This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Mattie Brice on topics including silent protagonists, co-op horror, the role of frustration in game design, and more. The sun over the Critical Distance virtual offices was blotted by clouds and naked branches scratched at the windows. I was alone in the room, listening to the howling wind that matched my intentions, full access to the site at my fingertips. When Kris Ligman is away, Mattie Brice gets to play. LiveJournal open, it’s time for This Week in Videogame Blogging. 05:28 PM February 8th, 2013 It’s the first day of the Mattie take-over, and I’m not quite sure what my first move should be to dethrone the powers that be and make Critical Distance mine. Reading Robert Yang’s meditation on Cardboard Computer’s Limits & Demonstrations, how some more conceptual games resist being played, and players’ relationship with cheating. Maybe I should make a post that defies being read? 09:34 AM February 11th, 2013 Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with my journal, I had to initiate my first phase in weakening games criticism for my eventual rule:
Herein lies the problem- when you leave out the personal, all that’s left is the status quo. Because that ‘standard’ consists of the values of a particular type of culture associated with the hegemonic, privileged class, there is actually something personal and subjective going on all the time. Thus, by leaving out the particular experiences of the silenced and marginalized, it bars anyone from revealing the bias that exists within this supposed stoically neutral discourse. It takes away the vocal chords of a person in a room full of shouting.
But enough of such grand schemes. Today, Gus Mustrapa spun a legend of eternal struggle, an overlooked opera I felt represented the toiling emotions in my heart. The last time that happened was when I was 8 years old on my first art museum visit, when I, much like Richard Terrell, questioned whether I was fully capable of understanding the full experience of a piece. With a swing of a paddle, I bounced back to reality when Andrew Vanden Bossche sharply criticized the zeitgeist of mainstream reviews, in this case Arthur Gies’s Dead Space 3 review, much like my 5th grade teacher scolding me for calling out answers in class. 2:53 PM February 12th, 2013 I have a lot of feels swirling around today, mostly about how Anthony John Agnello’s observations on voice and silence affecting the game experience reminded me of the correlation between my habit to talk to myself in empty rooms and the commodification of pink haired girls in visual novels. The rest of my day was gloomy, having to consider David Cage might be right about something, or so says Brad Gallaway when it comes to the non-gamers’ perception of videogames. To make matters worse, Simon Parkin over at New Statesman further complicates the violence in games issue more than my paradigm can handle. 10:15 PM February 13th, 2013 Did you know videogames made me an atheist? It totally makes sense now that Tom Dawson explained how games exercises our relationship with religion and how gods can be parasites:
I wonder, did anyone sit down to consider their own understanding of God before making these games? After all, these two examples can be viewed as commentaries on the nature and necessity of religion: in From Dust the Breath is created by the Men to aid them in their quest for survival amidst an incredibly hostile world, and Black & White’s opening sequence shows the god of that game being called into being by the fervent prayers of humans in need. In neither case is the god pre-existing, never claimed to be a creator – they are invented by societies which feel the need for them. The obvious insinuation is that is that people create gods, rather than the other way around, to benefit themselves. From these parallel beginnings the two games part ways and the nature of the human/deity relationship branches.
It also looks like many in the critical community are thinking of relationships the day for Valentine’s. I see Liz Ryerson’s questioning Duke Nukem 3D’s design and her intrigue as an allegory for the post-feminist Marxist’s plight with receiving chocolate on February 14th. Or take Lana Polansky’s experience with belonging and labels as the descent of neo-Derrida horsemen onto the videogame landscape. 8:29 PM February 14th, 2013 Dear internet, I had a wonderful Valentine’s Day! Let me tell you all about it: At first, I woke up with a sense of panic, much like the vulnerability Jorge Albor speaks to in the tension between horror and co-op modes in games. Even worse, when I arrived to surprise my boyfriend at work with gifts, he wouldn’t answer his phone! But I remembered Keith Stuart working through the nuances of difficulty, and knew I had to be patient to win my prize:
So frustration is not a universal commodity. It’s okay in some games, let’s say, but it’s not necessarily okay in all of them. Indeed, some studios have developed clever ways to sidestep frustration. The Easy mode is the obvious one, and it has become prevalent now that games are a mass entertainment medium. Most narrative adventures will offer an option for players, ‘who just want to experience the story’. However, I can’t help but wonder if this is a dereliction of duty on their part – if you have produced a game with a win state, there should be a way of challenging inexperienced players without spoon-feeding them narrative sequences in between one-hit kills and dozens of lobotomised enemies.
Soon enough, I found him lying in the park where we whispered words only lovers should hear, much like Jason Rice’s memory of Talana from Star Control II and their intimate scene together. If there was ever a clearer metaphor for the last hours of Valentine’s day, is it Sean Sands’s confession on his personal relationship with viole
