[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics like problematic assumptions underlying Harvest Moon, why it's impossible to make a meaningful game, and more.] I'm back from E3 and boy are my arms tired! …Just kidding. I live about a mile down the road from the convention center. Mainly the only thing still smarting after the expo is my faith in humanity, so thanks are due to Eric Swain for generously taking over the roundup last week! Let's hit the links! First, to follow on last week's reference to the closing of 38 Studios, I offer you a different tale from the sidelines: that of 38 Spouse. From the vaults of great genre design, neuroscientist Maral Tajerian brings us a new feature for Gamasutra on the neuroscience of survival horror. And Medium Difficulty co-editor Karl Parakenings puts these themes into practice with an essay on the difference between terror and horror, and how System Shock 2 pulls off the latter. This week was a strong one for retrospectives in general, as was the case in the resurgence of discussion around Civilization II following this Reddit thread about a player's single decade-long Civ 2 campaign. Experience Points' Jorge Albor then took the whole thing further in his own interpretation:
"Do you see what I see? The simple hope that this same motivation drives change in real world systems, be they political or otherwise? Games don't change the world, people do. And they do so by diving into systems that seem both at first glance fragile or haphazardly put together, but soon reveal themselves as immensely stable and immovable. I think it is fitting, then, that the leading suggestion in the comments at time of this posting demands the implementation of an incredibly time-consuming strategy, slowly changing the conditions of play until Lycerius can make a final move to achieve peace. The most enduring and deep-rooted homeostatic systems, be they digital or real, change most dramatically with the gradual persistence of collected individuals."
Now that we're all in a properly proceduralist frame of mind, allow me to direct your attention to David Kanaga's recent essay on games, spirituality, and meaning-making:
"It's not possible to make a meaningful game. Likewise, it's not possible to make a meaningful song or picture or story. Meaning arises from our interactions with these forms, from how we play them. [...] Games with a didactic quality like Jon Blow's Braid can fool us into thinking that meaning is a thing that is being created and then handed down to us– the intensity of the implied value systems that come packaged in game designs are often mistaken for the meaning itself. Sometimes our perceived meanings line-up very neatly with what we're told are a game's intended meanings, and this can feel good, but such an effect is incidental rather than essential in any way. It's not possible to make a meaningful game, but all played games are meaningful. Meaning can be generated but not located. It's a process rather than an object."
Adding another layer of tasty nuance to this idea is the latest installment of Eric Lockaby's "How You Got Videogames Wrong" series for Nightmare Mode, musing on games' ability to train us to perceive consequence from scenarios where our agency is narrowly constrained:
"For Kevin, the consequence of Journey was that he is probably–and if so, quite wonderfully–a closet sociopath. Furthermore, the consequence was that–contrary to his everyday self, I assure you–Kevin had been trained by wave after wave of inconsequential games into needing strict guidance for comprehending consequence itself. I find this potential particularly disturbing. For it seems to me that implying agency while at the same time delimiting said agent's scope of interpretation is a pretty nasty method of control, and one that mega-publishers and propagandists alike would just loooove to get their paws on."
Also on the subject of process, a tip of the academic hat to Olly Skillman-Wilson, who has recently posted the full text of his BA thesis on games, process and meaning. 'Grats, grad! And a couple more philosophical pieces for you, on the nature of space and players' interactions to virtual playspaces. The first from Matthew Schanuel is another deft reading of Journey, while the latter from Joel Jordon speaks of giving oneself over to the control of the environment, namely that of Dark Souls. I would be in error if I neglected to mention some of the excellent commentary and discussion pieces which have come out in the last few days on E3, sexism, and gamer fan culture. Let's start with the more balanced. Gamasutra member blogs newcomer and Medium Difficulty veteran Heather Hale writes about the good, the bad, and the ridiculous portrayals of women at this year's E3. Then fellow Medium Difficulty contributor Megan Townsend criticizing the very problematic assumptions underlying Harvest Moon: Boy and Girl:
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