The Game Critique

So, I’m leaving this to last possible moment this year…again. But I have a better excuse than last time of not being able to decide. This time it’s because my time has been filled with other projects, the most notable, or at least the one that has been revealed was the rebirth of the Critical Distance podcast.

Suffice to say I also haven’t played all that many games from this year. I missed out on most if not all of the major releases and most of the secondary releases. This is all depending on your deification of AAA release and AA or A release. I also had a bit of trouble deciding on which game I thought was the best. There was no supreme standout like ’08 or at least a powerful shortlist like in ’09. As I said on the CDC podcast, this year seemed to be a bunch of lackluster releases. All had great promise and all seemed to trip over themselves in some way or another. Even those that some have said didn’t, I haven’t got around to playing yet. I’m still waiting for a laptop with a dedicated graphics card so I can play the Mass Effects and Metro 2033. Bayonetta, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Red Dead are all sitting in my play next pile having got them over the Christmas break.

It’s not surprising since I was broke for a good amount of the year and spent 3 full months getting reading for and taking a language class to graduate. Now it just sounds like I’m making excuses, let’s get on with it. There won’t be a long set up and handing out of awards, but before I announce my game of the year I’d like to get talk about my honorable mention.

Honorable Mention

Minecraft was the breakout hit of the year, literally coming out of nowhere to being a million dollar seller. The fact that or most of the year it was is alpha is absolutely incredible. The creative force behind the game comes from the player almost if not more so than the creator. Both the creative and the survival aspects of the game create a special sort of game that creates a unique and personal experience for every individual. There are many things about the game that subvert many of the notions of modern AAA gaming. There is no instruction manual requiring you either to figure it out before night falls or search the internet for only the most basic of facts about what can and needs to be done. There is no real goal once you create a basic shelter; you make your own fun. It’s the digital equivalent of going to the park. There are monkey bars, there are slides, there are swings, but the fun you get out of it is only what you put into it.

Before the October 31st update, I created two worlds and spent most of my time in large dungeons/cave complexes I found. In the second world I found a mountain and started to dig a D&D style dungeon before digging straight down and hit a large cave complex. I spent days exploring and ended up getting lost in circles and then three dimensional figure eights. I went further into the system where figure eights blended with more figure eights. Eventually I hit bedrock in several locations. I nicknamed it Barad dur. I didn’t even get to finish exploring it. I failed at building a bridge across a lake of lava.

I built another world after the October 31st update to see the new biomes and other features Notch had coded into the game. Unfortunately for all the universal praise I could give the game’s design, creation and otherwise soul it came with a memory leak. A basic, 16 bit game after a few minutes eventually monopolizes over half of my computer’s processor and third of my ram, over a full gig. I can play only with every other nonessential program turned off and few of the essential programs and only for a limited amount of time before the frame rate makes it unplayable. I wish I could still play the game and maybe it will be fixed by some update in the future. I hope so, because I’d like to continue extending my Barad dur and build my great wall. Because of this major technical hiccup I can’t really rate the game. Without this issue, it would have been my runner up, or maybe even my game of the year.

Runner-Up

Heavy Rain was and is a game plagued with problems and issues. The walking is stilted, the story is full of holes, actions scenes come and go that make little or no sense, characters are stupid and the dialogue wasn’t written or translated by a native English speaker. I think the game is great despite it’s flaws. For all that it does bad, it creates a world and sinks you into it. All modern AAA talk about immersion, Heavy Rain succeeds by having a story and set pieces that are quiet. Explosions and gunfights are not the word here, in fact when these things happen it breaks the immersion somewhat. The best scenes are those that allow quiet contemplation about what you are making these characters do.

The third trial is the most talked about scene in the game, so I’m sure no one minds if I go on about it as well. I cannot tell you the tension this scene filled me with. I can’t think of any movie or book made me feel so terrified or shaking by watching a man sitting in a chair. That’s really all you are looking at while you manage his breathing. Just so the screen will stop it’s slight shaking. If you succeed you are give a clean opportunity to cut off your own finger. The fact that the game sets this up, so you would okay with it, but became complicit. Yes, Metal Gear Solid 3 broke this ground, but that’s all it did. It broke the ground and it took a lot of people off their guard. The impact of the scene was inherited not really because of the story or action, but its impact is from the realization the game is making you pull the trigger. It crosses that line from QTE to moment, by virtue it was a basic mechanic of the game you spent hours mastering. In Heavy Rain, it is the same mechanic used for a large variety of actions. With this setup context is everything. The abstract and representational nature of the mechanics amplified the context and the actions we were taking.

The game also had something almost no other game had, which I was grateful for: quiet and slow moments. Many have unrightfully called the beginning boring. It was slow, that is not the same as boring. Modern gaming has set us up with certain expectations and when a game defies even one of them, every claims it is bad this or that without even looking at what the game was doing. Heavy Rain was giving us contrast. Action heavy scenes only have meaning if they can be contrasted with slower scenes of quiet intensity. For all the details that were Heavy Rain’s failing, its structure, something I’ve been harping on nearly all year, is excellent. It’s pacing is right on point to tell the story it was trying to tell and matched mechanics to suit it. Everything flowed together and builds a solid super structure on which they could hang the dressings. Pity they chose moth eaten rags, nearly pretty and shiny rags, but rags nonetheless.

It’s the complicity that I loved in Heavy Rain more than anything else. It create a situation where failure wasn’t the end all be all. Every ending was legitimate, from the saccharine sweet to the soul crushingly depraved and everything in between. It really was a what-if mystery. Maybe not so much with whodunit, if you were paying attention (I wasn’t paying close attention), but rather in what will happen next. It is a roller coaster, but not the Michael Bay type and thank goodness for that.

Game of the Year

Neptune’s Pride is an online real time strategy game that takes about a month to complete. It is slow moving RTS, with ships taking hours if not days to travel between stars. It’s rather bare bones with only you only able to upgrade the three attributes of a star: economy, industry and science. The first gives you more money in the daily pay out; the second gives you more ships per day and science, which makes research towards tech, go faster. Combat automatically happens and can be calculated ahead of time. There are no random chances to any part of this game. I’d call it the chess of RTS, but you aren’t given full or perfect information. You can only see the space with scanning range of your stars. You can contact the other players and can trade with them. This is where the game takes itself to the next level.

This is a game where you can lose friends or come to hate strangers. The game becomes more an exercise in trust and betrayal than it is strategy. You can get through the early game with strategy alone, maybe, but if you haven’t set something up, something in the wings you will be destroyed. I lost a game today, because I didn’t foster any sort of relationships with my neighbors and went first in everything to 5th place behind two opponents who had been put under AI for inactivity. No video game makes you so nervous to be away from your computer. No game so simple or basic pulls you win and gets you so invested in your empire’s survival.

The ludodecahedron set up a few games in the summer to duke it out. No game caused so much battling on twitter or googlewave as the virtual fighting we did in Neptune’s Pride. Only a rule system as deep as Neptune’s Pride with the added benefit of human cunning mix to create a truly personal and memorable experience. I mastered the strategy, but my undoing is when it comes to betrayal. When it’s time to invade my neighbor, I set up too late. On the other hand I have come in first in two games, with tactics I could regale you with like the master generals.

Neptune’s Pride, a game with real people pit against real people, with no flash or complexity is my game of the year.

It’s been a little over two years since I started The Game Critique. In the past year I wrote fewer posts than before, (only 24 this year) but they definitely have gone up in quality and length. Looking at the posts that I have planned and those that are half finished I find that I may be entering a phase of long form essays. I think and hope I finally may have found my niche and expertise in the critical community that I’ve long been searching in the dark for.

This year was also the year I finally graduated college. I have my BA in English from Boston University. I’ve also found that I enjoy reading massive amounts of games criticism almost as much if not more than playing games sometimes or writing about them. Thankfully this is a useful skill at Critical Distance where I’ve taken on a larger role as the year progressed. In the beginning, March as it were, I was just filling in for Ben as he gallivanted around GDC. It has now turned into a monthly thing. And as of two days ago I restarted the CDC podcast, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and turns out only took about a week to set up and complete. Both are efforts I will continue in the coming year if Ben will still have me. (It was a long 4 and half hours long.)

In looking back over the last year I realized I only wrote about three games specifically. ‘Where is the Last Third of Brutal Legend?‘ was the first game essay I wrote this year. In the post I challenged classics professor Roger Travis to tell me where I’m wrong in comparing Brutal Legend to the Greek epic. He did so in the comments and I’m grateful for it. Later in the year I managed to write a trio of posts on inFamous and its missed opportunities with each post focusing on different elements of the game. Something I should do with more games in the future.

An ongoing theme in my writing about games this year in the need for structure in games, or rather a need for solid structure in games. I feel too many games drop the ball on something so basic for reasons, I really don’t know what the reasons are. Storytelling structure, which by the way is different from plot structure, is something we have mastered a long time ago and continue to innovate to push it forward, while always adhering to the basics in other media. I sometimes feel the basics are ignored or unknown in the games industry.

You could say this all ties into the Games as Art debate and whether or not they’ve reached that level. Thanks to Roger Ebert a lot of you did and I took it upon myself, I still don’t know why, to catalog these responses and because some people cannot let go, am still cataloging responses. As trite as it is to hate the topic and cry out in exasperation every time someone brings it up, we should know well enough to only use that response with someone who legitimately should know better. A game journalist, a game critic, an industry insider, developer or publisher. To a vast majority of people this was a watershed moment. This was the first time anyone had ever had the idea proposed to them. The reason the topic keeps getting brought up, is because someone will come along, ignorant of all the conversation before hand and say, “well what about this?” We should not go “uugggghhhh,” throw up our hands and condemn them. We will have this debate again, and we should be as calm and reasonable as we were with Ebert. Or at the very least point them to my post. There’s enough reading material there to keep them quiet.

This year was the inaugural PAX East. I was there and have the photos the prove it. It was definitely the post with the most title changes ever, as I had to fix the number every time I did some edits in the text. I have no idea if I’ll go to the next one. If enough of the people I know end up going to be worth the trip, then I’ll be there.

Another debate that came up that more people are sick of than aren’t is the one about CLINK HOCKING’s term ludonarrative dissonance. I’ve already written my defense of the term. I also went ahead and wrote a full post response to one of the comments in said posts. Gears of War deserves the term and it deserved a full post unto itself.

Tom Bissell wrote probably one of the most important pieces of game criticism of the year and not just it came in the form of a hardcover book. It has exceptional writing, but I felt that it lacked focus in making its arguments to any particular audience. It seems to be a 101 of game criticism and yet sometimes doesn’t even go that far. But as Kirk Hamilton said on the podcast, “sometimes beautiful writing is enough.”

I wrote a great response to a piece of criticism regarding Final Fantasy VIII, that I managed to expand into a piece on what exactly criticism is and how many people’s narrow thinking of it is wrong.

I end this look back at some of my better work on the post I was most afraid to publish and which ended up being one of the pieces I’m glad I did. Critical Distance back in its birth was a bit of a wild west as everyone tried to figure out how to fulfill its purpose, once we figured out what its purpose was. Eventually we got the weekly roundups and they became longer and more in depth. But it seems few were aware of how this mystical process of choosing the best writing of the week was done. I’m glad I could shed some light on it. It’s even spawned a larger discussion near the end of the year in relation to game writing. A discussion we are only seeing the beginning of.

What do I have in store for next year? Well for starters I have an entire word document filled with post concepts, a few outlines and one post that is three pages long and isn’t even a quarter finished. A lot of these are posts that should have gone up this year, but I spent most of the summer studying for the last language class I needed to graduate and then the mad search for a job that I’m qualified for that no longer seems to exist. On the bright side I got a contract writing gig at Gameranx writing the news. That starts early next year. I hope to get Indie Game Spotlight back up, but if there is one thing I’ve learned I should make less promises when it comes to my writing. I don’t seem very good at keeping them.

Last week I was asked to take over the TWIVGB feature at Critical Distance by Ben Abraham. It was my sixth time. During the week I collected the links and pasted them into a word document for later aggregation as I always do and I began thinking about the way things are done with TWIVGB. I realized I had quite a lot of power over the content of each issue, even the ones I don’t write. That thought scared me slightly. If there is one thing I’ve learned, is having someone looking over your shoulder and calling you out is the best option. Then as the week went on a number of things happened that caused me to reevaluate everything. So this is going to be split into two sections. The first on a view of the process and the second on the particulars, using last week’s post as example.

The Collection

Every week since April 19th of last year Critical-Distance has put together a weekly feature collecting the best of the critical writing the internet had offered that week. That initial purpose has been stretched somewhat, at different times discarding the internet, week, critical and in certain cases writing parts of that mantra. Every week people send in links to Ben via twitter, e-mail, facebook and/or any other method of getting links to a person. Then he aggregates them. Sometimes he passes the responsibilities off to myself or so far Ian Miles Cheong, when he is either unavailable or too busy to do a good job. It is important to note that we do miss things every week. Even with our expansive RSS feeds (Ben’s outstrips mine by about a factor of maybe 100) and people sending in links plenty slips through the cracks. Whenever we find something has been overlooked we enter it into the next TWIVGB. Sometimes it was missed by a day, a week, a month or in one case half a year.

My point is we are happy to get suggestions, in my case a little relieved. I hate being a sole authority on something like this. The fact of the matter is, the audience of this blog and Critical-Distance’s TWIVGB has limited overlap. I have a tiny audience in comparison. In fact, most of the hits TWIVGB gets aren’t even from Critical-Distance, but from the feature’s republishing on GameSetWatch and Gamasutra, especially the latter. People who might have an interesting in critical game’s writing, but have not the time to look for it, to go to many different sites or even to wade through RSS feeds to get it. That is our real audience. There is a good chance that those who take an active role in game’s criticism, the majority of my audience have already read a good deal of the posts we link before TWIVGB ever gets published.

This is where I feel like I have more power on the content than I reasonably should. In any given week I submit anywhere from 60 to 90% of the links. I don’t submit everything I read, not even close. If I had to guess, I would say a little less than half. If I think it’s interesting and worthwhile to others I submit it for TWIVGB. Think about that, 60-90% of what I think is worthwhile and interesting.

This requires a little history lesson of about a year and half ago. Critical-Distance went through a period right after it’s inception where people thought it was in danger of becoming a closed circuit network and, to be specific, have a white, middle-class and male slant centered around certain people. These accusations and fears were not entirely unjustified. Near all the contributors and editors are white, middle-class, male and in time it dawned on us English speaking. The debate almost completely devolved into arguments and fighting with the end result being that a lot of the culture link round ups and debates disappeared and Critical-Distance shrunk it’s scope to critical compilations, now far more infrequent and TWIVGB, which has grown. It wasn’t all bad. At some point in that debate someone said something along the lines of:

Well if you don’t like it, give us something not white, middle-class and male centric.

Of course the intention was good, but absolutely put the wrong way. I forget the specifics and I know there were nuances, but I can’t be bothered to search for them. (They are available in the comments of a post somewhere in Critical-Distance’s archives.) It was understandably taken as a rebuke effectively meaning, “we are white, middle-class and male and can’t be bothered to write or include other points of view” instead of how I saw it as an admission of a weakness along the lines of “we are white, middle-class and male and don’t know anything else, please show us what we’re missing.” Thankfully a few of the commenters took it as a challenge or as something that needs fixing and in exchange for a smaller scope Critical-Distance, The Border House was born. A fair trade any day.

It was a contentious affair and is still going on in other parts of the web every day. I will not belittle it. Instead I want to head anything like it off at the pass as it were. Honestly, if I kept my mouth shut, no one would have noticed or complained, but I don’t feel right not bringing it up. With content creation there is the 99%-1% rule. Where dedicated 1% of users create the 99% of the content for everyone. We see this is mod communities, LittleBigPlanet and Critical-Distance’s TWIVGB. I’ve never been apart of the 1% before, but there is a difference between a mod community and TWIVGB. With the mod community it is a matter of a person or group of people creating what they want to create. With TWIVGB it’s a matter of revealing already created content for others. I will admit it; my references and beliefs of what is worthwhile and good influence what I submit. How could it not? It wouldn’t bother me one bit if the submissions was more proportioned among users. However, thinking about it more, there are times where a piece will get submitted more than once, from what I see on twitter, by different people. I do not know what Ben gets e-mailed, but that doesn’t seem the case for the most part.

Also, regardless of how much I submit, or how much the regular contributors submit we will not find all the best game criticism. The internet is just too vast and places that don’t talk about video games may have a one off that is interesting and insightful and we will miss it. A few weeks ago, the time before last when I took the reigns of TWIVGB I liked a work by a internet magazine about a solider and his reaction to the Call of Duty games in light of his tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. I didn’t wait and posted the link for all to see saying they should read it immediately. I got this response some minutes later and I quote,

@TheGameCritique where do you find this stuff?

You want my secret behind being able to find such an out of the way and off the game criticism beaten path. Trick question, the answer is I don’t. The editor of the magazine emailed the article/essay to me, because he hoped I would like it enough to spread it to my readership. He overestimated the readership of my site, but got lucky with regards to Critical-Distance. (I ended up working that week.) I would have never found it otherwise. I doubt any of the usual contributors would have found it, nor anyone I follow on twitter. The source was just so far out of way at a site that had never published anything relating to games before and I never heard of before to boot. Without that editor, we could have and most likely would have missed it.

I tell this story to highlight a point. This is an instance where we found the piece outside our comfort zones; the places we frequent, the people who frequent us. How many did we miss all those other weeks? I don’t know, but I know we did. Just three weeks ago I found a piece that was back from December of last year. It was interesting and on a blog that has since gone quite, but a blog no one had heard of before. We posted it that week some 10 months late. It doesn’t matter. If we find it late and it’s quality we will post it, we’ve proven that, but we can’t find it all. Ben was one person doing it by himself in the beginning. Then he asked for help. Then for a few weeks out of the year he passed off the reigns to Ian and myself. It is an impossible task for one man to do. It gets no more possible with three.

I use my RSS feed for nearly all my blog reading. It is a central location so I can find everything simple and easy. I don’t have to go to the 100 gaming blogs in there (Holy shit it’s 100 even as of writing this.) they come to me. Of course a number of them are dead, retired, or just on extended hiatus. Plus, I’m adding a new one on a nearly weekly basis. New quality criticism blogs are being created all the time. Sometimes I find them and sometimes they find me. (My twitter/site name causes this to happen a lot thanks to google.) Daniel Golding’s Mapping the Brainysphere is woefully out of date as Ben points out and it’s less than two years old. But because of my method of reading and gathering there are limits. I can’t read blogs that don’t have an RSS feed no matter how much I want to. (I’m looking at you Psychology of Video Games.) I also lose out on the comments, because they don’t appear and I can’t click on each item.

Early on I made a conscience decision to diversify my RSS feed as much as I could. I went out and searched for different opinions, view points, backgrounds, and approaches to criticism. I follow people who I fundamentally disagree with in regards to games and only seem to argue with. Having a different opinion doesn’t disqualify you from my RSS feed. Not having one, a blog that has died, or not having anything to say are my only disqualifying requirements. Even then some of the blogs/site I follow have little to no critical component, but are a vastly different viewpoint and that alone makes them worth following. Some are writing experiments on a single game. Some are places to work out opinion pieces for other sites. I have a diversity of blogs from all over the world, opinions and backgrounds.

And it is not enough.

You could call this a plea to help with our search and get your own voice in the selection process by sending us links. But we say that almost every week. All I’m really doing here is notifying people of a situation. I paint it in as truthful a light I can and let you make your own judgment. Most, maybe all of you will be fine with things as they are and what we lose in the process is acceptable given the nature of the situation.

Now comes the harder discussion.

The Aggregation

The post was going to end there when I had first conceived of it last week. Then I was asked to wire last week’s TWIVGB. All was going well until Saturday when I sat down to compile it. I started early around 4 pm so I could get it done long before midnight EST, which is the usual target time. Or at least is the target as I perceive it. 12 hours later at 4 am I wrapped it up, posted it for editorial review and went to bed. This is the story of what happened in those 12 hours.

To be fair it wasn’t the whole 12 hours, I had dinner, walked away from the computer for an hour or so to stretch, had to pick up ice cream for my parents. But even so my first week, the largest TWIVGB we had took 3 hour to compile and post. I got faster and could do it in under an hour and half. Even the time I promised to do it and ended up going to Boston to sort out my graduation (because BU bureaucracy is three different types of pain in the ass), had no wi-fi and ended up stealing it from various Panera Breads around campus. Even then it took an hour 45. So what happened?

I had my list of links set up in one word document and I began writing in the other. I quickly reread some of them to group the related ones together. Then I checked and got Ben’s email of everything that was sent to him. Most of it was what I had already collected. There were some new additions as there always are. I opened them and read them. Then over the course of the hours a few more were sent in to the twitter account. That is where the problem came from.

There were a total of ten pieces not already in my list. Four made it in. If a suggestion comes in, 99 times out a hundred it is included if not this week then the next week if it missed the cut off time. I rejected six in one week, each for a different reason. That is probably more than double than all the other weeks I’ve ever done combined. Those ten posts cost me about 10 hours.

The four that went in consisted of two I hadn’t seen before, one that I had open in my web browser but hadn’t gotten to read yet and the three part interview from Gamer Melodico that I had read but hadn’t added. The first three are understandable and probably would have been on my list had I read them before. But I want to talk about Kirk Hamilton’s interview. I don’t really read interviews with the view of a critical mindset for submission possibilities. Probably because most interviews are glorified PR stints, but this one was sent in, which means someone thought it was worth enough to be included. I added it.

In contrast we have the other six pieces that editorially I felt were lacking and opted to not include them. I’m going to go one by one and explain myself. Again I could avoid all of this by simply keeping my mouth shut.

The first was this one about Activision’s oversight on a preorder bonus of 360 avatar costumes. It was discriminatory, but the piece was short and didn’t say anything about it other than the problem existed. It also has an update showing the codes Activison released when they realized their mistake. Sexism in the industry, even in something as small as forgetting to have female avatar costumes, is a problem. I see at least a dozen posts each week pointing out instances and the faults in each instance. The thing is, all these posts do is point out the faults. Very few go beyond that and the ones I recommend are the ones that are more than two paragraphs pointing out that such and such exists. Pointing it out and not explaining or exploring the problem is not enough. The thing is, there are a number of different points in the post that if expanded and connected could have given a great picture of midnight launch experience from her end, but she doesn’t. Had I found and read this post during the week on my own I would never have given it a second glace. But that wasn’t the case. It was suggested, someone thought it was worth the time to read. Remember for the most part this isn’t for the critical gaming sphere. I read it and reread it about half a dozen times debating with myself. In the end I thought that while yes it points out an example of a larger trend it says nothing about it.

Second was a review of Fable 3. I’ll quote Ben from the email here.

We don’t normally include ‘reviews’ under the heading of criticism, but have a look and decide whether you think appropriate. I leave the decision to your capable judgment.

Aside: I’ve gained a reputation within Critical-Distance for my somewhat outrageous reading habits, continual quality suggestions, weekly diligence and willingness to step in to help. I’ve gotten props within in the TWIVGB posts several times for my contributions in collecting. In one instance Ben included a piece he didn’t think was worth much based on my recommendation alone and said so in the post, saying “Still, the piece comes recommended by Eric Swain, so that counts for something.” He has a lot more confidence in me than I have in myself, to the point that I never suggest anything I’ve written because of…ethics I guess. End Aside.

Point being I read the review at least three times looking for something beyond a normal consumer review. I’ve included reviews before in my TWIVGBs, one making a satirical point about reviews and the other as an example of what a review could be. This one had an interesting idea or two, but does nothing with them. He states a feature of the game, says something interesting about that feature and then stays with it for exactly one sentence before moving to the next feature or thing the game does. A lot of what I read does this. They set up something about game, make a very interesting point and never explore it. And they always seem to be a point that could be a whole essay in their own right. It used to make me bang my head against the wall for the missed opportunity. Now I’m sort of used to it.

The next two come from Bitmob. They have a habit of submitting everything slightly critical from their site that week. So we take everything with a grain of salt and carefully read them. They submitted four pieces this week. Two made it in and two didn’t. The two that didn’t were about explaining why developers or rather publishers keep secrets when it comes to their the flow of information regarding their games and the other talking about death in video games. The former in my opinion was common knowledge and just a stating of facts, (don’t know if they are all true or not, giving the full benefit of the doubt) and the later is about such a well worn topic that not only manages not to say anything new, but anything constructive at all. Again it is a matter of listing facts, and then making an interesting a point before walking away from it instead of saying anything with regards to that point. I had to read it again to make sure I didn’t miss anything or there wasn’t a second page somewhere.

It really is noticeable, especially with regards to the other two pieces they submitted. One about a system of exploring the verisimilitude of games through the mechanic’s feel between the player, controller and game with an example to demonstrate. The other looks at the topic of betrayal, one not covered often, through the eyes of personal experience and the similarities between the feelings in what boarders on New Games Journalism. And no I don’t think either of those are exaggerations the big words make them sound like. They weren’t exceptional works that will be looked back for weeks or months to come like some I could mention that get reference again and again and probably would be included in an anthology, but they are worth including.

Finally we come to the last two, both from Electron Dance about amateur games. These were the time suckers of the evening. Both posts have something in common. Both are another type I see a lot of during a week. The here is a game, here is what it’s like, it’s really good, give it a try. They are the equivalent of the AAA press releases, but for indie/amateur game that no one has seen yet. Now these are the bread and butter for the independent, bedroom programmers towards getting exposure and I will not denigrate them one bit. As critics it is our job to find gems and point them out, but that is all they are. They aren’t critical; these posts point out a game’s existence and tell you what it is about. They don’t say anything about the game itself. Now the two posts in question do go a step further. The same step I mentioned above. The author makes an interesting point for a sentence or two and then walks away from it. Again this is like an IGN writer giving their two cents about a AAA game’s press release.

It didn’t help that the game in question were Marvel Brothel (NSFW), which I would have included despite the content if the post had said something about the game in any amount of depth. It didn’t help that by the time I got the link the game had been taken down due to copyright infringement. I will make no value judgment on a game I have not played, but it really would have taken some writing on the game instead of just about it to be included.

The other was about a game called Dungeoneer (NSFW, trigger warning for torture, trigger warning for rape, trigger warning for other vile things I’m not sure I have name for) had the same problems as Marvel Brothel in that it says little about the game before moving on. Again it’s okay to give attention to game, but not for a critical aggregation. I will admit there was a large personal preference in not including it for content. I was intrigued by what the game could offer as a unique experience, but I will never touch it with a 100 foot Ethernet cord if I can help it. I wrote and experimental game idea about torture for Blogs of the Round Table, and even that made me feel physically ill. I don’t want to think what a game like this would do to me.

Six rejections. This post is about editorship as much as anything else so I want to go a week further back and look at a blog post Ian Miles Cheong chose to include. It is about Minecraft as a secret Christian game meant to sucker the larger player base in to the word of the Lord. Now a Christian reading of Minecraft would be interesting in it’s own right. Criticism is as much as what you read into a game as it is what the game is about. I can understand some of the insight as legitimate, but some of it is just bat shit like the Alpha in Minecraft Alpha as a reference to Jesus being the Alpha and the Omega, when really it’s a software term for working first draft and as soon as Notch fixes enough bugs and programs enough features in will become Minecraft Beta anyway. Or the outrageous nudge nudge wink wink he gives Notch for secretly putting all this Christian stuff in to subtly win people over. The thing about readings is you can support most things. If I wanted I could say and support the exact opposite and given that he lives in Sweden, a country with a history towards Christianity and I could make a case, as stupid as it is. Also, this isn’t a joke post I looked at some of the rest of the site and the guy is as serious as they come.

I wouldn’t have included it, but Ian did. What does that say? We who write TWIVGB have a lot of power over the many, many people who read it for the articles. As much as I hate it, we are the gatekeepers. Our writing not only determines what posts get included, but also helps how many hits it gets. Which posts do you think get the most hits? The ones with quotes. I know this because one week I had three posts in TWIVGB all about inFamous. One got a quote. Guess which post got three times as many hits and the others. The size of the link also effects how many people click on it. A link that is a sentence is more likely to get clicked than one that is a single word. Of course, even I answer to people when it comes to TWIVGB. I have gatekeepers myself. What I write still has to be confirmed by an editor. I assume they read it first. Plus, like I said Critical-Distance is the small fry of the three places TWIVGB gets posted to. GameSetWatch and Gamasutra where most people get it from go through an editing process of their own. On one occasion my slightly snarky comment got cut out and another my editorializing went through as is, so I don’t know. There is nothing we can really do about this. A human being is still writing TWIVGB and these human beings have opinions. All I can do is be open.

I wrote TWIVGB, I rejected suggestions and I have explained myself satisfactorily, I hope. I don’t want to wish I kept my mouth shut. I leave the final word to Ben Abraham, the editor I answer to.

It’s a hard line to walk though. Between being comprehensive and also discriminating in linking to really quality stuff. Anyway, I need to go get ready.

countdown to zero divx online

One final note: I know what it’s like seeing one’s name recognized for the work you’ve done, and what a thrill it is to see something you’ve written linked like that even in something as small as TWIVGB. So please take credit for your work. Don’t make me hunt into the deepest reaches of your site for a name or try the Purloined Letter gambit and hide it in plain sight, but disguised. Also, I realize this might be an issue, but I like to know the author’s gender, so I’m not that guy, the guy who sees Sam and writes ‘he’ when the full name is Samantha. I don’t want to be that asshole.

I’ve been on a documentary binge as of late (Thank you Netflicks) having watched 6 in the last 24 hours at the time of writing. As it so happens while watching them I noticed a correlation in the behavior of the subjects of the majority of the documentaries and players of video games. The documentaries in question, or rather the aspects of the documentaries I’m going to talk about, all deal with the idea of responsibility. Of course it’s very easy to point to who is responsible, but then the question becomes ‘why did/do these things happen in the first place?’ The subjects, Corporate America, are similar to video games in that they abdicate responsibility by enduring none of the consequences of their decisions.

For those of you who do not follow my twitter feed, the documentaries in question are:
-Maxed Out
-Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
-Food, Inc.
-Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Each of these films at some point spotlight companies looking out for their profit margins to the detriment of their customers and employees. One of them pointed out, I think it was Food, Inc., that companies make these decisions because their decisions do not affect anyone making them. Sometimes it is insidious and one has to wonder why anyone could make these choices. Sometimes it’s about unintended consequences, such as rampant lethal bacteria in our food due to an effort to sanitize the animals by overusing antibiotics.

I’m not going to lecture or inform, the movies above to a good enough job covering their subjects without my input. I do want to point out the correlations corporate decisions and in game ones. Neither affects the decision maker. Corporate executives aren’t affected, because they exist in a whole other world to those they affect and gamers, because they can simply reload a save. Many others have already talked about death as a non-consequence and the many ways to get around the ludonarrative dissonance of it. But anytime something happened you don’t like you can go back to a previous save and rectify the decision.

Without permanence, consequence is taken out of the picture. Without consequence, action lacks meaning.

The Fable series is a perfect example of the lack of power decisions can have, because you alter the world’s perception of you from good to evil and back without having to reload. Any decision you make is non-lasting and can be erased by simply doing something else.

Heavy Rain has some interesting ideas on how to circumvent the notion by not ending the game at any point and allowing it to continue despite player choice or even death. The game continues and adjusts accordingly. Of course in both of these examples we are looking at story based interaction.

Failure in ludic games in fairly straight forward since the continued interaction in evident, but that can be the equivalent of the corporate bottom line. Anytime a game seeks to go beyond the goal of continued play it has difficulty in creating meaningful consequences that either have an effect or aren’t infuriating enough for the player to turn off the game.

I thought it was an interesting fact that corporate executives and gamers would have this in common. I think the fact that we don’t have a solution to either one is telling about our view on consequence and responsibility. Our mentality is: if it doesn’t affect me, it doesn’t matter.

So what is my game of the year? Well unlike the last two years when I asked myself that question, there was a clear winner. In 2007 it was Portal and in ’08 it was Metal Gear Solid 4. There were plenty of other good games out those years, but those two to me were just obvious. This year has no such easy stand out, hence the lateness of this post. Just to be clear, I have not played everything that came out, not even all the better than decent AAA titles, so this really is a personal pick. But even so, among the games I played I haven’t decided which is the best at the time of writing this post. I’m hoping that getting my thoughts down and explaining why I thought each game was so great that I’ll be able to choose. I was able to narrow it down to 5 finalists, and I am a shameless showman if nothing else, so in true award show style here are the nominees:

Brutal Legend

I wanted this game ever since I first heard about it, when I was looking up what Tim Shafer’s next game was going to be. When I heard the concept all I could think to say was: ROCK ON! There has been a lot of criticism directed at the game, though to be fair it would be better directed at the marketing. Despite that and a few control issues the game is awesome. Of course I am a metal head so that may explain some part of my excitement and love for this game. I love driving around looking at the scenery and listening to the music. You can feel the creativity just ooze from the title. Everything about the game is epic and the Tim Shafer humor doesn’t hurt it either. No game since the original God of War has me leaping up in victory like a Viking warrior. Any game with that can do that purely by its pathos is a winner in my book.

Dragon Age: Origins

I’ve been called biased towards this title, because of my ungodly love for Baldur’s Gate, but honestly I wasn’t expecting the second coming with this title. I think I kept my expectations well within reason for Dragon Age. I knew it was going to be another generic fantasy setting and the plot was going to involve saving the world from some evil demonic creatures. But in a way that’s good, because it means they could really nail the details without having to explain the elves, dwarves and the rest from scratch. I haven’t finished the game. It’s long and I haven’t had the time needed for it, but from what I have played of it Dragon Age has some of the greatest storytelling of any game I’ve played. It sucks you into a world and I think may be the first game where I decided roleplaying was a higher priority than making sure I chose an optimal dialogue option or armor. In fact I got rid of armor that hindered my enjoyment of playing my character.

Flower

Sublime is a word that gets thrown around a lot when talking about Flower. But more than anything else, something I had forgotten until I booted it up the other day, it’s a peaceful game. The lovely serenity that permeates the entire experience also sinks into you while playing. It’s an effort of simplicity with controls that even my dad could figure out on the modern Dualshock. The metanarrative of naturalism and dreams somehow meld into the nature of the game and are a reminder of our own dreams and desires.  It also represents the concept that maybe we all need to slow down a little. It’s one of the few games that just make me feel peaceful. The game may be short and can be beaten in three hours or so, but if you did, you’ve missed the point.

Small Worlds

Never heard of it, check it out. It’s a game that will take you at most 20 minutes to play, but after I finished it I immediately refreshed and played again. I hesitated putting it among my best games of the year, because it was a quick flash game for a competition and debated whether or not its seemingly insubstantiality made it worthy of being a contender. Then I remember that a game is a game and it came out between Jan 1st and Dec 31st of this year. The fact that it makes me question myself given its humble origins and that it made my top 5 says something about the game. Two weeks after playing it, I went and played it again. There’s barely a narrative and no characters, yet somehow it elated me, confused me, cooed me and chilled me to the bone. From the basic idea of exploration came a game that said more than any number of space marines could hope to say.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Again I have to warn all about my potential bias towards this title. I loved the first one and love pulp adventure. I’ve taken classes on the genres and have studied the style. So my love of Uncharted 2 is no mystery. It puts you into the shoes of an adventurer in the vein of Indiana Jones and Flash Gordon on a quest of riches, greed, villainy and the extra-natural. The action set pieces are wonderful and the scope of the game so grand you can’t help but feel like you are on a wild ride. And despite what anyone says, it is well written and well voice acted. Yes it’s not Shakespeare, Faulkner or The Godfather, but then it’s not trying to be. It’s about sending you on an adventure and having a rip-roaring time along the way.

And the winner is:

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Dragon Age: Origins

A year and a fortnight ago I started this site from the idea that I wanted to critique games, as one would do to a book or movie, looking at what they mean. It is hard to believe that it has been a full year. In that time I’ve learned about the larger spheres of critical communities: the brainysphere, the iris network, the border house and their overlaps. I like to think I’ve made some friends in that time and haven’t totally ticked anyone off with my constant need to argue and debate.

I’ve learned more about the nature of criticism from these astute people, many of them amateurs, than I have from my entire schooling. So to all the people to the right in the ludodidecahedron, this is my thanks to you. For teaching me and putting up with me.

I’ve just gone back over the last year and what has happened on this blog, a lot of it connected to what happened in the critical circles and the gaming culture at large. I don’t know if it is coincidence or not, but I’ve actually played less games this year, the first year I began critiquing them in any ordered manner, than in the previous years. And most of the games I’ve played were not from this year, but what I did do I have to say I am really proud of.

I know anything I could say about the nature of my being a critic I already covered earlier this year. So I wont go into any manifesto talk, but rather talk about some of my better writing this year.

In looking back over my game essays I realized more ink was spilled over Prince of Persia than any other game. A game I ostensibly disliked and felt insulted by, you can read here. My other game essays this year that I am proud of were on Beyond Good & Evil, again can be read here and a post on Flower with it’s twin linked in the post.

Of course I also wrote about the goings on around gaming sphere, throwing my two cents in where I thought necessary. Like on the Citizen Kane issue that erupted into a meme almost overnight. I asked where all the war games were and wrote an epic length response to Danc’s three false constraints. (I swear I’ll figure out that IP issue.)

While QWERTY may be dead, he did leave a legacy. Ok, not so much a legacy, more of a lot of WTF moments. But he had at least one or two good posts. And I always give credit where credit is due. Originally it was supposed to be a weekly feature on the blog, something to anchor it to some sort of schedule. Several months after QWERTY’s demise I started the Indie Game Spotlight. Though it has been sporadic for now, at least it has been more favorably received.

Despite some horrendous setbacks and some annoying setbacks I think I didn’t do too badly for an inaugural year. In looking over my categories, and this has more to do on my end that yours, while most are self explanatory others need clarification. Game Essays, Critical Responses, External Sources are self-explanatory. Recent Posts is the way my system orders the posts correctly on the front page. I got knocked a few times for posts labeled under Thoughts being not as well thought out or being wastes of time. In part I think that’s because of their schizophrenic nature. Some are just meandering thoughts about games in general that came to mind and I wrote down, while others are full fledged essays. In the New Year I am going to fix that. Thoughts will be the quick posts dashed off, while those that are more essay like, not tied to a specific title will be under a new category. I’m thinking of calling it Game Issues.

Finally there is my writing itself. While improving quality is a forever ongoing process that can be seen even over this blogs short existence, content is another matter. As of the time of writing this in 2009 I’ve posted only 43 times. With more time on my hands and presumably more disposable income I will try to write more on games, especially more game essays. Also, while there is nothing wrong with looking back and critiquing old titles, I will try and stay more in the current conversation. I will also try to keep to the plan in the new year of getting Indie Game Spotlight to be a weekly feature. It will be better for the blog and me as a gamer. And I’ve been telling a lot of people of a series of posts on the issue of formalism in gaming; I will try and keep to that as well.

In short, great year mostly spent on the old stuff. A good first year, but hopefully more content and better content in the next year and the next decade. Speaking of which, I’m putting off my decade list until the decade is actually over and I’ve gotten the chance to play some of the contenders I’ve missed. Next post will be my Game of the Year and then I’ll take off a week to actually game.

I’ve been playing Battlefield 1943 a lot lately. It’s the first shooter I’ve played in a long time. I am usually a single player game kind of guy and usually shun multiplayer modes, unless the person is sitting right next to me. But I tried out the demo and I was hooked in the free half hour it gave me and immediately bought the unlocked game. Playing it lead me to a realization.

The game is great, I have to say it is the most intricate and detailed game of checkers I’ve ever played.

What I mean by that, if you read the title of the post, is that it is not a war game in feel or purpose, but really is a complex game of checkers where three interchangeable classes, literally if you find a fallen backpack, fight over five strategic points on a map. Dying is only a momentary annoyance, but it would be worse if it were anything else in a multiplayer game. I like the game don’t get me wrong, but that is all it is, a game.

Regardless of a few fleeting moments it ends up being a games of checkers and wack-a-mole. In fact I think I can extend that to any game purporting to be about war. As noted over at Experience Points, and HitSelfDestruct there is an absence in civilians that would engender certain consideration on a real battlefield. Beyond that I find that a majority of games with a war backdrop put you in the position of an Ubermench, a super soldier that would put Captain America to shame. You take over entire enemy bases, kill entire divisions and disrupt the manufacture of war machines that could turn the tide of battles.

For power fantasies like those that try to emulate 80s action films that’s fine and expected, but most of these games have their influence in real life conflicts (eg. World War II games) or base their fictional conflict on the machinations of real conflicts (eg. Killzone 2 being World War II in Space).

Medal of Honor: Frontline, a classic in the World War II shooter sub genre, hold to a realistic depiction of the war with the first few levels with the storming of the Normandy beaches and assault on the bunkers, but once that is over the game sends you on a number of solo missions to disrupt major military instillation behind enemy lines.

I wonder if it is possible to have a reasonable war game that puts you in the shoes of a real soldier. With the constraints that the player has to be able to succeed and for something to be happening on screen at all times that the player can have an effect on, it seems unlikely.

In narrative games, the player has to win. Any losses are experienced through cutscenes after the player has achieved victory in the game itself. The reason there is no game where you play a Nazi is less to do with the moral ambiguity of the premise and more to do with the fact that they LOST THE WAR. A player doesn’t play to lose, so they cannot play the losing side of a conflict unless you are going to allow them to play with the facts of history like some RTSs do or have that loss portrayed in an end of game cutscene to show despite all their efforts they still lost.

Also, the concept that the player has to have an effect on the game world is not an unreasonable one; it is the basis of the entire medium. In a firefight, for example, it is very reasonable to have the player shooting enemies, have an effect on the outcome of the firefight. But in a war game that tries to be about the conflict itself, it seems to translate that the individual player, a normal soldier, having an effect on the outcome of the war. I can understand how that might work in a strategy game where you are taking the role of a Commander or General, but it is far fetched to think that an individual private’s efforts will determine the outcome of the sociopolitical sphere of the western world.

Then there is the fact that in a medium about interaction. War, at first glance, seems like a great place to set the game, until you realize what war actually is. War is long bouts of boredom interrupted by a few moments of sheer terror.  Are you going to have long bouts of boredom in a video game? No. The game has to cherry pick the moments of action a soldier would feel and we understand that as the nature of the medium. Therefore it is about how those moments are portrayed. Unfortunately, with regularity, war video games are an extension of the power fantasy video games. They put military actions up on a pedestal and glorify war. The glory to be had isn’t even in the vein of the Homeric epic where it is in death and being immortalized that glory is gained, but in the vein of Hollywood bad asses where it is earned from victory and being able to laugh in the distance at their fallen foes.

To put it simplistically, war video games are more The Green Berets, than All Quiet on the Western Front or Platoon or Apocalypse Now. Hell I’d even take the Saving Private Ryan version of a war video game. I would like to see something that recognizes or acknowledges the horrors and realizations of war rather than glorifying it.

I put it to designers like this: a soldier has few tools and uses them as trained when deployed, it is up to intelligent men to deploy the soldier intelligently. Or to put it in terms of video games, the player has few tools and will use them and it is up to the designers to set the situation and tone of the game. The message can be delivered and like everything else in video games it is going to be from the presentation.

So, yes I will continue to play my game of virtual World War II checkers, but I don’t want to be one of the few people left that realize war is hell before going into battle. There is more anti-war media in every other medium for a reason. War is not pleasant, war is not fun and I worry that if video games don’t find a way to deal with it beyond mechanical interface that we will be left behind.

Gaming Made Me started with the crew over at RocksPaperShotgun and the various designers they asked, and then others in the middle circle have taken up the question of which video games have made them who they are. Michael McBride talked about how discussing such information will have your audience better understand who you are and where you’re coming from when they read your analysis. I’m willing to one step further and say it’s an excellent method of self-examination so you can understand yourself better, see any biases you might have and write better critique in the long run. I figured it was my turn after last post’s self-searching nature, plus it felt like a good exercise

So here we go.

Streets of Rage 2 – Sega Genesis – 1992

This was the first console title I ever owned for the first console I ever owned. It came packaged in and as soon as I opened it I plugged it in and immediately began playing. I remember on my first try though I picked Max, because he was the toughest and buffest looking character of the choices. I got the three-button control scheme pretty quickly and soon succumbed to a Game Over screen before I had even beaten the first section of the first level. My next major memory of the game was in co-op and how a friend and I learned the lesson of friendly fire and collateral damage. We divided up the screen; he would take the top and I would take the bottom. We also divided the health and money as evenly as the game would allow. We could never agree on weapons if there was only one. Finally my last major memory of that era was late one Sunday evening when I finally made it to the 8th stage again and after much effort and bad beats I finally finished off the last boss and got that stage clear. I cheered and hollered and jumped up and down. After the closing cut scenes and credits I was presented with the top scores board and then the Press Start to Play screen.

A while back I located, setup and plugged in that game and found none of it had left me. I still understood the tricks to beating certain bosses. I still remembered the timing to do infinite punches and most importantly I still remembered where most of the secret 1up items were. There are few games I know as well as I know Streets of Rage 2. Thanks to the Genesis collection I can play it whenever I want and in HD. I get excited whenever I hear the “dun dun duh duh de dun duhh eh eh” 80s style riff of the opening level.

In looking back what I find interesting was my initial reaction to the game. Or rather how I responded to what it presented me. The opening that sets the scene is done in showing a pixilated NYCish city in the background and a text scrawl that is the story ala Star Wars. It ends with an evil mastermind’s face and hands appearing like a puppet master over the city. I ignored the text. I ignored the story. I had no idea what was going on and who I was. All I knew I learned from the gameplay. I was the good guy and everyone else was the bad guy. That’s all you really need to know as the entire game plays out like an extended final fight scene in an 80s action movie with all the first and second acts that would take up screen time done in the opening crawl. Later play-throughs I would skip that text crawl section entirely, until I beat the game that first time. The next time I sat down to play I stopped and read the whole thing. I didn’t fully understand, I was 8, but I actually cared about the story after having seen the ending and wondering who that extra character was they rescued. I saw the resolution and then I wanted to know exactly what was resolved. Even as fantastical and unbelievable the story sometimes seemed to be getting, the details in setting forced the player to fill in the blanks about what was going on. More than any other game Streets of Rage 2 introduced me to the concept of video games as a narrative medium. I didn’t understand it like that back in, but from then on I always wanted to know why I could or was doing something rather than just what could I do.

Goldeneye – N64 – 1997

Arguably the best movie to video game adaptation ever made, this set the original standard for FPSs on the consoles and where nearly all of my video game hours during middle school went. I beat the game on easy and then spent years trying to beat the levels on the higher difficulties. I would use the train level as others use a stress ball after a bad day at school. However, that is not where most of my time went. Most of it went to the multiplayer. Because of its multiplayer this is probably the game I have sunk more hours into than any other. Three friends and myself would all sit in front of the same screen shooting the hell out of each other at my house, at a friend’s house or at the local youth center. I like many others got the N64 blister working that analog stick.

Many games have had same screen multiplayer. What did I gain from this one in particular? I could call it a version of emergent storytelling. The same four people would play over and over. Eventually we developed favorite levels and favorite weapon stocks.  Soon we found our favorite match: proximity mines in the Aztec Temple with no time or kill limit. Beyond that we began choosing the same avatars and for every kill some of us supplied our own catch phrases. “I spit on your corpse” and “I am the lion in the jungle” were two of them. We had our own personalities in these death matches. We never got bored of playing essentially the same match over and over, because it would never be the same match.

The moment that remains in my mind to this day is where the game had been going on for a long time; I’d like to say an hour or so. The entire map has been littered with mines and if the game had destructible environments it would not be standing anymore. I stocked up on proximity mines in the large upper hall, planted a few more around and then realized I could not move without dying. I couldn’t go forward because of the mines I just planted and I couldn’t go backwards because of mines planted by others maybe 20 minutes ago. I saw one of the doors open on the far side and silently said ‘no.’ He entered and was instantly killed by the explosion. That explosion was followed by another and another and another. He had set off a chain reaction that crossed the entire hall. Just before it hit me I tried to escape and died a fiery death. That sort of thing cannot be planned and have the same effect. We were amazed and then kept on playing.

Yes the game’s graphics don’t hold up that well, but it was a milestone and everything else about the game does. Last year my friends and I went back to the game and dumped a few more hours into it. We tried a few new modes and weapons. It was still as good and as fun as ever.

Baldur’s Gate – PC – 1998

This is the grand daddy of them all. This is my all-time favorite game. It is also the best video game RPG ever made. But this about influence not quality. I dumped a lot of hours into this game as well, the big difference being that I’ve never beaten it, nor even come close. The game has so much content that I had to go off the beaten path and explore every section into the farthest wiles and deepest depths of danger and death. I went to the absolute limits of the map boarders. I went through every nook and cranny exploring every part of every map. I would uncover dangers I could not handle, run away or reload and come back, when I was ready so I could continue. This is the first video game to create such a complete world, one that seems to live and breath with so many unique characters. Even the repeatable no name citizens seem to adequately fill the world. What I love is unlike so many others are that the story allows such exploration. There is no immanent end of the world. The story is epic, but it is very personal. People are after you and you have to hide from them/fight them. Only you and your party care and some of the party members don’t even care about you and are there just for their own agendas. No one else in this world is invested in you. They have their own problem and their own lives. There are also references to an even wider world that extends the very large boarders of the world to locals like Amn, Waterdeep and Neverwinter. I was pulled into this world like no other game before it.

In part I think it may have to do that the game is based of the Forgotten Realms campaign world. The Sword Coast was already heavily detailed and much of the history, culture, and important world building were already in place. The game took the license and did everything it could to it. Over the years I had to restart the game due to bad saving choices, computer changes and faulty installs. Each time I played those first few chapters I find even more details and content that somehow escaped me on those previous ventures. For example, in one instance you meet an inane half naked idiot talking and one of the responses is as follows:

“Ok, I’ve just about had my FILL of riddle asking, quest assigning, insult throwing, pun hurling, hostage taking, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, and felons that continually test my will, mettle, strength, intelligence, and most of all, patience! If you’ve got a straight answer ANYWHERE in that bent little head of yours, I want to hear it pretty damn quick or I’m going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn’t touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!”

After reading that there was no way I could not choose it. It’s a line that I make a point to keep memorized. The old man’s response went along the lines of: “Well if that’s how you’re going to be.” He went on to give one last fact that made utterly no sense. Until I read some book on a random shelf and what he said clicked. It sent a chill through me. It is that kind of interconnectivity that you just don’t find just anywhere or I think even anywhere else. Nevermind that the dialogue choice is itself the best critique of the RPG and fantasy genres ever. I often find myself wondering why a game doesn’t try a morose and utterly depressing character choice? Why isn’t there a character who isn’t happy to see adventurers? Why isn’t there a quest that solves itself while you look on? Why does everyone have to know you are the hero and not some shulb? Or a quest where the quest giver doesn’t want you to complete it for non malevolent reason? And then each time I come up with something I stop and realize whatever example I was lamenting about had already been done in Baldur’s Gate. It was just so big and full in my eyes that despite any problems I felt like there was a world there I could live in if I could crawl into the screen.

I scoured my memories trying to figure out what games effected me in some way. The ones that influenced the way I react to them or even those that shaped my current tastes. I remember games lost to time. I remember games that probably wont show up anywhere on the internet if you do a search. I thought I knew what the first video game I played was, but going further and further back I realized how long video games have actually been apart of my life. I remember Win 95, I remember the autumn leaves wallpaper of Win 3.11 that I could only get to through a DOS command. I remember my Genesis, I remember my Game Gear, I remember my earliest electronic tutors and yes even my family’s Apple II in all its black and green glory. From King’s Quest VI to Myst to Doom to Wolfenstein 3D to Pixelart to Reading Rabbet. I remembered so many games I’d forgotten about and the time spent with them. It was wonderful sitting down to figure out which games stuck with me, which ones my mind thought deserved to be remembered and which ones Made Me.

Usually I take the criticism silently and appreciatively and I still do, but after more than seven months I’m still getting the same comment. “I can’t wait to see where your going with your blog.” It is a little annoying that after all this time my blog still feels schizophrenic enough that I haven’t fallen into any sort of groove yet. I felt that I had to spend some time examining my thoughts and my opinions of critiquing in a way I have never done so before and probably should have done in the first place. I sat down and thought about what exactly where I want to go with this site. First I want to clear up something that for the most part isn’t a problem, but I think in some cases it is causing some subconscious determinations about me. It will make sense in minute.

The name of the site is what it is, because when I was setting up everything I needed a site name and URL. I couldn’t come up with anything decent that wasn’t already in use. A friend of mine, who coincidentally is also the man who set up most of the behind the scenes infrastructure and my editor over at the CreativeFluff design blog, suggested GameCritique.com. A straight to the point name and almost a mission statement unto itself. It was taken. TheGameCritique.com was not. I laughed at the time that the name made me sound overly pretentious and I even wrote, when introducing it elsewhere, that you could not find a more pretentious name. Recently after a talk with Corvus Elrod on IRC some months ago that rather than the name be ridiculed or chuckled at as I thought it would be, I was being taken more seriously and it seemed more was expected because of the name than I was delivering or could. In other words to some people the name of the site made them think I had the answers. I’m sure most of you think that that isn’t the case, but I think the name is subconsciously affecting the people I discuss and debate with.

Which in the most roundabout way to lead me to my point. I do not know everything or really much of anything. If you second-guess me, then you can be sure that I am second guessing myself. I am learning on the job as it were. Back in November I could not have argued the thematic relevance in Prince of Persia, in January when I wrote that post I could not have argued and defended my theory of populous power in Beyond Good and Evil and when I wrote that one I’m sure I could not argue whatever is coming up next. I am continuing to evolve, so yes it may always be ‘I can’t wait to see where it goes.’ Doesn’t make it any less annoying that it’s always about where I’m going and never arriving.

However, I do take criticism and I like to think I take it well. I am going to address a few of criticism of my site.

QWERTY is now on indefinite hiatus. While previous entries had some point behind them, mostly ridiculing the argument of the week. Though this was lost on a lot of people, as he never gave context or back information for the satire, a problem in itself. And at the end of his run he wasn’t even trying and wasting my time as well as yours. I said at the beginning it was an experiment and was on a trial basis. The trial is over and QWERTY is done.

I have been told I have a fear that some bloggers have of giving specific examples. This has mainly to do with the fear of spoiling stories for people. I don’t like it to happen to me and I transmit that desire to others. When talking directly to a single person I can limit myself to what is necessary, because I either know or can ask if they’ve played a game and/or how far they’ve gotten. On the internet, however, anyone can read it and understandably it causes more fear of spoiling anything. It’s never been brought to my attention that I was doing this, so yes I will make an effort to stop doing that.

Finally the comment that made me think the most, and gets at the heart of what I want this post to express. I was told I don’t cover design aspects of a game when talking about them. This comment to me was saying that somehow I was doing it wrong. That my criticism was weak or invalid for not talking about them. Two things, one in certain arguments the design may have nothing to do with the argument. Secondly I rarely do arguments that have to do with design. I don’t feel I know not enough about it to discuss it intelligently.  Plus, when I do focus on it, I have an agreement that such posts go to CreativeFluff.com.

Which leaves me to explain what is left for this site. I said before I am an English major, that is how I will approach TheGameCritique. I look at video games as cultural artifacts. I look at them from the culture and creator that produced them. I look at the work to see what it is saying about the world and culture around it. Video games are the next art medium that is a fact. What that means or what it will look like when it comes to pass is another matter and another discussion entirely. My critique is not about is it good or bad, but what and why.

It is important to know where a critic is coming from when they critique otherwise they’re just sound bites. Critics do come from somewhere and look at things in certain ways. If anything I think I focus on Animist and Iconoclast nature of criticism. That will loosely associate with the bottom right and top right respectively in the graph above. I leave Classicist and Formalist readings to others.

Thank you for putting up with me for the last thousand or so words. I needed to get that out of the way before I can continue on and get back to work. If it got a little too ivory tower there at the end I apologize, but links to the various terms are provided if needed.

I try to be civil. I try to be nice and understanding to everyone. In other words it takes a lot to piss me off. Thank you to the asshole that broke into my room and stole my PlayStation 3. Thank you for making me have to take time out of my already packed and less than bright day to file a report and remove all credit information from my account. Thank you for changing my view of the world and making me feel no longer safe in my own room. Thank you for actually going out of your way to figure out which closed door was unlocked and which one contained an empty room so you could steal their stuff. Believe me this is one of those times I really wished I got back early so I could pound your face in. And most of all thank you for teaching me what has to happen, what a person has to do to make me hate them. Asshole, my friend, you have accomplished a rare feat in the world. You have managed to make me hate another human being. A feat that many of my friends sometimes don’t think is possible. I was going to put a real post up today. I was planning on getting one out every day this week. I had more than enough material. But somehow it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. I’ve had a busy day that wasn’t over yet and thanks to you got completely derailed. 5 hours later I find myself in an increasing state of pissed off and writing this instead of everything else I could be doing and should be doing. This was a bad day for me already, so thank you asshole for making it even worse. So I will put this in a way you can understand me. You want the police to find you, because you don’t want me to find you. I have enough stress without having to wonder if I’ll get what’s mine back and having to wonder if I have deal with this shit ever again. I don’t like having to lock my door just to go to the bathroom for 5 minutes. I’m not even sure I can get another one. They don’t make the 60 gig model anymore and even if they did, I don’t have the money. The hard work I poured into doesn’t matter anymore, my saves, my money, my time and now my critical effort. My only consolation is that a lot of my profile’s stuff is online and not on the machine.

To any readers I might have picked up I will finish up whatever work and game essays I still have. I might post a piece on what little PC gaming I own or DS gaming, but the fact of the matter is, most of the work I had coming up was on the PlayStation. Time will tell if I’ll even bother anymore.

Oh and one last thing.

Thanks asshole and FUCK YOU!