"Where is all the good writing about games?"
…a groundbreaking online game, reflecting on the poignancy of its end and the design features that made it so influential.
“An otherwise unmentionable videogame convention is transformed into an expression of metaphysical dread.” Focusing a little more on interaction design, two critics consider different skills …
Shaping design
…lot of writing, and some of the finest examples are collected below. Other recurring themes that saw careful examination this week include the shifting legacies of role-playing games, the relationship between games and time (both specifically and conceptually), and the boundaries between design and interactivity.
Three articles this week reflect on the identities included, excluded, and effaced from games and their surrounding cultural spheres.
…
…at the ways Red Steel 2 effectively synthesizes elements from both the Wild West and Feudal Japan when so many things could plausibly go wrong.
“The question may then arise as to precisely why the world of Red Steel 2 works. The answer essentially lies in the method of the game’s combination of tropes. Rather than mixing the Wild West and feudal Japan into every single one of its characters, local*]}*es or plot elements (which would obviously be a recipe for disaster), the game allows both sets of tropes to stand on their own, but alongside each
…
…a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.
A trio of excellent articles this week examine deep links and synergies between the games we play and the wider neoliberal frameworks they inhabit and reproduce, even when those games purport to push against those frameworks.
…
…Queerness in Larp | Eurogamer.net Evan Torner chronicles the long, queer history of live-action roleplay.
…going to cast light on the cinema and the graphics. If you say that games are, so a lot of people are like, games are kind of like conceptual art that makes social criticism, then you’re going to look at like what it means. And I think a lot of these things. I mean, they’re all right. But I also think that these attempts to praise games by subjugating them to a paradigm of another art form can often lose out on what’s central about games. The reason that Suits is interesting to me, is that I think he like…
…say “Well I’ll go somewhere else then!” and wave them off instead of rushing to appease a vocal and outraged segment of the existing fanbase. But it’s so so important they do.”
Okay, loosely-associated section alert. These next two pieces dwell on games (or their subjects) taken out of their time, and the experience–be it jarring, offensive, ethereal, or magical–of approaching them with a contemporary perspective.
…Points Monthly Astrid Anne Rose examines Cyberpunk 2077‘s juvenile, yet sanitized and ultimately hollow approach to sex, sexuality, and sex work.
…entrepreneurs in the Chinese digital game industry initiate their venture creation by investigating the relationship between their social capital and the key aspects of identifying entrepreneur opportunities in the pre-market entry stage. So, the two aspects I’m really interested in, they are opportunity recognition and opportunity evaluation.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with a total of thirty-three gaming entrepreneurs in Shanghai, I found that, their social capital played a minor role in their recognition of opportunities. These entrepreneurs adopt various approaches to accessing and mobilising their social capital based on their situated industry sectors. Those who focus on commercial…
…Setting a game in Rome, into Rome, what other games are set in Rome? Maybe that’s the reason why someone may be looking at games like that, or telling similar stories through maybe a pattern that might have been weaved through it, say folklore or a particular culture, so you draw from the same characters but you kind of have different adaptations, that’s also quite interesting. And that can lead itself to say fictional characters and real historical characters that may be adapted into a videogame and then there is a sequel and then there is different platforms and different…