Comments on: Gaming Made Me, Part 2: Critical Mass

By: Gaming Made Me | The Game Critique

Gaming Made Me | The Game Critique — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:58:26 +0000

[...] the various designers they asked, and then others in the middle circle has taken up the question of which video games have made them who they are. Michael McBride talked about how [...]

By: Chris Lepine

Chris Lepine — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:07:46 +0000

I felt the same about VTM: Bloodlines. It didn’t get a fair shake when it was released, and I was among the relatively few that made a reach for Bloodlines instead of Half-Life 2 when both were released. I had played (and finished) VTM: Redemption years earlier, and I craved a game that paid so much attention to its world and characters. VTMB was not the same kind of game, but it gave me the kind of gaming that I would have expected in a real face-to-face roleplaying experience. I felt so scandalized when it was passed over as a commercial, and critical, failure. It was flawed for sure, but made up for so much with its charm, wittiness, and seedy urban landscape. It was a game that I’ve always wanted to write about, and I’m glad to see someone has!

By: Tales of a Scorched Earth » Blog Archive » Gaming Made Me, Part 1: Discovery

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:34:39 +0000

[...] This is the first part of a two-part series. Read “Part 2: Critical Mass” [...]

By: Lucas

Lucas — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:42:29 +0000

Thanks for posting. It's interesting to think how history has been used in games, particularly war games. Games often pervert and make abstract real-world things. Death in Doom is not the death we know and feel in life, and though this kind of abstraction and distance exists in WWII games like Call of Duty, WWII is a bit of a special case. Pac-Man makes a mechanic of over-eating as Medal of Honor does of killing, but MoH is also working within a well-established mythology: the killing has already been made righteous and bloodless. WWII has been popularized, polished and sold over and over since it happened (even during). Games are really just using WWII myths (Normandy is a vignette, not a place, not a battle), as have movies and radio shows since 1940. Just as sports video games try to recreate the experience of the sports as seen on TV and not the experience of actually playing them (Marc LeBlanc's observation), I think WWII games are using popular myth, not attempting to recreate or introduce the war itself. This is why the games are (and aim to be) "cinematic:" they borrow from movies, not accounts or history. So, yeah, I wouldn't say our generation is out of touch so much as it is familiar with and eager to perpetuate WWII as it has been told in movies and schools. (As a side note, Clint Hocking has argued that WWII games are popular because players want to be their grandparents to know who is right, who is wrong, and to save the world. A good presentation, though only tangentially related to what I wrote above.) I would love to see a video-game adaptation of something like With the Old Breed, some real-life survival horror that took its material seriously, instead of another storm-the-beach explosion-fest. Not sure if that'd make for a good game, but it would likely be one worth discussing.

By: Jorge

Jorge — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:06:14 +0000

I had a tear when you mentioned Civ3.

By: Céleste

Céleste — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:48:52 +0000

wow…when did you have time to get married and have two kids I wonder…sounds like a full time job

P.S. Amelie still finds the monster “too scary” (photo from Gears of War)…I believe it’s the same as in your critique post earlier on…