Lessons
Something that a lot of game players and developers like to talk about is those semi-rare occasions when a study comes out discussing the benefits of playing games, as opposed to how they are turning people into murderous drones. That…
Category Playing Games
Exploring Transgression 1
There’s a huge subject I’d like to tackle, but it’s a bit difficult for me to pin down. It’s something I feel very strongly about, and because I feel so strongly it tends to bleed into a lot of apparently…
Artificial Neuroticism
In games everything has a clear cause and effect. If you get your face stomped by a cyclops, it’s because you forgot to re-equip your Axe of Extravagant Evisceration after using the Feather Duster of Tidiness for that side-quest, or…
Hard Mode
An enduring problem with single player games that rely on challenge for appeal is that they allow for mastery. Once these games are mastered, there is no longer any challenge to them, and thus no appeal. Due to fluctuations in…
Binary World
It’s been interesting to observe the ongoing shitstorm about sexism and misogyny in games as it pulses through the loosely knit ‘gamer’ community, particularly from the perspective of someone who agrees to some extent with people on both of the…
Competitive Single Player
I don’t seem to play games the way I used to any more. Studying game design changes you. To a certain extent, the change happens when you just play enough games, but actively studying their design catalyzes a greater change.…
Within Beauty
There’s been a great deal of debate out there as to whether or not games are art. Well, it’s a very silly debate, since it mostly ends up with a bunch of people who have one definition of art arguing…
All Creation
Sometimes, it is very hard to write. A couple of months ago, I went with a friend to a cafe to do some work. I had intended to try to do some programming, but when I tried to make my…
Worklike
One of the criticisms I often see levied at World of Warcraft and other such MMORPGs is people saying that playing them is ‘like work.’ By this they mean, I believe, that the gameplay involves a lot of more-or-less tedious…
Playing in Character
Game genres are a strange and many-splendored thing, a grab-bag of features and perspectives and settings which came together through common usage and convention. The games came first, then the words to describe those games, then the genre classifications built…