes, that’s the actual name of the company) seemingly came out of nowhere in 2009 with the sleeper hit Demon’s Souls, which was followed in 2011 by its better known and hugely successful successor Dark Souls. Well, it…
Category Essays
Music and Meaning
I feel like there’s a hole in the way we discuss soundtracks. We talk about using certain instruments or techniques to evoke certain kinds of emotions and associations without ever talking about the specifics of how we do that and…
Haunted
We are writing the ghosts that haunt us. We write them out onto the page hoping that they might continue long after we have gone. Someday they will haunt the world, but for now they just haunt us when we…
Frustration
What role should frustration have in the player’s experience of a game? It’s a tricky question. For a while game designers assumed the answer was ‘none’, that frustration was an inherently unpleasant experience with nothing to offer, that it stood…
The Last Word In
More than once I get an idea and start writing a post only to realize after one or two hundred words that I don’t really believe in what I’m writing. It’s a concept that sounds logical, and I can wrap…
Simple Appeal
Sometimes it’s embarrassing how simple our tastes really are. You know, we can write essays about why we love what we love, what works and doesn’t, about the delicate structure of ideas that play against each other in this particular…
Things Unseen
It’s interesting how much goes into a game that the player never sees. Old versions, unused content, hidden details of construction, or simply paths the player never takes. As we play the game, this stuff is invisible – sometimes we find…
Dropsy
For a while now, I’ve thought of the point and click adventure as a more-or-less static genre. We understand the design, its conventions, what it can achieve and how. And yet, while sticking close alongside those conventions, Dropsy turns the…
Water and Fire
There’s a disease artists seem to catch as they become more experienced. They begin to see art entirely in terms of its creation, in terms of the simple components that go into making it. As artists become more skillful, the…
Waiting
It’s Christmas now – well, it won’t be when this is uploaded, but it was Christmas when I wrote that it was Christmas. Usually, around this time of year, I travel. I get on whatever flight or train necessary and spend…