Games have space. This is one of the core components of game design, and something that every designer must consider. What is the space of your game? What are the rules? What are the challenges? How do they interact to form a system that is compelling? Space is one of the more ambiguous categories, as…
Like most film adaptations, Edge of Tomorrow does not stay true to All You Need Is Kill, the light novel that it is based off of. In my opinion, the changes made to the protagonist and his relationship with those surrounding him makes it hard to empathize with the movie version of the characters compared…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the comparison between films and video games–why is that we allow such diversity in movies but only have one way of thinking about the “successful” video games? Reading burlison11’s post, Taking Fun Seriously, reminded me of some of the themes we covered in my Digital Africas course. In it, we…
I’m writing this post because I don’t play video games. The only game I can remember playing is Spyro on PS1 when I when I was in middle school (I’ll let you figure out how old I am) . I’m barely even a casual gamer–I did play a little Candy Crush and Fruit Ninja when…
As, perhaps, the first obvious choice presented in The Stanley Parable, the choice to enter the left or right door presents an opportunity for the player to adhere to what has been dictated as the game’s story, or rebel against the narrator and assert their own volition. While this offers the opportunity for a player…
Pippin Barr’s Breaksout takes the retro game known by most people and creates something unique and entertaining. In the original, the player controls a paddle and moves left and right in order to catch a falling ball and cause it to bounce. The objective of the game is to destroy all of the bricks near…
Jonathan Belman, in his article Designing Games to Foster Empathy, states that games are suited to fostering empathy because “they allow players to inhabit the roles and perspectives of other people or groups”. While playing Papers, Please, I got a first hand look at what Belman meant by this statement. Throughout the game, I was…
What does it mean to have an immersive gameplay experience? For me, I thought this meant playing a game for hours with little to no breaks. An experience in which all my attention was devoted to the game. Although I felt somewhat satisfied with my answer, I am still left wondering how I am able…
As a few of our readings explained, the notion that videogames should be fun (and form of escape) is why some gamers are so resistant to games being critiqued for being racist or sexist, or why they’re so resistant to games addressing social issues. When I read last week’s readings, and when folks in class…
Reading “Self-Saving Princess: Feminism and Post-Play Narrative Modding” was a revelatory, empowering experience. Thinking about Big Problems is more often than not a paralyzing experience. Big Oil, Donald Trump, the possibility of nuclear warfare, widespread misogyny, poverty, neoliberal capitalism, climate change– when we think about these Big Problems, a feeling of doom, like a peach…
