The Game Critique

Tadhg Kelly is a very good marketer and a pretty good essayist when it comes to that field, but every time he ventures forth out of marketing or the cold world of numbers I cringe. A recent opinion piece on Edge is one of the bigger offenders in cringe worthiness and laughably contradicts itself so spectacularly that it almost doesn’t need a response. But I am going to respond anyway, because 1 I don’t like people constructing untruths from my former field of study and 2 as a jumping off point to clear up some misconceptions I see perpetuated mostly by accident. read more »

I like getting thoughtful and intelligent criticism of my work. I like reading what people had to say. It means I had enough of an effect on them to make them think and ad drive them enough to respond. And while I like the criticism, whether it agrees, disagrees, clarifies or whatever else, I also like responding back. I want to head off at the pass that I’m writing to the following in an effort to silence my critics. No, I’m responding to them the same way they responded to me. We call that a conversation. read more »

So a lot of good things have been happening to me as of late and here’s another one. I’ve been invited to write for the Moving Pixels blog over at PopMatters. My first article has been published today and as per usual when I’m writing for a new site I am super nervous. PopMatters is another huge step and I can’t thank G. Christopher Williams enough for giving me this opportunity. (Strange thing, he’d been wanting to talk to me for weeks, but since he doesn’t have Twitter and I don’t have Facebook it wasn’t until a random time on Skype did it happen.) read more »

I am writing this, because I am freaking out right now and not entirely in a good way. I need to get this out of my right now, before my heart does something it shouldn’t. Twice today I’ve gotten a shock and both concern free games. read more »

This is one of those posts that felt like pulling teeth. It just didn’t want to come out. Then again it’s a post about how the game offered nothing to talk about, so that is understandable. I say in the first sentence that this was my fourth attempt at writing this piece, but with the editing and major corrections it went through it’s probably even higher. It should have come out a week or two ago, but it kept getting pushed back because I didn’t know what to do with it and the editorial team was equally stumped. read more »

I wrote a piece for Gameranx asking the question, ‘What is action/adventure?‘ This is part of the larger question about game genres, one that’s been discussed at length over twitter and several posts have come up as well with regards of what certain genres are. As much as the genre debate is generally one of semantics, or in the case of Action/Adventure pigeonholing, I feel there is a necessary undercurrent of philosophy and focus behind the question of what they are that is generally lacking in the current discussion. read more »

The day after Halloween I have a post up about a potential Halloween tradition in video games.

I personally have traditions every year for other holidays with family and friends as I’m sure most if not all of you do. And while Halloween is important for my friends and I we don’t have any set ritual. It’s different ever year. As I have a weekly obligation to talk about games and I’m smack dab in the middle of another project that takes a lot of time and leads to little results until it’s done I decided to go back to a short game from last year. Costume Quest, which recently when on Steam sale, is a game about Halloween as opposed to one associated with the holiday for being part of the horror genre. read more »

So, my weekly post is up at Nightmare Mode. It was suppose to go up Thursday and alack it is Monday. One of these days I’ll publish on the target day. One of these days.

Part of the reason it is late is that this needed far more editing than anything else I’ve published there to date. But what should I have expected. My target post deadline is Thursday and the only game I’ve played all week is Burnout: Paradise, a game in a genre I’ve literally have no experience in other than demos. And all those demos did was reinforce that I cannot play these games. Plus, racing games aren’t known for their deep thematic material, or their statements about much of anything. Searching for a grappling point was a challenge in of itself. read more »

I played Another World on Monday and Limbo on Tuesday and I wrote the post on Thursday. I had a post due and I missed the previous week pulling my hair out trying to get the follow up piece on Heavenly Sword written. It didn’t work out. It was quite fortuitous that I played these two games when I did and found a connection between them. read more »

This was supposed to go up last Thursday, but it was an absolute mess. It wasn’t until over the weekend did I realize the problem with the original draft. It was three essays worth of content in one. It was a mess to create a cohesive argument in all of that. Now the version that is up is only two essays in one. I managed to smooth things out so one essay in smack dab in the middle of the other and is necessary to make my argument. The thing is, both pieces are something I’ve wanted to write for a long time, some longer than others. read more »