October 27, 2010 Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts Resonance or Dissonance in Gears of War My last post generated the most comments of anything I've written (so far). At the end of the comments Dagda had this to say on the Gears of War franchise: "It's why the "rah-rah kill them" mentality of the Cogs is somewhat undermined by the fact they cower behind chest high walls at every opportunity despite wearing refrigerators." That strikes me as ludonarrative resonance; undermining the tough-guy images the characters present is Gears of War's central narrative theme. | more
August 25, 2010 Eric Swain Critical Responses, Recent Posts In Defense of Ludonarrative Dissonance First off, no this is not a retraction of my opinion (which I was apparently the sole defender of) that Ludonarrative Dissonance is a bad thing for a game to have. Instead, this is a response to the growing antagonism towards the term itself. There is plenty of it about, most recently from a post of Corvus Elrod's over at Semionaut’s Notebook. I wanted to write this right away after reading it, but other commitments kept me from doing so at the time. | more
