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September 2015

…to create “good” levels that meshed with Nintendo’s design philosophy. To do this, Brown looks at a favorite level from each of the games incorporated into Super Mario Maker to address how it was built, how it challenges and surprises the player, and what ideas he could borrow for his own designs.

In a special edition of History Respawned, John Harney (a scholar of the Ming Dynasty) and Bob Whitaker LPed Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China on Twitch. Among other things, the two discuss the choice for a female protagonist. While one of the few ways for…

December 20th

…queering up Harvest Moon by Pluto.

In the meantime, Eurogamer provides us with both an exhaustive history of the Kinect by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, and Keith Stuart’s look at game violence in the context of crime fiction.

Speaking of books, Joel Couture recently reviewed Nick Suttner’s volume on Shadow of the Colossus, and on First Person Scholar, Xi Rao reviewed Brian Upton’s book The Aesthetic of Play.

How The Bratwurst Is Made

On the German side of things, a new issue of the essay magazine WASD (to which I contributed) is available, and some articles have their…

Episode 31 – Back to the 2015

…Undertale is Tearing GameFAQs Apart by Patricia Hernandez

Hideo Kojima is the Jonathan Franzen of Videogames by Kevin Nguyen

Punk Games by Zoe Quinn

We are not colonists by Gita Jackson

The queer masculinity of stealth games by Riley MacLeod

Video Games’ Blackness Problem by Evan Narcisse et al

Peter Molyneux Interview by John Walker

The vast, unplayable history of videogames by Gita Jackson

Should I Stay or Should I Go: How to Stay Afloat in the Games Media by Luke Winkie

Opening Theme: ‘Close’ by The Alpha Conspiracy

Closing…

Episode 32 – Supplementary Grades

…Extra Credits creates a short cartoon Youtube video as a basic introduction of design concepts, craft implementation and surrounding issues of the videogames industry. Over the years, supplementary shows have been added. You can check them all out (as well as specific episodes we discuss on the podcast) below!

http://www.critical-distance.com/podcast/Critical-Distance-Confab-episode-32.mp3

Direct Download

SHOW NOTES

Extra Credits Channel

Extra History

Extra Remix

Extra Play

Design Club

Video Games and Storytelling

Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Spec Ops: The Line Pt. 1

Spec Ops: The Line Pt. 2

Power Creep…

January 2016

…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YWyLfDo8LA

In a deeper dive, Heather Alexandra delves into Fallout 4, turning a critical eye to a game you’re probably all still playing. In particular, she compares it to previous entries in the Fallout series in order to get at what it does both right and wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OxN9LMv2n0

Exploring another open world roleplaying game, History Respawned turned an eye to Red Dead Redemption, exploring both the historical West and the way it has changed in the American imagination over the years throughout fiction and film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP9LEycVXsw

The scarily smart folks at PBS Idea Channel looked…

March 13th

…primary targets of surveillance or rendition.

Cameron Kunzelman at Paste finds the politics embedded in Far Cry Primal to be just as bad, as they present a false, progression-based, colonialist narrative of our prehistory.

Sonia Fizek at First Person Scholar sees the industrial revolution concept of machines freeing humans from work come full circle, by putting them to work in the games they were originally to free up time for.

Horror, monsters and bad faith

Over at Vogue, Pip Usher explores why women are choosing virtual boyfriends over real life ones.

Eve Golden Woods reviews…

March Roundup: ‘Choreography’

…How do party and music games change the way we play by prompting us to move? We want to know what you think about play in motion and what that means to you.

Matt Leslie kicks us off this month with a look at the recent history of WWE games that just don’t work. Wrestling, as a theatrical performance and as an athletic spectacle, just can’t exist with too much, or too little, of a sense of choreography:

…the true problem is professional wrestling is extremely hard to define because it encompasses elements of so many…

June 19th

…Martin praises CD Projekt’s compassionate characterisation of monsters.

“the strength of the Witcher series neither lies in its fantastic monsters nor its richly drawn peasants, but somewhere between. It finds the monstrous, the ugly, and the grotesque in humans, and the redeemable, expressive elements of monsters, and in doing so it bridges the gap between them.”

Dungeons

Two video essays this week look at the spatiality of level design and play dynamics, to highlight how games relate to the history of their own franchises.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the…

June 26th

…other, these pieces look at games about seduction, consumption and leadership.

CRPG History Abridged IV: A few niche RPGs that brought something new to the table | Gamasutra blogs Felipe Pepe shares some hidden gems with surprising game design ideas.
Snake’s alive! The expanding cult of Slither.io | Eurogamer.net Graeme Virtue pays homage to the subtle aesthetics of slither.io

“The aquatic feel is real. Blobs waiting to be hoovered up all bob slightly, as if subject to invisible eddies and currents. The lumpy turning circle of your snake suggests pulling against some kind of

…

August 21st

…that No Man’s Sky reveals the beauty of life’s numerical structures.

Abzû is an Underwater Parade of Beautiful Things :: Games :: Reviews :: Abzu :: Paste Jack de Quidt talks about play and discovery in lush ecosystems.

The Comeback of the Immersive Sim | Game Maker’s Toolkit – YouTube (video, subtitled) Mark Brown gives an overview of the history of games that are built around the idea of systemic worlds and personal expression.

Small Magic | Problem Machine Problem Machine argues for magic to be incorporated into world systems in a subtler way that is not…