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December Roundup: ‘New Game+’

…troubling decision. Harrison admires the game for forcing players to examine their decisions without an easy option like New Game+ to find alternative paths:

I’m glad The New Order contains this little ‘fuck you’ to its players if I’m being honest. “‘If you want to play the game again’ I hear it say ‘then be my guest, but bugger me if you’re doing it in an attempt to nurse your own personal guilt or re-imagine my already re-imagined history: that isn’t the way this works.’ Life is too short to worry about the way you did things in

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February 15th

…Cara Ellison’s visit to Marigold Bartlett and Christy Dena marks the end of her magnificent Embed With series, which will soon be available in ebook form, I understand.

Jess Joho on the feminine history of computing and how it is being overwritten.

On PopMatters, our own Eric Swain considers The Banner Saga‘s colloquial approach to lore, while G. Christopher Williams looks at Grand Theft Auto protagonists and their moral compasses over time.

Evan Narcisse talked to the most dedicated explorer of Shadow of the Colossus.

On Gamasutra, John Andersen remembers the late Shinya Nishigaki, developer of…

March 8th

…how we need to preserve games history in the present rather than years after the fact.

A panel of developers at GDC pointed out the ageism of the game development industry and offered several ways to address it from both sides of the relation.

The End of the Show (and some LINKS!)

That’s This Week In Videogame Blogging for…this…week? Thanks so much for reading.

In a moment of excellent signal boosting, be sure to check out the relaunch of BoingBoing’s videogame blog, Offworld, in the next few days. We think it is going to be excellent.

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March Roundup: ‘Extended Play’

…a sinister reminder of Heavy Rain’s serial killer. Roman remarks:

“What was supposed to be an uplifting image of community outreach was to me a completely abject, horrifying reminder of the Origami Killer’s malevolent torture chamber.”

Moving into more theoretical territory, Mark Thorne extends Derrida’s observation about the interrelational dependence of language to make a similar claim about game mechanics. He states:

“Just like the words that make up our language, mechanics come with their own history, one which feeds the understanding the player takes from situations the game places themselves in.”

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March 2015

…ability, and of privilege.” Kunzelman concludes with a call to action to further interrogate gamer memory.

Speaking of Memory…

While Alexander and Kunzelman bring a concerted critical focus to memory and nostalgia, there were also several LPs this month that revisited older games with a more lighthearted (though also not uncritical) spirit.

For instance, Game Informer’s Andrew Reiner, Tim Turi, Jeff Cork, and Ben Hanson revisit and reflect on the very creepy (pun?) Sneak King. Together, the team discuss the game’s and its developer’s history while asking the tough questions like “Why…

April 19th

…story. Oh, crap, would be a good assessment—if not quite a verbatim transcript—of my internal dialogue at this juncture.

Konstantinos Dimopoulos interviews Tale of Tales of their new game Sunset. And Paolo Perdicini published his keynote for DIGRA 2013’s Art History of Games. Stephen Beirne, on his Two Minute Game Crit, examines how Ace Attorney presents clashes of ideologies, and Peter Christiansen at Play The Past asks what it means to design ethical systems in “historical” games.

Amsel Von Spreckelsen writes on The Order: 1886. Alexandra Orlando and Betsy Brey examine the politics of shooting a photo…

April 26th

…week. Grayson at Video Game Heart writes about games’ potential to encompass spirituality, and over at Game Church, Christopher Hutton provides a brief but comprehensive overview of the history of Christian videogames.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that Cara Ellison has written her last S.EXE at Rock Paper Shotgun, at lovely series that I’m sad to see go.

Further Reading

Shout-outs this week to the release of Merritt Kopas’s book Videogames for Humans, which brings Twine authors, games critics, writers, and players together in conversation. This hefty volume is well worth your time if any of those topics…

April Roundup: ‘Palette Swaps’

…balls could be exchanged for cheeseburgers.

Sean Seyler, keeper of the upliftingly titled blog, I believe in you, plays us out with a piece on how he expresses his love of the colour orange through is workplace, East German telecommunications, family history and games. He says what I hoped someone would say in these two sentences:

I push against the idea that the “palette swap” is just cheap and easy design, a lazy attempt to differentiate sprites and blobs without much work, because that belittles the power that color holds for us. Meaningful choices in games…

May 3rd

…does it disprove Anita Sarkeesian’s claims regarding video games. All this study really reveals is that we should shift our focus from investigating the belief that games cause certain behaviors and instead concentrate on the attitudes that allow and promote sexism in games.

This is Not a Phase. Mom, I’m An Adult Goth

At The Serious Work of Play, Corey Milne compares and contrasts the subtext and symbolism of level design in both Dark Souls’ Lodran and Demon’s Souls’ Boletaria.

Over at Kill Screen, David Chandler traces a literary history between Bloodborne and Stoker’s Dracula, remarking…

May 17th

…Pearce and how the music on his smartphone makes him an even worse character.

While at MotherBoard, Soha Kareem takes on “The Dirtiest Job in Video Games”

In light of Koji Igarashi’s Kickstarter campaign, Michelle B. took to FemHype to examine Igarashi’s history with women protagonists in “What Is a Woman?! Bloodstained & Koji Igarashi’s Female Characters”

Blake Reynolds comes to terms with pixel art and his desire to communicate with his audience in a language they understand, even if it means foregoing the form he loves.

While at Offworld, Jon Peterson writes about the blurring…