Gamer Grow

This week, I address game design issues, elements, and problems from a variety of different angles. Get in on the discussion, and get started on the hands on application. There are adapters to buy, games to try, and a design challenge that may blow your mind. Download Critical Casts 2 HERE. Show Notes.... Wiimote + Bluetooth Adapter Compatibility Chart WiiLi Main Page Neo*RPG (I'm going to try and post my design postmortem document as well) Neo*RPG Game Download Guitar Hero Type Games Flash Hero Frets on Fire Tenacious D Flash game Amped guitar Flash game Hybrid Game Breakris Game Website

This is the first go at it. I'm starting off small and controlled and fully intend on ramping up the content and excitement in the coming shows. In the cast, I run through the concepts behind future segments for future casts to give you a glimpse at the scope of Critical Casts. Also, I plan on getting guests to be a part of the show with me. Listen to the podcast here. You can check out a permanent link to the feed over to the right under Critical Casts. ShowNotes: Playing to Win Excerpt from Gamasutra Charlie Wilson's War Trailer The Brainy Gamer Blog Graffiti Gamer Pie Chart Review Thanks and enjoy.

This is a rough draft of a project I'm working on. I'm trying to present all the current conversations on BioShock all in one place. http://freemindshare.com/map/jlq29ELNOQ/ This BioShock Discourse contains a branched/interconnected presentation of the essays on this blog. I encourage everyone to check it out here for a non-linear way to read critical essays. Look at the end of the gray panel to the right for a permanent link to my [insert game here] Discourses. Feedback would be much appreciated.

Like Marxist criticism, the most successful Feminist critique of a game involves analyzing how the range of player functions that affect female characters directly or indirectly reveal the operations of patriarchy. When the player is encouraged or forced to play in a way that depicts men as strong, rational, protective and women as weak, emotional, submissive, and nurturing, then the game can be said to support and reinforce patriarchal genders roles and ideologies. Patriarchal values work to oppress women, and all feminist theory and criticism works to promote women‘s equality. A Feminist analysis can become more complex when finding examples of actions toward women if a game doesn’t feature any women or the game allows for limited interaction with women. Writing essays about such games often leads to finding evidence by absence. In other words, a Feminist critic’s central piece of evidence may be what can’t be done to women instead of what can. BioShock depicts women as weak, emotio...

Like Psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism can seemingly critique a game by looking solely at a its fiction. However, both of these critical modes, in relation to videogames, achieve a deeper, more profound level of analysis when the elements of interactivity between the game and player are taken into consideration. Many Marxist critics of literature believe that film, literature, art, music, and other forms of entertainment such as videogames are the primary bearers of cultural ideologies. While we’re being entertaining by these medias, our defenses are lowered making us all the more susceptible to ideological programming. A Marxist critic of videogames looks for how a game supports or condems capitalist, imperialist, or classist values. Perhaps the best and most obvious place to look toward in games is the role and function of money. Some games represent money with actual U.S. dollars or some other form of real world currency. Others use fictional currency from bell, to gil, to...

For those who aren’t careful, a Psychoanalytic critique of a game appears to only be concerned with the fiction of a game and the relationship of the characters. Unless the game is Psychonauts, most games seem to have little to nothing to do with the human psyche. Neglecting how the game fiction and the gameplay (or game rules) come together to create the Psychological work in a game is a common pitfall. Another easy pitfall is to get wrapped up in Psychoanalyzing the developers of the game, or what may be infinitely more embarrassing, accidentally analyzing one’s own psychological state while trying to pass it off as an analysis of the game. Though it is true that the fiction of a game is an important part of any Psychoanalytic analysis, the gameplay is where the most profound sources of material because the interactivity of the game can influence and transform the player in more powerfully subtle ways than a passive medium. In the following essay, I intend to highlight the psychologi...

“What we’re trying to do is to redefine what it means to be a first person shooter. Our goal is to put a stake in the heart of all those clichés you’ve been playing for years in first person shooters. Linear corridors. The very static environments. And the Cookie cutter AIs. Now, we understand that that’s a pretty lofty goal. And it will really be up to you guys [gamers] to decided if we succeed.” Ken Lavine, creative director of BioShock. Between BioShock’s story and its gameplay, there is more than enough material to fill multiple Structuralist essays. The transfer of masters from Atlas to Ryan to Fontaine to Tenenbaum and finally to a little sister is an obvious structure that governs both the story of BioShock and the narrative of the gameplay. Instead, I’ll spend my time analyzing the structures and their functions within BioShock’s shooter style gameplay to illustrate that the game Lavine created deconstructs itself revealing a product that is more comparable to an RPG than a mod...

For a New Classical critic the degree to which a game’s formal elements promote its primary function is a measure of its success. Such a critic views all games through the lens of the principles found in Classical game design whether a game is made under a Classical or Western design. When approaching a New Classical critique of BioShock, I ran into a number of issues. Because Western designed games prioritize game-story and the overall “experience” over its gameplay and mechanics, I had to consider if a New Classical critique misses the core of such games? On the other hand, I had to consider if I had enough experience to critique BioShock’s experience or story otherwise. With games borrowing from various other mediums (books, music, theater, movies), wouldn’t assessing a game’s overall experience require at least a working knowledge of these fields? For the purposes of this essay, I will begin with a New Classical critique of BioShock, and then move into a more free discussion of my ...