[Originally posted on PopMatters] I’ve saved a lot of worlds in over two decades of playing video games. It’s refreshing that modern games are more personal than ever and that they don’t have to lean on something as ostentatious as saving the world to get their point across. Still, I have to confess that I’m fond … Continue reading Natural Heroes: Inevitable Environmentalism in Games
[Originally posted on PopMatters] There’s a story to Risk and Settlers of Catan and Monopoly but not in the games themselves. Sure, there’s an identifiable setting that makes them more than flat pieces of cardboard—the unconquered world, the geological absurdity that is Catan island, Britain street(?)—and the point of these games is to become emotionally engaged … Continue reading Gaming the Dice: How Randomness Contributes to Game Experiences
[originally posted on PopMatters] Somewhere during the first third of Final Fantasy VII, as the party grows and events begin coalescing, the protagonist, Cloud, complains that he’s turning into a “three-ring circus.” This is a cute bit of meta-humor as the game followed the then common convention of having party members travel around inside the body … Continue reading We Are One: JRPGs, the Group Journey, and the Mechanics of Cooperation
[Originally posted on PopMatters] Leene’s bell chimes three times from the town square and a teenage adventurer is awakened by his mother, a cadet at Skyloft’s knight academy throws together his belongings and dashes to his practicum, a busty archeologist hones her skills on an obstacle course in the gardens while her gremlin of a … Continue reading Where the Heart Is: The Use of Home in Videogames
[Originally posted on PopMatters] A former professor of mine once told me that for a story to be a story, it must consist of a character being changed by events. Stories may be layered and make use of a gamut of literary devices and tropes, but everything is built on the foundation of a character being … Continue reading Situation as Story: Games and Atmospheric Narrative
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