Exploring Transgression 1
There’s a huge subject I’d like to tackle, but it’s a bit difficult for me to pin down. It’s something I feel very strongly about, and because I feel so strongly it tends to bleed into a lot of apparently…
Category Narrative Design
Artificial Neuroticism
In games everything has a clear cause and effect. If you get your face stomped by a cyclops, it’s because you forgot to re-equip your Axe of Extravagant Evisceration after using the Feather Duster of Tidiness for that side-quest, or…
Agency and Narrative
“Anyone who prioritizes the delivery of narrative over support for player agency fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the medium.” – Bizarro Hepler I recently encountered this quotation in my twitter feed, and it got me thinking. I generally agree with…
Reduction of Metaphor
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience…
Predictability or Inevitability
A little while back, I discussed how experienced and incisive players of video games begin to perceive the hand of the designer, to predict his aims, and infer information which the surface layer of the game doesn’t communicate in order…
Announcing: Eve
I am pleased (albeit scared) to finally be able to announce this project. Eve is a game concept that has been lurking in the back of my mind for a couple of years, and I’m incredibly excited to finally see…
Binary World
It’s been interesting to observe the ongoing shitstorm about sexism and misogyny in games as it pulses through the loosely knit ‘gamer’ community, particularly from the perspective of someone who agrees to some extent with people on both of the…
Cut Loose 2
We keep finding ourselves as amnesiacs and strangers in the games we play. There are practical reasons for this, which have been frequently mentioned by other authors and by myself, in the realms of narrative and game design. The most…
Very Funny Mister
So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been experimenting with these shorter-form essays, 300-500 words, and for the most part I’m really digging the results. 500 words is the perfect length, I think, to capture an idea, and usually…
Cut Loose
I have been thinking about sorrow, because I feel sad, or at least morose. I think of Silent Hill 2, and what a powerful experience it was for me because, unlike most games, it was unrepentantly tragic. I like the…