The entire Camp David sequence then is a game within a game. It conjures up elements that are inherently familiar to anyone who’s ever played a video game before and warps these as part of the narrative world. It can pause, break down, and reconstruct itself when a mission fails and its action is merely … Continue reading How ‘Call of Duty’ Has Become a Metafictional Playground for Gamers
1. Against better judgment, I always felt compelled to give Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series the benefit of the doubt, an undoubtedly foolish errand motivated mostly by a long-standing craving for a decent blockbuster open-world action series. I consider these games a kind of equivalent to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, titillating a base desire … Continue reading Revolutionary Woe: Notes on Assassin’s Creed III
To simply inhabit the world of The Order is a pleasure in itself, adorned as it is with a smorgasbord of visual and literary influences that inform our gameplay experience. The aforesaid steampunk aesthetic shines through in the rustic weaponry and analogue gadgets encountered throughout the game. Its alternate history imagery fetishizes a synthesis of … Continue reading Second Shot: A Case for The Order: 1886
This kind of inward withdrawal and assemblage takes primary importance in Mountain and Journey, a pair of games that investigate our relationship with nature and how art can lead to the disclosure of ecstatic truths. Mountain, released in 2014 by O’Reilly, is a game about its own means of articulation. Much has been written about its … Continue reading Upward and Forever Upward
Developers who craft first-person walker games certainly have intended consumers, a demographic I would imagine as the equivalent of cineastes that venerate arthouse films—like Gus Van Sant’s audience, for example. There is a particular kind of mindset necessary when approaching first-person walker games. One must think of these works in relation to one another under … Continue reading Why Are We So Afraid to Walk?
1. In some ways, this year’s Mad Max: Fury Road idles at a beguiling crossroads in the forward progression of cinema. With director George Miller’s affinity for practical effects shot on location in the deserts of Namibia and the physical, painstakingly choreographed stunt work, Fury Road could easily be considered old school, yet it’s also … Continue reading Fast and Furiosa: Notes on Mad Max: Fury Road & Videogames
Hey, hello folks! I’d like to recognize Kill Screen for curating a (now passed) meditation on cinema and videogames for their Film Week which includes my essay, “Let’s Go Home, Ellie.” Definitely check out the other articles from an array of very talented writers! Cheers. Read my republished essay on Kill Screen. Continue reading Kill Screen, Film Week, & Let’s Go Home, Ellie
Perhaps the most affecting AAA title in recent memory, with a tightly wound narrative calcified by solid performances from Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker, Naughty Dog’s 2013 effort The Last of Us evinces a cinematic quality often ascribed to games, but rarely interrogated thoroughly. Moreover, I’ll propose now that the game’s plot, organized around seasonal … Continue reading Let’s Go Home, Ellie
Hello folks! I’m pleased to announce that my piece for Haywire Magazine, “Slouching Towards Los Santos” has been included in an anthology by Five out of Ten. Check out my published work alongside nine other insightful voices in Flux Capacitor: The Best of Haywire. All proceeds directly support its writers! Cheers. Continue reading Introducing Flux Capacitor & Slouching Towards Los Santos
Foreword: I originally wrote this scholarly annotation and reflection in the spring of 2014, but never published it anywhere. For additional reading, I suggest Lindsey Joyce’s great annotation of the same piece on her blog The Joycean. — The short piece “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” by Henry Jenkins seeks middle ground on the conflict … Continue reading Here and There: Notes on Henry Jenkins’ “Game Design as Narrative Architecture”
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