Spiraling Shape
This could lead to excellence Or serious injury Only one way to know Go, go, go Go ahead, wreck your life That might be good Who can say what’s wrong or right? Nobody can There is no coherent way for…
Category Playing Games
Abstraction Layer
Video games are, at their most fundamental level, a collection of numbers. Anyone who’s done any programming has seen this in action, of course, and had a direct hand in what those numbers are and what they represent. There are…
Hotline Miami: Critical Analysis
Doing reviews and analyses of specific games is kind of out of form for Problem Machine, but I seem to be doing it a lot nowadays regardless. The thing is, I’ve been playing these games and they’re just too damn…
Frog Fractions
Last week I played Frog Fractions. Frog Fractions is a fun game! In Frog Fractions, you play as a 4frog. Bugs try to eat your fruit so you have to eat the bugs. When you eat the bugs you get…
Lessons
Something that a lot of game players and developers like to talk about is those semi-rare occasions when a study comes out discussing the benefits of playing games, as opposed to how they are turning people into murderous drones. That…
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…
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…
Hard Mode
An enduring problem with single player games that rely on challenge for appeal is that they allow for mastery. Once these games are mastered, there is no longer any challenge to them, and thus no appeal. Due to fluctuations in…
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…
Competitive Single Player
I don’t seem to play games the way I used to any more. Studying game design changes you. To a certain extent, the change happens when you just play enough games, but actively studying their design catalyzes a greater change.…