[This piece was written as a part of Critical Distance‘s June 2016 Blogs of the Round Table feature] Videogame fiction, like a lot of adventure fiction for young people, places the central character in the position of rescuing a loved one. Often the loved one our hero must rescue is a damsel in distress with an implicit … Continue reading A Family That Plays Together
I want to talk about Always Sometimes Monsters. For one, it’s a quirky, homemade project made with RPGmaker, which is apparently a skeleton key for my heart (Filipowich, Mark. “Sturgeon’s Law, Taste and RPGmaker.” The Border House. Aug 12 2013.). For another, Monsters is very grounded in the real world. In the last few posts on … Continue reading Surviving Poverty in Always Sometimes Monsters
A lot of what I have to say will be an addendum to my most recent piece on The Border House so I guess go read that now (Filipowich, Mark. “Welcome to the Machine: The ambivalent tone of The Last Story.” May 5 2014.). Oh, and there are spoilers. Spoilers are everywhere. The observation in that … Continue reading The Incomplete Revolution of The Last Story
An NPC in Motherbound, the third of four towns in Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, jokes that she wishes she could go out and see more of the world, but the monsters surrounding the town are too difficult for her to fight; if only, she laments, she started an adventure in Lufestpolis—the player’s starting … Continue reading Mobility as a Weapon in Phantasy Star
[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
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