A Rashomon, named after Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film, is a story repeated several times from different characters’ perspectives. Each retelling adds more information from each character until, in the end, a full story emerges. The Rashomon effect is a psychological phenomenon wherein multiple witnesses view the same event but describe it with different or even … Continue reading The Ludic Rashomon
[Originally posted on PopMatters] The American Civil War caused more American deaths than any other conflict in the country’s history. It is remembered as a war between former neighbors and friends. It was a war between kids over a dispute that somehow got far out of hand. It was a war for the rights of people … Continue reading Reveiw: Brother Against Brother: The Drawing of the Sword
I can’t remember how many turn-based strategy games I’ve played in a row but these days it seems like the games that excite me the most involve commanding sprites along a grid in small, squad-sized skirmishes. Case in point, the most recent I played was The Banner Saga. In The Banner Saga, the player guides two separate caravans … Continue reading Resource Based Humanity
[Originally posted on PopMatters] Herald, developed by Dutch designers Wispfire and currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, is, in the developers’ words, “an interactive period drama about colonialism”. Herald is an adventure game, one of the few video game genres that might appropriately convey the complexities of the colonial identity. The demo, now available for potential kickstarter backers to … Continue reading Herald Attempts the Troubled Waters of the Colonial Narrative
Director Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy is one of the most respected works of fiction in the past decade, uniting popular and critical audiences in rarely agreed celebration of its value and importance to contemporary fiction. Its exclusion from the 2009 Academy Award “Best Picture” category sparked considerable controversy and even prompted the Academy … Continue reading The Fascist We Deserve: The Authoritarian Ideology of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy
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