[This piece was written as a part of Critical Distance‘s February 2015 Blogs of the Round Table feature] One way of looking at storytelling as a historical practise is as a simulated socialization. Anthropologically, storytelling is a way to facilitate prosocial behaviour and ideation. The point being that stories are imagined social extremes where the … Continue reading Friends that Play Together
“Human sperm cells were seen with the earliest microscopes in the seventeenth century. The human egg is several thousand times larger, but — despite earlier postulates — it was not visualized until 1827. […] For something to be found, it must first be imagined and sought.” (Duffin, Jacalyn. A History of Medicine, (Toronto, ON: Toronto … Continue reading It’s a Man’s World: The Implications of Makeup in Mass Effect
[Originally posted on PopMatters] Video games have a lot of sequels. They have for a long time (Patricia Hernandez, “What’s that? Modern-Day Gaming Has Too Many Sequels? Actually…”, Kotaku, 11 September 2013.). There are plenty of reasons why games lean so heavily on sequels. After all, reusing a successful idea makes for an easier pitch to … Continue reading The Secret to Sequels
[originally posted on Unwinnable] Videogame interactivity is so great. Who wants to watch a hero when you can be the hero? That’s the promise games keep giving us on the back of the box, isn’t it? But they seldom deliver on that promise. Games welcome their players to a world, lay out a central conflict … Continue reading View From the Side
[Originally posted on Medium Difficulty] In the great sandwich of videogames, game mechanics are the baguette and game stories are the stuffing. Whether a game is simply a thin spread of butter on an oven fresh bun or a triple-decker steak’n’cheese with pan fried vegetables and extra dressing, a game is composed of these two … Continue reading Tighten up the Narrative in Level 3: The grammar of videogames
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