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At the Intersection of Police Brutality and Vigilante Tourism in Games
It’s hard to say what time it is, but it’s night. It’s always night in Gotham. Perched on the top of an abandoned factory I listen for the voices of two-bit thugs pulled up from the surrounding streets by a coastal wind. Nothing.
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Dust: An Elysian Tail Makes Hack’n Slash Feel So Right, Even When It’s Not
Dust: An Elysian Tail opens to a narrator describing the world of Falana as a lone, insurgent fighter takes on an army of opposing foes. Here, the shrouded combatant is mine to control, even though his fate is not. Beyond simple side scrolling movements, the only other action I’m allowed to execute is “wage war,” ...
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BREAKING: Hulk doesn’t just smash…Now he trolls too!
Film Crit Hulk has a column smashing Mass Effect 3’s detractors in which he explains, among other things, why the game’s ending is actually spot on and communicated the entire point of the three game series perfectly. Unfortunately, the not so jolly green giant’s all caps diatribe is about as well thought and and enlightening as the ...
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Vive la Révolution: A French Studio Brings Democracy to Development
Even as studios become larger, and publishers hide more and more behind their PR departments, some video game creators are taking the opposite approach and bringing the development process back into the open. From video games funded by Kickstarter to the proliferation of online beta sessions, the barrier between makers and players has started to ...
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A New Zealand judge is wrong. The U.S. itself isn’t what threatens digital rights.
Comic-Con wasn’t the only meeting that wrapped up last week in San Diego. Of much more import, and thus to much less fanfare, the TPP concluded its 13th meeting there where it discussed, among other things, the kinds of copyright laws that each member country would adopt some time in the near future. At the very same time, ...
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The world may be coming to an end in 2012, but the Internet is just getting started
Today marks the beginning of two new Kickstarter campaigns. The first is for a new product that will potentially disrupt the current models governing the manufacture, publication, and distribution of video games. The second however, a modification to an already existing service, is less radical in its potential for innovation, if not its monetary objective. ...
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Thanks to this videogame related ruling, I’m moving to Europe.
I’m moving to Europe. I’ve always wanted to, not least of all because it’s old, beautiful, and full of real castles. But there are other perks as well. For instance: mandatory paid vacation. That’s why Europeans have so much time to go to things like this, and this. Did you know we’re one of the ...
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Entitled, Insatiable Whiners. Yea, I’m Looking at You Gamers
Gamers, that most thankless sub-culture of righteous, misanthropic critics. We are never pleased, often discontented, and consistently better informed (or so we like to think) than our video game loving counterparts in every other part of the industry proper. Who could love us? Who could put up with our ever changing standards? Who would devote themselves to ...
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How Universities Are Helping Video Games Move Forward
In a recent interview with Electron Dance, Dr. Dan Pinchbeck explained how the development paradigm he works in actually finds values in failed games, “If you are a developer and you take a risk and it doesn’t pay off, you’re in real trouble. As an academic, if you take a risk and it doesn’t pay ...
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Owning Games Isn’t What it Used to be, and That Needs to Change
Much of our lives are moving online. Last night, I ordered Chinese takeout through Grubhub in-between talking with friends over Gchat and Twitter, and then later played a few (fruitless) hours of Modern Warfare 3‘s multiplayer, before returning to my computer to write a blog post, while listening to Pandora, while an episode of Breaking ...
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How do you Solve a Problem Like Max Payne?
The man is a high-functioning alcoholic. He spends his nights drinking himself into oblivion while the light of day finds him planting heavy metals deep into the flesh of his enemies with the biologically-ingrained certainty of a fifth generation lead farmer. This repetitive cycle is as precise and determined as the bullets Payne fires off ...
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Don’t Front. We All Love The Violence.
Violence is the name of the game. Well, not literally. And not for all games. There’s Nintendo and the indie scene and whatever new craze is lying in wait on the App Store. But the core of gaming right now remains unmistakably violent. As many people have noted, nowhere was this more evident than the showroom floor at this year’s E3. Developers served ...
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Feedback Loop: How Videogames Stole my Daydreams
When my brother and I were younger our parents used to force us to spend a certain amount of time outside every day. In the summer especially, when school was out and the days were lazy, we were cast out into the suburban wilderness to wander the sun baked streets. They did this to get ...
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E3 2012 is Upon us, but What Choices lie Ahead?
The mood is unmistakable. The current generation isn’t quite over, and the next one hasn’t gotten started yet. Unlike recent years, everyone has both eyes looking into the future even as both feet remain firmly planted in the present. It is a period of transition for the modern gaming scene. Even as Epic Games unveils ...
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From Rockband to Monsters and Why These Devs are Happier for It
Bryn Bennett and Steven Kimura started working in the videogame industry around 1998 and have a history with notable companies (Irrational, Harmonix) and big games (Bioshock, Rockband). Now, more than 10 years later they’ve struck out on their own as an independent studio called Eerie Canal with their first new project: Dreadline. Joined by “sound ...
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How Many Warlocks Does it Take to Screw up an Empire?
Arcane comes from the Latin word “arcanus” meaning hidden or secret. Paradox Interactive’s new game revels in both of these things, asking players to learn its quirks before unlocking its potential. Cajoling into place an erratic mixture of city planning, hexagonal war waging, and omniscient spell casting, Warlock: Master of the Arcane requires you to ...
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Size Does Matter: What “Indie” Really Means in Videogames
In June of 1992 the Journal of Human Evolution published an article by R.I.M Dunbar entitled, “Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates.” Jargon-filled but widely cited, the scholarship established what is now known as Dunbar’s Number: the amount of people on average that a person can maintain strong social relationships with. ...
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Feedback Loop: When Rape is Just a Game
I have always been especially sympathetic to parody, satire, and general irreverence. I’m skeptical of authority and find tradition and convention extremely dubious. And when topics are off-limits or taboo, the benefits to silencing discourse rarely makeup for what’s lost as a result of doing so. But sometimes the tradeoff isn’t so one-sided. Earlier this ...
