I made a guest appearance on the latest episode of The Incomparable Podcast with my good friends Dan Moren and Tony Sindelar, and my new gaming idol, Scott McNulty. The topic: roleplaying games! (Apologies if you’re offended by podcasts that break Godwin’s Law as early as the title, though, even if it is in the context of a gaming joke.)

During the podcast, each of us chats about our personal experiences in gaming, I fail to restrain myself from babbling about my dissertation research, Scott awes and terrifies with his tales of villainy, and Hipster, Please! gets an unplanned plug (because we recorded it right when I finally got around to listening to 20-Sided Rhymes). I hope you enjoy it.

I love video games. But….

I realized recently that just about everything I write about games could start that way. I write about games because I find them so interesting to play and to analyze, but as any of my friends will tell you, I am one of the most cantankerous and critical entertainment consumers you will ever meet. I’m the guy who complains on the way out of the epic movie we just watched together because of that plot hole in act 2, or who watches every episode of Lost just to pick apart every foreshadowed plot point that never comes up again, or who tells you in one conversation that he loved Red Dead Redemption and then will go write an entire blog post about its flaws.

I am hard to please, and even when I am pleased, I’ll probably still criticize. This is why I don’t really reflect much on the “Game of the Year.” I can’t pick one; I’m too picky.

Continue reading “The Game(s) of The Year” →

Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption represents an interesting contradiction in game design. On the one hand, as a “sandbox” game, it represents everything that game critics and scholars have been saying about how the real strength of the medium is in choice, challenge, and exploration, and not in traditional storytelling. On the other hand, the story it tells—if you make a point to actually follow instructions and go complete story missions—is exceptionally linear, sometimes even restrictively so. Critics seem pretty darn near universally tickled pink by both aspects of the game, gushing not only about the richness and fidelity of the world, but also about their involvement with story and attachment to characters.

I liked the game, too, but I think I must have been spoiled by all the RPGs I play that take “choice” as a matter of course in plot development. Actually, what bothered me most about Red Dead Redemption wasn’t the lack of choice per se in any given interaction—such as not being able to choose your own dialog in cut scenes, as you might in many RPGs—but the times where it looked like I had a choice and it turned out I didn’t.

(Some major SPOILERS follow.)

Continue reading “Red Dead Railroading” →

I have a new article up online, titled “Hunting for Mysteries.” It’s a short piece inspired by both my research and my personal experiences at the MIT Mystery Hunt (which I look forward to attending again in about a month).

You might notice that this isn’t the kind of peer-reviewed, open-access academic research article I normally link to here. For a change of pace, I thought I’d pitch this one to one of my favorite online magazines, The Escapist Magazine. I’ve been reading The Escapist‘s thoughtful articles on gaming since the publication was available as a (smartly designed) PDF download, and I’ve been pleased to see it getting some additional attention lately through features like Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation reviews.

Even in my academic writing, I try not to sound that academic. Still, it was nice in this case to just relate an experience without worrying about whether I mention enough French theorists or statistical data to be taken seriously by my readers. Also, did you know that some publications will pay you to write things? The novelty of this has yet to wear off. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the piece as much as I enjoyed writing it.