Shovel Knight

and Self-Reflexivity: The Retrogame as Metafiction and as History

David Boffa

Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight (2014) has been a retro-gaming hit, lauded as much for its crisp gameplay, attractive visuals, and catchy chiptune soundtrack as for its success in channeling and revitalizing the feel of classic 8-bit video games. The game focuses on the eponymous hero’s quest to rescue his companion Shield Knight from the evil Enchantress, doing battle with knights from “The Order of No Quarter” and collecting treasure along the way. As players and reviewers have noted, the game is effective because it does not rely simply on nostalgia, even if (as its developers have stated) it is strongly influenced by games like Zelda II, Castlevania, and Super Mario Bros. 3, among others. Rather, Shovel Knight employs nostalgia as just one of many tools in its impressive arsenal to create a meaningful and rewarding gameplay experience. I’ve now played through it nearly three times (twice normally and once in “New Game Plus” mode, in which I have yet to conquer the final stage). Continue Reading →

Rethinking ∆Flow

in Relation to Narrative Within The Last of Us

Shawn DeSouza-Coelho 1 Comment

Flow is an immediate, task-based construction. Csikszentmihalyi argues that flow exists in a ‘flow channel’ residing between anxiety and boredom, both of which measure challenges as they relate to skill level (ch.4). He believes people experience anxiety if challenges are too great for their skill level, and boredom if their skills are too great for the challenges provided (ch.4). Within the flow channel, however, “the difficulty is just right for [their] [. . .] skills” (Csikszentmihalyi ch.4), and people can become “completely absorbed by the activity” (Csikszentmihalyi ch.3). The exact activity matters very little; all that is required to enter the flow channel is an actionable task that possesses clear goals, adequately matches a person’s skill level, demands a certain level of concentration, and gives immediate feedback (Csikszentmihalyi ch.3). Indeed, flow is simply a task loop – goal, action, feedback – immediately registered by the player, traversing upwards through the flow channel as both skills and challenges increase in tandem. Continue Reading →

We’ll Fight For Our Future

How Phantasy Star II's Dungeons Structure its Narrative

Brian Crimmins 1 Comment

Before Sega retooled the series for MMORPG audiences, Phantasy Star was one of the most prominent JRPG franchises of its time. It had always remained ahead of the pack by experimenting with themes and narrative models years before its rivals could catch up. The first Phantasy Star game featured a slight political dimension to JRPGs seven years before Final Fantasy would do the same. And its sequel only continued that trend. One of the first RPGs for the Genesis, Phantasy Star II strengthened the political themes with a grim narrative and Daedalian dungeon design. Continue Reading →

Going Maverick

the Politics of Terrorism in Mega Man X

Chris Lawrence 1 Comment

Terrorism, as one such political narrative, has remained at the forefront of public consciousness to varying degrees since September 11 2001, but in particular has been retooled and pulled in new directions over the last couple of years by the Government of Canada under Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. While all kinds of video games have tackled the subject of terrorism over the years, one unlikely franchise has echoed with uncanny fidelity the trajectory that terrorism as a narrative has followed under Conservative governance: Mega Man X, originally developed and published by Capcom for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993. Continue Reading →

Battle of Bannockburn

Visitor Centre Battle Game

Carly A. Kocurek

During the First War of Scottish Independence, the Battle of Bannockburn was a significant victory for the Scottish army, defeating the much larger English forces. Since the battle took place in 1314, its location has become a significant historical site, studied by archeologists and historians and preserved through the efforts of the Bannockburn Preservation Committee, the National Trust for Scotland, and Historic Scotland. While the initial visitor center at the site, the Bannockburn Heritage Centre, opened in the 1960s, it was closed in 2012 to be replaced by a new building opened in March 2014 in time to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the battle. Today, the site’s modern facilities welcome visitors with a gift shop, café, and two “Battle Room Experiences”: the Battle Show, a brief narration illustrated by tabletop map projection, and the Battle Game, which takes place using the same projection system and is overseen by a Battlemaster. Continue Reading →

Flexible Times

need Flexible Game Design

Benjamin Norskov and Mohini Dutta

Since games emerge from and reflect upon culture, it is becoming more and more important to find ways to accommodate the various cultural relationships to games and play that already exist globally. As the barriers to technology drop, accessibility to the tools of games are increasing, but the syntax of game making remains largely unexamined from the context of multi-cultural languages of games and play. Game development is a small world and has not demonstrated a willingness to deal with the cultures of play around the world that are now being reached with new global audiences. Mindful Play is our attempt to investigate the ways in which games are made and find ways to adapt existing game design methodologies to accommodate these emerging forms of play. Continue Reading →

THE ILLUMINATOR

Grayson Earle 1 Comment

Games are interesting to us for a few reasons. The first is this idea of Procedural Rhetoric put forth by Ian Bogost. For Bogost, software programs are a unique medium in their procedural rules, a flow of loops and state changes governed by conditional elements. Leveraging this idea for the purposes of employing rhetoric is then “the practice of using processes persuasively.” Our 2014 collaboration with the New York Civil Liberties Union aimed to put this into practice. Continue Reading →