The Game Developers Conference is over and Kris will be back in the saddle next weekend. Hello to any new potential readers we may have picked up over the last week. Let’s get This Week In Video Game Blogging started.
Critical Proximity
While the inaugural meet up of game critics and writers was last weekend, there have been a few responses in the meantime.
Mike Joffe of Video Games of the Oppressed wrote about his take on attending the conference and how he learned to stop worrying and love the myriad and nebulous concepts none of us can agree on.
Joshua Comer focused on the particulars of jargon, a concept brought up in many of the talks and various attributes of it as a useful tool and a barrier to communication.
Meanwhile, Nick Hanford, The Man of Many Frowns, decided not to respond to one concept, but all of the talks through the lens of audience and who the talks were for and how the talks addressed the concept themselves.
And on the Critical Proximity site, Richard Terrell put up the Roundtable Maps, a dynamic snapshot that grew out of the roundtable talks held after several of the talks.
GDC
While not all of us were fortunate enough to go, there was much discussion to be had about the recent Game Developers Conference.
On Paste Magazine, Maddy Myers wrote about what she had to consider about how she dresses when she goes to conferences or conventions like GDC and how it ends up hiding who she truly is.
Matthew Kumar delivered a detailed write up of Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue postmortem for Edge Online.
Held concurrently to GDC, across the street is the Lost Levels conference as an ‘unconference.’ Mike Joffe posted the full version of his talk he gave on non-human play.
And finally, cartoonist Elizabeth Simins had what must be the shortest interview with Peter Molyneux ever and produced it for Kotaku in comic form. If this doesn’t spawn a Molydeux style game jam I don’t know what to do with you all.
Social Effect of Games
Looking at human’s response to video games for a sociological perspective.
Katherine Cross for Feministing looked at some success stories in the RPG realm – Dragonfall and Pathfinder – that put another nail into the coffin for the idea that sex sells and anything else is doomed for failure.
Mrs. Dawnaway wrote a piece for Big Tall Words about the implications of makeup in Mass Effect.
And Mike Rose delved into the seedy world of digital gunrunners who circumvent the Steam trading system to make a quick buck off of Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
This is where everyone sort of wanders about towards their own interests
Edward Smith wrote a trio of posts about Silent Hill 2 looking at the long intro walk in the woods, the character of Laura and a closer look at the subtle meanings behind the nurses’ design.
At Kill Screen Alexander Saeedy wrote about the archaic design as why he quit playing Baldur’s Gate II. The submitter did qualify that he wasn’t sure if Saeedy had made it through the admittedly somewhat lengthy and dull opening dungeon.
Mutlimedia Editor G. Christopher Williams at PopMatters looked into Device 6 and how it takes a different route towards its metanarrative of player/game relations.
Mark Chen calls Depression Quest the most important game he’s ever played.
Francisco Dominguez had some questions while figuring out his reading of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, so he went to the source, Dan Pinchbeck.
Robert Rath calls Ground Zeroes the first Metal Gear Solid game that gets, like the tagline says, Tactical Espionage Action right.
Leigh Harrison looks at the super lengthy Darksiders II and how that and its repetition are, in a way, something to be admired.
Stephen Beirne looks and the concept of exploration by eschewing the normative model of an open world filled with collectables for something far different filled with weird sights.
And Austin C. Howe wrote a defense of Super Metroid‘s backtracking for his blog Haptic Feedback.
Dispatch from our Foreign Correspondent
Amélie Middelberg writes about sexist abuse in her gaming life and the various internet projects dedicated to documenting such instances of harassment.
Tobias Martin Schwaiger considers how the movie adaptions of Resident Evil manage to enrich the source material, despite its own heavy use of cinematic devices.
Speaking of films, Benjamin Filitz talks about the Dota 2 documentary Free to Play and its uncomfortable existence as a Valve product documenting a Valve product.
On Polyneux, Doreen shares her personal experience with The Last of Us‘ Left Behind.
Other Types of Game Criticism
All before were words on a page.
Extra Credits looked at the design benefits of collectable games like Magic: The Gathering.
Campster aka Chris Franklin follows up on his look at Thief with a an analysis of the newest entry in the franchise.
The Ontological Geek has a new podcast and episode 2 takes a long look at the concept of the asylum level in video games and what it means.
Final Points
The Ontological Geek is holding a call for articles for Romance Month in April. Likewise The Journal of Games Criticism with open for submissions for their second quarterly issue. The deadline is April 19th.
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