Every month I pick my top 5 films and give them a mini-review. Here goes August with perfect summer films, feminists against the world, and a musical interval by king Hosono Haruomi himself! Films watched this year: 206 | in August: 46 🔥 Born in Flames (1983, US, Lizzie Borden) Social democracy has been achieved... … Continue reading Top 5 Films: August 21
I watch a lot of films so every month I pick my top 5 and give them a mini-review. Here goes July, with (litteral) Pulp Fiction, a Japanese showa-era classic, more Varda goodness, 1970s feminism, and of course yakuza plotting over a glass of milk. Films watched this year: 163 | in July: 20 🚬 … Continue reading Top 5 Films: July 21
2018 has been a busy year for me, with two-thirds spent making two games, 3D models, and essays, and the last third burying myself in thesis research. Unfortunately, this meant I didn't get to play many of the exciting 2018 game releases. However, thanks to many late nights in November I was able to make … Continue reading AC: Odyssey – The Challenge of Player Types in an Open World
As a media that is both interactive and technically complex, video games have the ability to approach storytelling from a different angle than other forms of entertainment (Jenkins, 2005). To understand and leverage this difference, particular attention should therefore be paid to storytelling techniques or tools that are specific to games, and to features that … Continue reading Narrative Spaces in BioShock
Through direct interactivity, computer games transform users into players, a premise that drastically affects narrative and story-telling (Skolnick, 2017). This allows players to sometimes assume the role the main character in a dramatic story, an experience that Mateas and Stern define as interactive drama (2006, p.648). To better understand the building blocks of interactive dramas, … Continue reading Interactive Drama Aesthetic Categories in Sunset
Introduction Over the last decades, increases in computing power and game development techniques have allowed virtual worlds to become increasingly complex, allowing for exponential immersion and engagement with the player (Ryan, Rygby and Przybylski, 2006). This evolution has also prompted the study of factors behind player engagement in video games, in particular with regards to … Continue reading Intrinsic Motivation in Yakuza 0
Realism in media can be defined as the link between a particular type of media and how it mirrors a form of reality (Glyndwr University, no date). Being both audio-visual and interactive, video games have an innate versatility with regards to representing realism, and can make use of several lenses to do so. This post … Continue reading Dishonored 2 and Realism
The 1983 video game crash. A sinister sentence for gamers who lived the event or those who recently saw tons of Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges being dug-up from decades in landfill. What was this crash, and did it really almost destroy gaming? In 1982, the home console market looked pretty solid in the US: sales … Continue reading Rewind: Putting the 1983 Video Game Crash in Perspective
Psychologist and theorist Csikszentmihalyi conducted decades of research to understand how certain pleasurable activities induced a phenomenon called “flow”, which he later defined as “a state of peak enjoyment, energetic focus, and creative concentration experienced by people engaged in adult play” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). As noted by Salen and Zimmerman (2004), flow is important to … Continue reading Dark Souls and Flow
