Critical Distance is back with a regular digest of critical writing on game design.
Identification
Two approaches to relating to characters in videogames are found here, positioning the player-character as an avatar and as a representative of gaming as an activity.
Nathan Drake Is Crash Bandicoot: Uncharted 4 and Acceptance | Midfalutin
Steven Scaife argues that the resolution of Nathan Drake’s character arc amounts to a shrugging acquiescence regarding the state of videogames.Dimensions of Identity in Games – First Person Scholar
Lindsay Meaning uses Adrienne Shaw’s Gaming at the Edge to think about what it means to identify with a videogame character.
“While researchers and game designers tend to assume that players automatically identify with the avatar or character that they control, Shaw discovers that this is not the case. Rather than the interactive aspects of games driving the process of identification, she argues that it is the affective qualities of game narratives that build connections between players and characters.”
Fetishistic details
Two writers consider the meaning of interacting with the tiny details of a videogame world.
The Whole of the World: Positions of Consideration in Games – Not Your Mama’s Gamer
Alisha Karabinus highlights a theoretical approach to worldbuilding and environmental narrative that offers a response to the question of what kind of storytelling is best suited to videogames.Miniature Mansions | Gnog | Heterotopias
Zach Budgor talks dollhouses and miniature worlds.
“Gnog is about trying to understand the world, about breaking it into functional pieces and mechanical architectures. There is merit to the notion that miniaturizing life makes it more comprehensible; the fetishistic detail of Luyten’s dollhouse exists on a spectrum with a Lego set. But Gnog manages to escape the desire to have everything just-so”
This is an extract from a full weekly roundup posted on Critical Distance. To see the full post and other great writing and podcasting from the world of games criticism, check out critical-distance.com.
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