Archive for the 'game criticism' Category
The computer scene in the earlier days was often dominated by “uber nerds” who would collect lots of hardware and not actually have that much to use for it. My impression was that a lot of games were created for this market in the earlier days.
I love my “uber nerd” friends (“omg my new rig [...]
Filed under: game criticism, game culture, game history, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: game criticism, game culture, game history
Anger is the righteous emotion, and anything worth a shit is worth getting angry about. The games which please us make us furious, the games we hate are disgusting, sad, and, furthermore, boring. Nobody who ever played a video game past the age of five did so because they were bored and frustrated. They did [...]
Filed under: game criticism, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: game criticism, game culture, game lolz, spousal abuse is no laughing matter, video games
“Easy to Use and Incredibly Difficult: On the Mythical Border between Interface and Gameplay”
An interesting article by Jesper Juul on the complex relatioship between ease of use and challenge in video games. Here’s the abstract:
In video game literature and video game reviews, video games are often divided into two distinct parts: interface and gameplay. Good video games, it is assumed, have easy to use [...]
Filed under: game criticism, game design, game studies, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: game criticism, game design, game studies
I’m not sure what to think of No More Heroes : Desperate Struggle. The original No More Heroes took me completely by surprise when it came out in 2008. I was expecting a sword-waggling action game and what I got instead was a darkly funny and deeply unsettling excercize in idiosyncratic game design and storytelling. [...]
Filed under: game criticism, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: E3 2009, game criticism, video games
The Art of Rules, Ctd.
From Game Culture:
Games are supposed to be safe places, where we experiment with strategy and compete without fear of consequence. When we play, we come to even the most violent, sadistic variety of game bearing an implicit assumption — an assumption so ingrained and absolute that we don’t even acknowledge it consciously — that we [...]
Filed under: game criticism, game culture, game design, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: game criticism, game culture, game design, video games
The Art of Rules
Rules are to game design what editing is to film: a craft that is at once unique to its medium and forms a central (if at times overlooked) part of its distinct expressive powers. Rod Humble’s recent article for the Escapist serves as a useful and rather accessible introduction to the history and modern use [...]
Filed under: game criticism, game design, video games | Leave a Comment
That was a joke. But if taking games seriously is your idea of fun, Mia Consalvo’s introductory essay for the latest issue of Eludamos provides a lovely progress report. Here’s and excerpt:
…there’s been a concomitant drive to specialize, already well under way. We can already see the emergence of separate venues, literature reviews, and research [...]
Filed under: game criticism, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: arts, game criticism, video games
New Issue of of Eludamos
Read it here.
Filed under: game criticism, game studies, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: game design, game studies, video games
-
Author
JRGBruno