Category: Close Playing

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A Cat in a Box: Procedural Storytelling in Always Sometimes Monsters

[Originally posted on PopMatters] I’m really rooting for Always Sometimes Monsters. I want people to play it and talk about it because it tries very, very hard to be a part of a conversation. Sometimes it tries too hard, but in the current videogame climate, where “being political” is an assumed sickness (Harper, Todd. “Erasing your audience … Continue reading A Cat in a Box: Procedural Storytelling in Always Sometimes Monsters

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Invasion Tactics

Somewhere right now there’s a guest author at some university telling an enthralled gathering of undergrad wannabes “all stories are conflicts.” That isn’t true, but fiction in European, expansionist traditions treats conflict as the foundation of storytelling. Of course stories can and do exist without conflict, especially outside the aforementioned traditions,1 but the assumed truism … Continue reading Invasion Tactics