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"The world lies on the brink of destruction. Only a select few may be able to save it." More »
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A lot can (and has) been argued against the use of cut-scenes in games. They are broadly seen as an archaic film mechanic that stumbled into gaming convention in an age when games were too young and naïve to put forward any other alternative. More »
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At present, the word "tension" is almost exclusively considered negative.   More »
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Based upon part six of the Mimesis as Make-Believe serial. More »
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Based upon part five of the Mimesis as Make-Believe serial. See part four here. More »
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It was recently announced that God of War writer Marianne Krawczyk will be lending her talents to the upcoming game Shank.  More »
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Based upon part four of the Mimesis as Make-Believe serial. More »
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The Chicago Sun-Times film critic has finally revisited his old contention that games can never be art, to defend it "in principle," and to dispute about that which cannot be disputed. More »
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The summers of my childhood were marked with scars. Good scars, not bad ones. More »
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Some deep reading over on Gamasutra on game design and narrative (courtesy of Company of Heroes narrative designer Stephen Dinehart) could be my next graduate school adventure. More »
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GameSetWatch has an interesting column up on the evolving nature of WoW; the rules of contest are frequently 'in play,' so to speak, in most sports or games, so why would a MMORPG be any different? Patches and additions codify, so to speak, some of the player-created games, but there are plenty of 'unsanctioned' game making that goes on: More »
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If your life seems to be lacking a certain academic something, Jesper Juul of The Ludologist (among other things) has posted his conference paper from the September Digital Games Research Association international conference in Tokyo. I admit that since I'm backlogged in slogging through lots of other academic reading, I haven't had time to take a close look at it, but how bad could a paper that covers Cooking Mama, Karate Champ, StarCraft and Dead Or Alive 4 be? More »
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A new anthology on gaming - on design, architecture (both of the virtual and actual varieties), urbanism, and lots of other interesting and academic-sounding things - will be coming out next month (or November, for those of us in the US). Entitled Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture, and Urbanism: the Next Level, the volume brings together an impressive number of authors with a variety of backgrounds, and everything from game reviews to essays to interviews: More »
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Terra Nova has a post trying to generate a list of potential doctoral programs for people wanting to study video games and synthetic worlds, but not necessarily make them. Having done the grad school search/application grind myself and nearly having had a mental breakdown doing it, I envy no one going through the process - especially not when trying to find programs that will fit an academic interest that doesn't really have a 'home' yet. More »
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An interesting discussion over at Terra Nova: how to design a new paradigm for online worlds that don't harken back to Second Life or WoW? Given a few basic rules - existence independent of the players, limitations on the actions that can be taken in the world, each player having a character/avatar, and existing in real time - what can you come up with? And is there really a need for such a thing? More »
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Chris Bateman at Only a Game has an interesting - if jargon heavy - post up on his nine hypothetical types of gamers, broken down by patterns of play, emotions, and skills. What's his purpose for putting such a list together? He's trying to design a survey that could lead to answering a couple of questions: "What are the basic types of player? Can we uncover a comprehensive inventory of play styles? What would this teach us about games and game design?" More »
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Ben S. Decker isn't just playing video games at Harvard, he's studying them. His concentration is "the study of video games from both a technological and humanities perspective," AKA "ludology." More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=235216&view=rss&microfeed=true Will Wright's speeches always leave me feeling equally exhilarated and confused. He manages to both tear down the walls of my current box and stir me to new ways of thinking. More »
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