Masculinity and femininity are often associated with gender and physical sex (often confused with the concept of gender) but are more accurately considered the idealized traits of performing or embodying certain gender identities. This comes into focus when we see people playing with the ideas and expectations of gender performance and the clarity of seeing … Continue reading Feminine and Masculine Game Mechanics
Unreliable narrators in books is a catch all term for characters that are unable to accurately look at and description their environments, situations, and the other characters they interact with. Most characters could be described as this as, unless the piece is written in a third person omnipresent point of voice, you can't get an … Continue reading Spec Ops: The Line, and Unreliable Narrators
The introduction of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim put "open world" on everyone's tongues. Suddenly, it became the next big thing to emulate in order to be successful. The Dragon Age series moved from semi-open mapped to their version of an open world in Dragon Age: Inquisition with very large maps that could be accessed via fast travel. But … Continue reading The Evolution of Open World Games
If you haven't played Dungeons and Dragons before, I highly recommend it, especially if you're a fan of games like Divinity: Original Sin, Dragon Age, or A Bard's Tale. These games are almost digital recreations of the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons by Wizards of the Coast, with some clear deviations due to the format in which you're playing. These … Continue reading Emulating Dungeons and Dragons
There's always been a race to develop the best, most realistic graphics. Avatar (2009) is a testament to how fast people will flock to the biggest development in the race to hyper realistic graphics. Even look at the fascination with the hyper realistic art style, often depicted or exemplified by including water to bend the light and still … Continue reading The Cost of Realism in Games
In games, we have different kinds of control over the story and/or assets and the related mechanics. The term operator simply means the player and what the player is able to control in the game. The diegetic actions of the operator is the literal manipulation of the game within the confines of the actual elements. … Continue reading The Operator
What does the machine control in a game? Well, besides nearly everything? Just like the operator (or player) the functions of the machine (or gaming engine/programming) can be split into two categories: diegetic and non-diegetic. Using Rimworld as an example again, a diegetic action for the machine is the interface or perceivable actions that are not … Continue reading The Machine
There's something great about original soundtracks for games and movies. As we find in The Silent Place, a horror film where sound isn't just for jump scares but a major component for the film's premise, sound is extremely important for visual works. The soundtrack for Mad Max: Fury Road sets a completely different mood than How to Train … Continue reading Music in Games
This might not be a tactic only used by Bioware, but they’re the one that use it the most notoriously as a AAA gaming developer. The original purpose of downloadable content was to add extra content to a story and milk a little extra money out of a game that’s already been released. Some DLC … Continue reading Integral Story as DLC: A Bioware Criticism
If someone can figure out how to make a characterless RPG, let me know. In the meantime, both the player character (customized or premade) and non-playing characters are an important aspect to role playing games, but just having characters doesn’t make a compelling story. While I’ll be straying into basic concepts also found in general story writing … Continue reading Making the Player Care
Video Games Deconstructed 