Author: by Katie Williams
[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Katie Williams on topics including one of the earliest examples of gamification, asymmetrical knowledge, and more.] Hello there! I'm Katie, and I'm doing Video Game Criticism duty today. We have a great selection of reads this week, so get comfortable and make yourself a cup of hot chocolate. (Hot chocolate is an excellent accompaniment to games criticism, and I should know; I've had three cups of it while compiling this list.) On to the latest edition of Video Game Criticism, then. We'll start with an intense interview piece, courtesy of Rock Paper Shotgun. In the first of a new series called 'Level With Me, Dan Pinchbeck', modder Robert Yang chats with the aforementioned Pinchbeck, who's currently working on a reboot of his 2008 Source mod Dear Esther; Pinchbeck especially has some interesting ideas on whether "lazy" narrative really needs to be "saved". The discussion later shifts focus to the design of a Portal 2 map, a collaborative project between Yang and Pinchbeck. This is the first of a seven-parter – Stick to the end of this series, and you'll get to download and play the map that they're putting together! Blogging at The Machination, Jack McNamee suggests that the stories of 1001 Nights may have been an early example of gamification:
"Princess Shahrazad finds herself married to King Shahriyar, who takes one bride every night and cuts their heads off in the morning. Thinking quickly, she invents Gamification, doing in one night what would take the rest of the world thousands of years to rediscover. 1001 Arabian Nights – the collection of stories she tells to the king keep herself alive – is made of wheels within wheels. Instead of tasks, though, it's wheels are made of stories."
Following a previous piece on sexism in Arkham City (which we linked last week), Film Crit Hulk has now posted a great follow-up, addressing the criticism his first piece received. Read on for his thoughts on why realism, freedom of speech, and context do not necessarily excuse the sexist language used in the game. The ever-excellent Kirk Hamilton, writing for Kotaku, imagines what it would be like if buying a book was like buying a game, in the process making some great commentary on the inconsistent marketing decisions made when publicizing games. It's so true! Just consider if you had to face this dilemma every time you bought a book:
"Hmm, it's been a month and I still can't decide: Should I pre-order through Amazon, or through Barnes & Noble? It looks like Amazon gets a special bonus of a foreword from the author… that would be pretty cool to read. Oh, but Barnes & Noble has a special bonus chapter in the book itself, which folds seamlessly into the narrative. Hmm. I remember preordering from Barnes & Noble once and when I went to get the book, they didn't have it."
In another neat example of games criticism featuring in a more general-audience publication, Hayley Tsukayama interviews Irrational Games' Ken Levine for the Washington Post. It's an intelligent discussion about the politics of Bioshock Infinite's world in relation to that of real world events, particularly the Occupy movement. 'Off Book' is a PBS arts-focused web series that in this episode takes a look at video games. It features comment from a healthy blend of games designers, journalists, and academics, and is worth a watch. Meanwhile, Dan Cox at Digital Ephemera looks at the concept of "asymmetrical knowledge" in tragic stories. Cox writes
"If 'audience member who knows that the big fall is coming, but doesn't know when' then there is not a symmetry between what the character knows and what the audience knows. The audience knows more than the character. In books, plays and film, this is what builds dramatic tension. The audience is watching 'the slow-motion train wreck' about to happen and is transfixed by their sheer curiosity of how the situation will resolve. Will the character escape their fate (made manifest by their flaw) or not? Can Oedipus escape the Oracle's prophecy?"
Cox goes on to examine asymmetrical knowledge in games, a significantly less linear medium than plays and film, with some interesting discussion of how in-game achievements can alter the narrative's tension. At the Brindle Brothers blog, John Brindle looks at the way that physics has been replicated in touchscreen phones' operating systems, and how the tiny touches of physics simulation supports the verisimilitude of the virtual. He says, "This facsimile of physics lends a material weight to immaterial. It exists in part to meet the demands of the new and still not completely intuitive gestural vocabulary which smartphones and pads have introduced." The Brainy Gamer's Michael Abbott, in 'Little Nuggets of Truth', discusses an IndieCade speech on the nature of creating puzzles, delivered by Jonathan Blow and Marc ten Bosch:
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