Dreaming Alone
I love single-player games. Don’t get me wrong, I like all sorts of multiplayer games as well, and I enjoy cooperation and competition as much as anyone, but what really excites me about the medium of games is the possibility…
Category Criticism
The Past
The past is a dead end. In 1975 the movie Jaws was released. It is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. On the off chance you don’t know about it, the premise is that a great white…
Minecrafting
The last week or so has been a bit odd as I’ve found myself, at the age of 36, finally getting into Minecraft for the first time. I suppose this is an appropriate time to get started – if we’re…
Leaders
The conceit of strategy games is an interesting one. Most strategy games place you as the general of an army, or some other authority figure, and tasks you with managing an army or other complex system and directing it towards…
Luck of the Draw
In August of 1993, Magic: The Gathering was released. I was 10 at the time, and it was a year or so later that I was introduced to the game, I believe somewhere in between the release of the Antiquities…
Static
If we are alone, and we are dissatisfied, we can change the scene – either by traveling or adapting the world to suit ourselves. If we are with a few other people, it is usually still possible to convince them…
Virtually Real
Virtual reality will never be what you want it to be. What do we want virtual reality to be? We want the complete experience of being someone or something else. We want to be able to do what they can…
Hyper-Competition
Most games are competitive in nature – some might argue that as part of the definition of game, that anything that isn’t competitive is really a puzzle or some other sort of interactive entertainment. What the word ‘competition’ even means…
Individual
Is there a name for the deep hunger for evidence that we actually exist? “I think, therefore I am” is a pretty flimsy reassurance. Every character we write believes that they think; every character we write believes that they are.…
Being Good
What is good art? We are constantly declaring various books and movies and games to be good or bad – we get in arguments about these classifications, have entire professions dedicated to evangelizing them. We go to great lengths to…