How implicit or explicit should a game developers message be so that it may be impactful and understood by the player? Often this question arose in my mind after playing Grayscale and Redshift and Portalmetal (Redshift). If developers seek to convey a message the player should be able to walk away from the game…
Considering the endings of Queers In Love At The End of The World and The Stanley Parable in conversation with each other reveals different ways of determining what to value in games. There are multiple endings in the Stanley Parable, and the end that Stanley meets is determined by player choices. Once an ending…
In the article “Videogames of the Opressed,” (http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/Boalian) Gonzalo Frasca says of the Sims: “The fact that the best-selling game of the year 2000 was about people is a clear sign that videogames are on their way towards maturity.” He goes on to repeatedly make the connection between humanity and maturity in games. This intrigued…
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…
It seemed that, as a class, we generally believed that in order for videogames to be successful, they need to have some sort of “fun” component in them. Of course, there are many different ways to define “successful” but in this context I’m using 1) How wide of an audience does the game capture and…
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…
Although many people see videogames as only meant for the purpose of having fun, I think that a lot of learning can be done by playing them. It makes sense that the creators of the games will emphasize fun in their games. This will attract a bigger audience and increase their revenues. People often want…
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…
I want to bounce back to the question Professor Parham asked, addressing how fun can be taken seriously (especially in video games). First, fun is taken very seriously by the producers of video games. They use the “idea of fun” to expand their market and ultimately, increase their profits. The gaming industry uses fun to…
