Welcome, Guardian. This cave is an important part of our history. It is called The Cave. Essays spawn outside of The Cave and drop legendary Engrams of Critical Distance: The This Week In Video Game Blogging. I am The Traveler, Zach Alexander, here to give you The Insight so that you might combat The Darkness with Knowledge.
First Things First
Guardian! Outside the cave are The Genders! E McNeill discusses the field of virtual reality and the gender gap. Jenn Frank, Guardian of The Guardian, discusses her personal experience with community and gender.
Elsewhere, Sande Chen talks about why gender representation is important:
[W]ith repeated exposure to this stereotyped content, viewers merely become further entrenched in gender stereotypes and beliefs.
Be on the lookout, Guardian!
Mirror, Mirror
The representation of history in games is also important. Gilles Roy talks about how our understanding of history can be altered by games over at Play the Past. At Polygon, Alexa C Roy talks about the history of Lord of the Rings in videogames.
Tom Battey would like to remind you, by the way, that criticism is neither an attack nor censorship, but the act of bringing context to dialogue. Tom also links to an older, excellent article by Kameron Hurley (cw: racial slurs used) about how women have always fought—er, been Guardians. Nick Cummings writes about how Unity excludes its intended audience by not taking casual games very seriously:
I get the sense that casual gaming is still seen by Unity (and by the many developers who clapped and cheered for this feature) as a fringe market instead of what I see as the millions of potential gamers who aren’t being targeted properly. Too many games are made by too few people with too myopic a perspective, and that, I think, is the biggest hurdle to growing the gaming audience.
Design
As we inch closer towards The Cave, Guardian, take a moment to reflect on design. At Gamasutra, Leigh Alexander interviews Bennet Foddy about Speed Chess. Bennet advises designers to do their own take on the basics: “figure out what the bread is, and what the eggs are, and then give them your best shot.” Sounds delicious!
Marshall Sandoval talks with Kentucky Route Zero’s composer Ben Babbitt about the incredible music of the game. Over at Connected Learning, a panel discusses respectful game design specifically when targeting games used for education. In it, Caro Williams asks to “interrogate multiple concepts… if we take a textbook and wrap it in a game, we’re reproducing the logic that children best learn math by repeating an algorithm over and over again.”
Meanwhile, Owen Vince talks about the tension of open world games over at Ontological Geek.
Essays
On a literary note, we have a scattering of game-specific essays worthy of a Guardian’s attention. Jared Ettinger talks about his experience with Metroid: Other M mirroring his experience with anxiety. On First Person Scholar, Luke Arnott discusses Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard and the “sovereign exception”:
Beyond the protection of human law, already belonging to the gods (hence ‘sacred’). Reduced to ‘bare life,’ the homo sacer could be killed with impunity by anyone, but, conversely, he could not be offered up in sacrifice.
Some light is shed on Metro: Last Light by Stephen Beirne, who reads it alongside The Last of Us, and Ed Smith, who reads it alongside Modern Warfare.
At Joystiq, Ed Smith compares the storytelling of Gone Home to X-COM. “Rhaomi” has rolled up a big ball of essays on Katamari Damacy on Metafilter. Finally, Zolani Stewart talks about the use of image and space at his own blog.
Rolling in Engrams
The time has come, Guardian. You have made it to… THE CAVE. Kirk Hamilton lines up the first shot with Kotaku’s review of Destiny, which frames The Loot Cave as a critical design flaw of the game. Michael “Sparky” Clarkson flanks with a focus-fire on The Loot Cave.
Matthew Gallant scouts out the area in depth, discussing the game mechanics at work in and around The Loot Cave. Trent Polack pulls up the rear with a comparison between Destiny and Halo.
Meanwhile, Mark Filipowich is happily mowing down grunts, asking why do we look down on “grinding,” anyway?
Exuent
Well, Guardian, I hope you got the drops you needed. The galaxy requires my services elsewhere.
While I’m gone, please submit any and all writing you’d like to see featured in next week’s This Week in Video Game Blogging through our Twitter, our email, or through random drops the next time we meet in the Crucible.
Also, don’t forget to participate in the upcoming Blogs of the Roundtable!