"Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks Vs. The Mario Series" by San José-based Hoai-My Tran
News: League of Legends is offering in-game rewards to players for basically not acting like idiots.
Props to developer Riot Games for being proactive about the issue, but
one would hope that eventually the gaming community can get to where it
needs to be without incentivization.
Alright, you'd have to be be cracked to believe that video games will ever be part of the Olympics, but it's still fun to imagine the possibilities.
The Guardian plugs Twine as the program that’s democratised the video gaming world.
Lulu Blue explains how the relationships between systems and context inevitably push ideology to the surface: "Much like a face drawn from lines, game systems carry assumptions made by their creators. If a man sets out to draw a woman and he idealizes a certain beauty standard, he’s likely to draw women which conform to this beauty standard."
At Kill Screen, Ray Graham explores depictions of torture in video games in light of recent CIA scandals and wonders how culpable games are in the widely held (but misinformed) belief that torture is an effective method of gathering information.
Maggie Greene compares Tales of Xillia to Chinese literary traditions. Specifically, she looks at multiple endings and the effort to capture both tragic compromise and fairy tale ever-afters.
Mark Joseph Stern warns that The Supreme Court Came Alarmingly Close to Allowing Video Game Censorship after Ars Technica unearthed remarks by Justice Elena Kagan at a Princeton forum in November.
Mike Diver makes the case that We're in the New Golden Age of Video Games. "I'd argue that, right now, video games are at the cusp of a new transition, another positive shift in public perception. And that's entirely down to the wonderful variety that the industry can offer to its audience—through myriad devices both games-exclusive and multipurpose, a fantastic array of game types and challenge levels to suit all. Gaming today is the healthiest it's ever been, and if we're going to assign the banner of "golden age" to any era in gaming history, now might be a good time to pin up the bunting and get a cake baked: 2015 could be amazing."
Not halfway through January and the first big trend in game criticism has already arisen. "Ludocentrism" is a new word coined to describe games criticism overly focused on mechanics and systems over narratives or abstracts
Over at Not Your Mama’s Gamer, Samantha Blackmon describes the frustrating process of trying to teaching her mother how to play Telltale’s Game of Thrones. It didn’t go well, but it did effectively demonstrate how inaccessible games are to those without years of practice playing them.
Paste offers an excellent essay by Janine Hawkins on the hauntingly empty hissing wastes in Dragon Age: Inquisition. "the Hissing Wastes are full of things to stumble upon, but there is no flag to plant by a statue half-lost to the creeping sands. There’s no quest marker for watching the silhouette of a fox cresting a ridge in front of the imposing milk-white disk of the moon."
Red Thumbs' Lenin of Love takes the time to observe the subtle humanity in the mundane citizenry of the Metro series. The author observes that Metro rewards the player only when they stop and note the people around them, “we are offered salvation through the simple act of caring.”
Simon Parkin bemoans the "Curse of Retro" over at The New Yorker which strikes me as some serious irony, as magazine is one I am more used to associating with Grandparents and pretentious college professors, but he makes some good points, nonetheless. (Yes, I used the words "pretentious" and "nonetheless" in the same sentence.) "Video games are more prone than other media to obsolescence. With each new generation of hardware and software, scores of titles are made unplayable. "
Stephen Beirne examines cinematic framing in Final Fantasy VII.
At Time, Matt Peckham explains Why 2014 Was the Year Sex Got Real in Video Games. "games are still judged by double standards. A BDSM-explicit “erotic romance” like E.L. James’ novel 50 Shades of Grey or the rape scene in an episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones provoke at best passing social media chatter. By comparison, the option—that it’s a choice and an inessential side activity are crucial distinctions—to follow implied sex with violence in a series like Grand Theft Auto leads to widespread outrage, not to mention sending legislators scrambling to introduce censorial bills."
Video game speedrunner KevinDDR recently took part of a special exhibition of Tetris: The Grand Master 3 – Terror-Instinct at the ongoing Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 marathon–which is raising funds for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. During a bit of the exhibition, KevinDDR demonstrated some incredible high-level play in a difficult mode before continuing to showcase his impressive moves during a bizarre credits sequence featuring invisible blocks.
Alright, you'd have to be be cracked to believe that video games will ever be part of the Olympics, but it's still fun to imagine the possibilities.
The Guardian plugs Twine as the program that’s democratised the video gaming world.
Lulu Blue explains how the relationships between systems and context inevitably push ideology to the surface: "Much like a face drawn from lines, game systems carry assumptions made by their creators. If a man sets out to draw a woman and he idealizes a certain beauty standard, he’s likely to draw women which conform to this beauty standard."
At Kill Screen, Ray Graham explores depictions of torture in video games in light of recent CIA scandals and wonders how culpable games are in the widely held (but misinformed) belief that torture is an effective method of gathering information.
Maggie Greene compares Tales of Xillia to Chinese literary traditions. Specifically, she looks at multiple endings and the effort to capture both tragic compromise and fairy tale ever-afters.
Mark Joseph Stern warns that The Supreme Court Came Alarmingly Close to Allowing Video Game Censorship after Ars Technica unearthed remarks by Justice Elena Kagan at a Princeton forum in November.
Mike Diver makes the case that We're in the New Golden Age of Video Games. "I'd argue that, right now, video games are at the cusp of a new transition, another positive shift in public perception. And that's entirely down to the wonderful variety that the industry can offer to its audience—through myriad devices both games-exclusive and multipurpose, a fantastic array of game types and challenge levels to suit all. Gaming today is the healthiest it's ever been, and if we're going to assign the banner of "golden age" to any era in gaming history, now might be a good time to pin up the bunting and get a cake baked: 2015 could be amazing."
Not halfway through January and the first big trend in game criticism has already arisen. "Ludocentrism" is a new word coined to describe games criticism overly focused on mechanics and systems over narratives or abstracts
Over at Not Your Mama’s Gamer, Samantha Blackmon describes the frustrating process of trying to teaching her mother how to play Telltale’s Game of Thrones. It didn’t go well, but it did effectively demonstrate how inaccessible games are to those without years of practice playing them.
Paste offers an excellent essay by Janine Hawkins on the hauntingly empty hissing wastes in Dragon Age: Inquisition. "the Hissing Wastes are full of things to stumble upon, but there is no flag to plant by a statue half-lost to the creeping sands. There’s no quest marker for watching the silhouette of a fox cresting a ridge in front of the imposing milk-white disk of the moon."
Red Thumbs' Lenin of Love takes the time to observe the subtle humanity in the mundane citizenry of the Metro series. The author observes that Metro rewards the player only when they stop and note the people around them, “we are offered salvation through the simple act of caring.”
Simon Parkin bemoans the "Curse of Retro" over at The New Yorker which strikes me as some serious irony, as magazine is one I am more used to associating with Grandparents and pretentious college professors, but he makes some good points, nonetheless. (Yes, I used the words "pretentious" and "nonetheless" in the same sentence.) "Video games are more prone than other media to obsolescence. With each new generation of hardware and software, scores of titles are made unplayable. "
Stephen Beirne examines cinematic framing in Final Fantasy VII.
At Time, Matt Peckham explains Why 2014 Was the Year Sex Got Real in Video Games. "games are still judged by double standards. A BDSM-explicit “erotic romance” like E.L. James’ novel 50 Shades of Grey or the rape scene in an episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones provoke at best passing social media chatter. By comparison, the option—that it’s a choice and an inessential side activity are crucial distinctions—to follow implied sex with violence in a series like Grand Theft Auto leads to widespread outrage, not to mention sending legislators scrambling to introduce censorial bills."
Video game speedrunner KevinDDR recently took part of a special exhibition of Tetris: The Grand Master 3 – Terror-Instinct at the ongoing Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 marathon–which is raising funds for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. During a bit of the exhibition, KevinDDR demonstrated some incredible high-level play in a difficult mode before continuing to showcase his impressive moves during a bizarre credits sequence featuring invisible blocks.
No comments:
Post a Comment