Blips: Letting Go

Source: Game of the Year
Author: Davey Wreden
Site: Galactic Cafe

I'm going to keep this brief because commentary on the article I'm linking to today feels a bit counter-intuitive. Davey Wreden, creator of The Stanley Parable (a game I quite liked), recently wrote a post with a comic that details what he felt like to have a critically acclaimed game come "game of the year" time. The Stanley Parable was included on a lot of top 10s last year, which can be validating and depressing all at the same time. In Wreden's comic, he goes through his thought process in a very open and honest way as a means of self-catharsis moreso that trying to make a point to readers. He explains his reasoning for even deciding to share the comic in a preceding explanation.

I wonder what effect choosing games as your artistic medium has in this situation opposed to others. Games are a medium that allows for very wide distribution from small sources. The products are digital and infinitely reproducible, rarely ever with consideration to editions and rarity the way a medium like photography is. It's an industrialization of individual artistic labor, and I can understand the conflict inherent in critical praise for commercialized art that you no longer feel 100% ownership over because of its mass distribution. I think this will be an increasingly important issue, especially in indie games, as some developers grow in size to fill gaps left by mid-tier studios and others remain as one-person entities.

Blips: A Life More Ordinary

Source: Beauty in the ordinary
Author: Kris Graft
Site: Gamasutra (blog)

I'm loving this post from Kris Graft about the virtues of games that focus on "the ordinary." Graft sets this up by contrasting the views of his Midwestern existence with those of his city-dwelling friends, and vice versa. It's all a matter of perspective of course, and so what one views as an ordinary day means significantly different things depending on setting. Having grown up in the Midwest and now having spent the past 5 years living in east coast cities, these points of contrast are starkly illustrated in my mind. If I change cities again, what will I miss from my previous sense of ordinary, and what what will I be happy to be rid of?

I was likewise drawn to meta-ordinary games like The Stanley Parable last year for their powerful examination of both ordinariness in human existence and ordinariness in gameplay. The literal approach in a game like The Stanley Parable isn't the only way to go about it though, and in fact it's likely a trend that will fizzle out before long (how many obscure simulators can the market realistically support?). Any game world can establish a sense of the ordinary, given the time and space to do so. What do the characters do when they're not embroiled in the craziest thing that's ever happened to them. And no, those quiet comedown moments of fireside chatting in the wake of a tragedy don't count. I want to see when those characters return home and go back to work. What does the extraordinary look like once it reverts back to the ordinary.

Blips: Look Closely

Source: Two Games That Undermine The Concept Of Games
Author: Maddy Myers
Site: Paste

Maddy Myers really nails it with her recent piece for Paste about the institutional critique of The Stanley Parable and Antichamber. While other games like Hotline Miami and Spec Ops: The Line attempt to twist the expected campaign path back on the player, they do so at the player's expense. The curtain pulls back and the games accusingly ask, "why did you do that?" The Stanley Parable and Antichamber both satirize the role of the game developer instead, which actually further empowers players by allowing them abilities that would break most other games. In fact, "breaking" these games is part of the point. Myers begins her piece with a puzzle in Antichamber where continuing forward locks you in an endless loop, a metaphor for the typical gameplay loop that serves as a core element of game design. However, the only way to progress in the game is to break the loop and go back from where you came, a move that surprisingly leads somewhere totally new.

I haven't finished Anitchamber yet (a couple hours in), but I have a running theory that the game is about games as artworks, or rather, art as a game. This is in contrast to The Stanley Parable which is a game about games, which could be interpreted as art. Antichamber rewards astute perception, the sort that reveals hidden truths that require time and focus to unearth. The white cube space might as well be the "white cube" of the modern art gallery, the snarky puzzle hints on the walls the accompanying wall text. There's even a room in Antichamber full of sculptures in vitrines that reinforce the non-Euclidean nature of its world by appearing as different objects depending on the angle from which you're looking. How do you absorb an artwork, interpret it, and make it meaningful to you? For a painting, you look at it, study it, and live with it. The approach to Antichamber is only different insofar as the medium is different; ultimately what you're doing is the same.

Once I finish Antichamber, I'll flesh these ideas out more thoroughly (assuming I still feel the same by the end of it), but even now I can say that the game offers an opportunity to literally play with the idea of what games are and the spaces in which they can exist. That's a sophisticated level of institutional critique very few games approach, and fewer deliver.

Blips: The Killing Screens

Source(s): How The Walking Dead uses big data to make life-or-death decisions, The Stanley Parable Review: A Review of The Stanley Parable
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

Two new pieces up on Kill Screen this week: a review of The Stanley Parable, and a look at how Telltale games uses player data from The Walking Dead. I've managed to become a more regular writer over there, so look for more pieces from me in the months ahead.

My review of The Stanley Parable was the first review I've been paid to write, so of course I wrote something that questions the role of video game reviews. The game seemed to call for it though. The Stanley Parable is an intensely self-referential game, both in terms of its conscious acknowledgement of itself as a video game, and of the player's acknowledgement of that acknowledgement. What better way then to present a critical look at the game than one where I take on a similar voice as the game's unreliable, 4th-wall-breaking narrator? Hopefully my criticism of the game comes through as well; it is largely a game for gamers and may have limited appeal outside of the open-minded segment of that audience. In truth though, The Stanley Parable comments on interactive narrative in general and has more in common with The Hitchhikers Guide than most video games.

The piece I wrote on The Walking Dead actually got me to play the game, which had been on my to-play list for quite some time. I was most intrigued by the stat screens at the end of each episode that show how your decisions in the game stack up next to other players' worldwide. I thought that the psychological effect of this screen mimicked the themes of the game about the importance of fitting into a social group. When my interview with Telltale CTO Kevin Bruner fell through, I felt a bit panicked, but ultimately I think I like the story that came out better than just hearing technical details from a developer perspective anyway. The article is also published on Intel's IQ website.