Have you ever played a game where an important and valuable item was taken away…only to be immediately given back? At first glance, it may seem weird for a narrative to effectively mess with you in this way. And yet, the cause of this scene – and anything similar – can be understood as part of a more fundamental problem of design. One which creates a tension between creating a sense of impact for the story, while making sure a game remains fun for the player.
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The Player vs. Creator Challenge
Tough content in video games can be a bit divisive. Some people love a really tough challenge, and others can hate the repeated failure that comes with it. But even when we talk about the toughest content in games, we can still run into problems of design – problems where it feels like something wasn’t meant to be completed. In this essay I’ll be exploring how the drive to make a game difficult can effectively go too far and create something genuinely unfun.
Analysis and Opinion
Have you ever finished a game, and as the credits scroll by think about every bit you liked and disliked and try to review the game for yourself? There’s a fair chance the answer is “no.” And yet, if you’ve ever watched someone else play a video game, they will almost certainly do precisely that. In this essay I intend to explore that particular facet of performance and the possible pitfalls that we can run into when analyzing a game we’ve literally just completed.
On Storytelling: Bloodborne
Bloodborne offers some of the most confusing writing in any FromSoft game. Its story is told in a style that is not merely minimalistic, but barely even there. And yet, for those who wish to dig down into it, there are various themes that can be pulled from it. In this essay I will be doing a thematic analysis for Bloodborne and analyzing its world, narrative, and mechanics to pull together a core message for the player.
The Speedrun Crash and Burn
Speedrunning a game may be fun, but it can also cause a lot of stress. And knowing what to do about that stress is important. In this brief essay I’ll share a story of my own recent burnout with speedrunning, the cause, and how I addressed the problem.
The Speedrunning Grind
Since I’ve been learning to speedrun, I wanted to share a bit of my own personal journey in that learning process. In this post I’ll be describing some of my choices, my initial struggles, and my initial successes.
On Speedrunning
One of the weirdest and yet most fascinating method of approaching video games is speedrunning: attempting to complete a game in the fastest way possible. In this essay I’ll be taking a brief look at what makes speedrunning so fascinating, and the role of community in making speedrunning possible.
Talking about Games: Counter-Recommendations
Giving game recommendations is just an everyday component of being a gamer. We have games we like we want to share, and we’d like others to do the same for us. But sometimes loving a game and how we express that love can hurt the chances that other people will share in our enjoyment. In this essay I explore how we can effectively recommend a game to a degree that people end up hating the game.
Peer Pressure and Puzzles
Puzzle games are often associated with “intelligence” – if you play a lot of puzzle games, you must be smart. But that association often cultivates some bad behavior: it can lead us to insist on playing puzzle games even when we aren’t having fun. In this essay I will be examining the social pressures that exist around playing certain kinds of games, and how giving in to those pressures can hurt our ability to just enjoy things.
Talking about Games: Bad Analysis and Consumerism
We like to talk about games in ways that make us feel smart. It’s not enough to just say that a game makes us feel good or bad – we need to explain why it made us feel that way. And yet, trying to engage in that kind of analysis becomes almost destructive. In this essay I’ll be looking at one way in which bad analysis misunderstands how games are made and results in people just having less fun.
Abstracting Games 