Warning: The following contains spoilers for the ending of Catherine. Catherine, Atlus’s 2011\12 visual novel puzzle game amalgamation is a game I’ve seen cited as “one of the most sexist” games made and another example of “the weird Japanese and their games about sex”. I don’t have much interest getting into the racism and ethnocentrism of that […]
Tag: Game Criticism
Categories
Mechanical Definitions.
At a low enough level all game mechanics are the same, we press a button, move a stick, and something happens. Action and Outcome. Process and Result. Context is what allows us to determine if we are moving a ship through space or a counter across a board context is provided by the narrative of the game. If a plot […]
Categories
Contextual Specification – Examples.
Through unintentional irony, L.B Jeffries has helped me prove my assertion that: “Abstract concept can be powerful but are difficult to appreciate without specific examples.” I’d like to claim that I had intended for my previous post to be overly abstract so as to prove a point, but unfortunately it was merely the result of poor editing. […]
Categories
Contextual Specification.
When it comes to the creation of the common ground in which play occurs, the boundaries themselves can either be embedded or emergent. Embedded boundaries are those defined prior to, and separate from, the act of play itself. They are the rules of the game and the narrative overlaid on those rules. These elements define what […]
Categories
Narrative Context.
On several occasions I’ve recounted events that took place while I was playing a game. I’ve described in detail the actions I took and the consequences of those actions, as well as explaining my motivations and emotional reaction to such events: Jumping out I threw a Molotov at the pursuing vehicle. The Molotov hit the […]
Categories
Blowing in the wind…
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Flower. “It’s like running barefoot through a meadow!” That was my initial impression of Flower formed after a minute of play. It feels as true now as it did then. Flower is an instantly gratifying experience based on very simply concepts, the pleasure of flight and the sensation of bringing […]
Categories
Exploring Meaning.
In order to consider and analyse the explorative form of games it is necessary to present the game mechanics, the logical game space, in some visual manner. The interconnected nature of objects and actions, nouns and verbs, within a game can make any attempt at a complete representation of the entire possibility space prohibitively complex; therefore some […]
Categories
Mechanical Exploration.
Warning: This post contains mechanical spoilers for Gravity Bone. If you don’t believe that’s possible and have yet to play the game I assume no responsibility… In the comments to my previous article on the difference between literature, film and games, Chade questioned my use of the term explorative to describe games. He made two […]
Categories
Communicating Intent.
My previous post was vague and though some of that was intended to promote comment and discussion, I feel I may have been unintentionally cryptic in both the post itself and my comments. It was not my aim to imply any order of worth to each of the forms of media mentioned, and I also […]
Categories
The difference.
Literature is descriptive. Films are representative. Games are explorative. That’s a fundamental difference. Expansion and clarification can be found here.