This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including nanotechnology, the Twine Revolution, game narrative as improvisational theater, and more. In the year 2148, commenters on Brainy Gamer discovered the remains of an ancient spacefaring civilization. In the decades that followed, these mysterious artifacts revealed startling new blog topics, enabling travel to new critical heights. The basis for this incredible technology was a force that controlled the very fabric of space, time and the ludodecahedron. They called it the greatest discovery in game critic history. The civilizations of the blogosphere call it: THIS WEEK IN VIDEOGAME BLOGGING In this adventure you play Commander Kris Ligman, the galaxy's most desk-bound human Spectre. Press [Spacebar] to skip this narrative flavor text we worked so hard on at any time. Go on, just try it, see if we care. EPISODE 1: MORE THAN A NUMBERS PROBLEM Commander Ligman's first encounter starts in the humble human colony of Gamespot, where Alliance Navy Chief Petty Officer Carolyn Petit aggressively criticizes game development’s unwillingness to include women characters:
Right now, the fear that big-budget games about women won't sell is self-fulfilling. Developers are afraid to make and properly market big games with female protagonists out of a fear that they don't sell, but if developers don't make and properly market those games, they don't have a chance to sell. It's time for industry leaders to abandon the antiquated notions and tired excuses they sometimes trot out when talk turns to female protagonists.
Elsewhere, on the planet Kotaku, Patricia Hernandez reveals that the lack of women presenters at the Playstation 4 presser goes much deeper than a numbers game– it reflects a larger, system problem of erasing women role models from tech fields. Or Reapers. Possibly it's Reapers. Shh. Also on Kotaku, we overhear Evan Narcisse in conversation with David Brothers on how to increase racial representation both within games and in the development industry. Press [Left-Click] to join conversation. EPISODE 2: IT’S A GREAT BIG WORLD OUT THERE Critical biotic commando John Brindle of The New Statesman suggests that while the predicted epoch of top-down political games as propaganda appears to have failed to materialize, grassroots, bottom-up political games like September 12 and Cart Life represent a growing genre. Captain Terrence Jarrad of the PC Powerplay battalion has released the complete interview with the directors of IRL Shooter a “real life” FPS (don't they call those LARPs?). Existing in a world where air cars do not, Gamasutra's Mike Rose presents a fascinating experiment using SimCity to model, and diagnose, his town's traffic congestion problem. EPISODE 3: IT’S THE MATRIX, NEO Joker, quit using your out-of-date sci-fi movie references, no one thinks you're funny. (Except EDI.) Anyway– while it's no doubt a familiar approach to some of her readers out there, Commander Ligman still appreciated this analysis by Push Select's Mark Jensen using Final Fantasy VII to illustrate several philosophical tenets of existentialism. EPISODE 4: A NEW HOPE Seriously, Joker. Stop. Elsewhere, back with the plot, Commander Ligman discovers a mighty entity that must be destroyed before it consumes another race of synthetics: the Bit Creature! It's already claimed Gavin Craig, who this week turns his gaze on a particular scene in Heavy Rain which not only misdirects the player but breaks the rules of the gameplay (and possibly space-time) entirely:
We’re used to and know how to read unreliable narrators in books and film. We’re even familiar with unreliable characters in games. The “would you kindly” revelation in BioShock is jarring, but it’s also frequently discussed as a high point in game narrative and not as evidence of a broken game. With some very rare (and usually clearly signaled — think of the Scarecrow sequences in Batman: Arkham Asylum) exceptions, what the player sees is treated as objectively reliable. It becomes difficult to imagine functioning in most games if what you see isn’t what, for the game’s purposes, is really there. In Heavy Rain, however, just for a moment, the camera itself becomes an unreliable narrator.
Admiral Robert Yang of the SSV Radiator muses on how we might think of game narrative as improvisational theater, and not just on a “yes, and” level:
[L]ongform improv comedy involves actors cooperating to “find the game” — to find the core of a joke. Each actor makes “offers” to expand upon a premise and move action forward, hopefully toward a funny destination, and usually, actors err on always accepting offers (”saying yes”) and building upon it since “blocking” offers frustrates your scene partners. However, it's very possible to “say yes” to a premise while still “blocking” the “game.”
Finding himself lost in a non-Euclidean alternate universe not of his own design, Corporal Zolani Stewart transmits a few notes on nature soundscapes as narrative design in Antichamber. Back with Gamasutra, specialist Sebastian Alvarado presents the latest installment of his series on nanotechnology, this time focusing on the Nanosuit from Crysis
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