This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including Dead Island: Riptide's controversial "Zombie Bait" statuette, Star Wars: The Old Republic's "Gay Planet," and more. If I had to describe Critical Distance with the title of a game, it'd be Infinite Undiscovery. Except I heard that game wasn't too good. Oh well. Moving on: its' time once again for This Week in Videogame Blogging, the web's premier weekly collection of the most interesting games writing, criticism and commentary! DESIGN We start at The Border House, where Michelle Ealey writes of the minimalist ambiguity of Kairo. Elsewhere on TBH, Prunescholar takes a look at three games’ fantastical treatment of capitalist greed and exploitation. Martin of Oh No! Video Games! has some video and textual commentary on The Walking Dead’s representation of totalitarianism. Meanwhile at Push Select, Jeff Wheeldon criticizes what he perceives as a pervasive yet shallow oversaturation of religious and mythical iconography in games. On Nightmare Mode, language scholar Oscar Strik takes a look at several gestural and symbolic forms of online communication which crop up in several games, including Tale of Tales' latest, Bientot l'ete. C-D alum David Carlton writes on his own blog Malvasia Bianca about guitar learning with Rock Band and Rocksmith. Dyad lead Shawn McGrath showed up on Kotaku this week with some deep meditations on the source code of Doom 3. On Unwinnable, Brendan Keogh has a few words on how exactly Far Cry 3 fails to discomfort the player:
It is exactly how the game fails to deliver the message that [lead writer Jeffrey] Yohalem thinks he delivers: the game gives me permission to not think about what I am doing. The game gives me a safe space to be comfortable and to just have fun. I don’t need to think about what Jason is doing or how he is evolving. I don’t even need to think about my own survival for the greater part of the game. Mostly, I don’t have to think at all.
Lastly on the topic of design, this isn't an article really, but have you visited Wikipedia's entry on games with hidden rules? BUILDING UP THE GIRL Back on The Border House, Kaitlin Tremblay writes of the construction of masculinity as machine in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. On The Phoenix, Maddy Myers shares her ambivalence toward the romance of Cortana and Master Chief:
After all, she “picked” him, she's the smart one, the dominant one who tells him what to do. He may argue, but eventually, he'll agree that Cortana is right. She's always right. But this subversion doesn't make me feel good about Cortana and Master Chief's relationship. If anything, it makes me question the logistical reality, let alone the romance, of a human dating a much smarter AI being. Cortana's smarter than the Chief, and not even just a little bit smarter – she's way more chock full of knowledge than the most brilliant human being could ever dream to be. In other words, she's not human. So why would we want her to date a human, let alone this one? The reason is obvious: because this human is Master Chief, and we are Master Chief. We want Cortana to love us, because we love her. We don't see his face, ever, because his face is supposed to seem like it could be our face. We aren't supposed to see Master Chief as an alienating Peter Pan manchild, like I do – we're supposed to see him as us.
HUNT FOR THE GAY PLANET This week saw the announcement of an expansion for BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic, which includes a much-promised update to allow players to pursue same-gender romances. However, by setting the content behind a paywall (in addition to some other problems with its execution), the announcement has drawn some ire from various outlets. On Gameranx, Denis Farr decries SWTOR's choice to sequester these same-sex relationships to a single location as too like the real discrimination faced by LGBTIQ people:
The first is to wonder if perhaps you’re trying to give everyone a history lesson. By putting these NPC same-gender romances on Makeb, a planet that is part of paid content and available to higher level characters only, you are systemically placing the same romance options others have already experienced and continue to have access to out of easy reach. Pay money for equal rights. Feel what it
No tags.
