Game genres are a strange and many-splendored thing, a grab-bag of features and perspectives and settings which came together through common usage and convention. The games came first, then the words to describe those games, then the genre classifications built…
“If your idea of a home security system is a pit full of lava– you might be a supervillain.” Games are simulations. They may not be simulating reality in any substantial way, but by their nature as systems they are internally…
(This is a follow-up to my previous essay on conceiving a game as the intersection of three spaces, world space, design space, and narrative space. If you haven’t yet, you should go back and read it now.) Regardless of how…
The first essay I wrote for Problem Machine described experiencing the design of a game in a sense analogous to exploring a physical space, as well as drawing comparisons between exposing game design elements (clumsily) and exposing narrative elements. I’d…
The game space is a controversial place to be right now. A perfect storm of people exploring sexism in games, gamers being misogynist fuckhats, and clueless developers talking excitedly about how they’re going to treat their female leads in new…
I am super tired today, so rather than a new essay I’m going to be sharing with you the work I’ve done so far on a project for this site. This is the start of a glossary of gaming terms…
“And maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll both live again, well I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, don’t think so.” I am sitting in front of my computer trying to write an article. I am confident that…
Yes. It’s an article about violence in video games. How terribly cliche. I’m going to start here by stating my opinions on violence in games, and then work backwards to explain the reasons why I feel the way I do.…
