Search Results for:

narratives

July 19th

…Epps talks to FGC members fighting for a better, more just, more inclusive scene.

  • What Killing Eve Can Teach Video Games About Writing Complex Queer Characters – Gayming Magazine Celia Lewis examines the ways in which queer narratives in games are still playing catch-up to other storytelling media.
  • The Gaming Community Still Isn’t Ready to Talk About Race – Gayming Magazine David André Jarrett takes stock of the state of systemic anti-Black racism in gaming along all its axes.

    • “Why did it take this particular tragic event for the world to finally stand up and…

    August 2nd

    …envisioned within the larger collaborative process of game development and the studio system. with the aim of including indigenous narratives and game mechanics that can reach larger audiences.”

    Changing the Rules

    Two authors this week look at play as protest, art as activism, as well as how to design for both.

    • The meaning of a massacre: GTAV and protest art — Wireframe Magazine Edwin Evans-Thirlwell takes a long, critical look at a GTA mod designed to highlight both the crisis of gun violence in America and the perennial media feint towards games as the problem…

    Final Fantasy VII

    …developers to abide,” serving as a sort of early communal reflection of the expectations accompanying RPG narratives.

    Beyond the fate of Aerith, many other writers established frames for interpreting the game via allegory and intertextual reference. Wesley Schantz’s ongoing Myth and Materia column for The Well-Red Mage makes a case for how the game was influenced by – and went on to influence – storytelling tradition by identifying its references to Greek, Norse, and Mesopotamian mythical systems, as well as by likening it to the work of literary figures like Dante Alighieri and John Milton. Ria Teitelbaum situates the…

    August 23rd

    …has something interesting to teach.

    • Interactive web coding with the makers of Danger Crew | The Toolkit Caroline Delbert delves into ideas and activities for building games with web development tools and languages.
    • I Am All Love Blaseball (And You Can Too) | The Garden of Forking Narratives Cat Manning does the quasi-impossible and breaks down the game and social experience that is Blaseball.
    • The Game Boy Sewing Machine is More Than a Punchline | Fanbyte Hannah Steinkopf-Frank takes a deep look at an ambitious line of Game Boy Color peripherals.

    “These experiments

    …

    September 13th

    …something to say about affective or evocative design in games, be it in terms of narrative direction, dramatic pacing, or, hey, just being nicer to dogs maybe!

    • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Remastered Edition Is an Enchanting Journey into Mystery | Paste Waverly finds Crystal Chronicles to be a game at its affective best during the quiet in-between moments: a story of smaller stories rather than grand moralizing narratives.
    • Videogames, Please Stop Making Me Kill Dogs – Paste Allison Keene implores devs to expand their horizons when it comes to designing interactions with dogs.
    • Sins of the

    …

    August 2020

    …Pointed Violence

    A few longer essays look at how to read violence in the narratives of particular popular videogame series.

    • Let’s Get Sad – A Last of Us Video Essay – Ladyknightthebrave (1:23:50)

      Ladyknightthebrave recaps The Last of Us games and tries to make sense of their endless cyclical depths of violence and revenge. I enjoyed the fresh cross-media perspective in this analysis. (Manual captions) [Notes: The Last of Us 1 & 2 spoilers, lots of violent in-game footage, discussion of transphobia and lynchings].

    • Marathon: Children of Doom Episode 4 – Errant Signal (24:42)

    …

    September 27th

    …alternately as positives, negatives, and stuff in the messy middle.

    • Black Athena: How Hades Gets Its Gods Right | Kotaku Ash Parrish revels in the diversity of Hades‘ take on the Greek Pantheon.
    • “Catch These Hands”: The Black Boxer Trope in Fighting Video Games | Medium Joshua Adams asks and investigates why so many Black men in early fighting games were boxers, and considers the conflicting stereotypes and cultural narratives that inform the trope.

    “The Black Boxer trope carries subtle conceptions about Black men as paradoxically both superhuman and inhuman. How else can black

    …

    October 18th

    …“Instead of focusing, as Black Ops does, on the frustration of soldiers armed to the teeth, only to be torn apart, these narratives could build an understanding that the same forces that erected the institutions from which these soldiers were sent out to die also resisted the progressive movements at home that might have made these wars unnecessary to begin with.”

    Critical Chaser

    Shining in the Darkness poetry! One day I’ll get to the bottom of its depths. . . maybe. With save states. And rewind.

    • Game Enjambment: On Shining in the Darkness | Sidequest…

    November 1st

    …pieces this week looking at games that remix or renovate established genres in the interest in producing something new and critically reflexive towards what came before. I’m, uhh, gonna have to play 13 Sentinels sooner or later, aren’t I?

    • For moon, Intimacy is (Almost) Everything | Into The Spine Jeremy Signor identifies intimacy as the missing ingredient in JRPGs that moon capitalizes on.
    • 13 Sentinels has a surprisingly hopeful message | Polygon Autumn Wright takes a deep look at how 13 Sentinels twists genres, temporalities, and cultural narratives into something more.

    “In a genre

    …

    Alenda Y. Chang | Keywords in Play, Episode 13

    …be one thing, but that chapter grew out of this, this piece, I had written about farm games, where for a period, I was obsessed with them, and I think I played, it’s almost embarrassing to admit, but I think I’ve probably played like 70 or 80 of those games. And they’re all pretty much, they’re all pretty much the same, right? There are like some minor differences. Sometimes it’s magic. And sometimes it’s, it’s science, and others have these narratives about fighting global agribusiness. And it’s always about the valorization of like a family farm. And it’s almost always…