The Malkavians’ World

Representations of Mental Health in Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines

Ansh Patel 1 Comment

Games, we know, do not have the best reputation in terms of representation. Through the decades, games have gained notoriety for excluding people who aren’t seen as their target audience: especially women, people of color, and people of different sexualities. On top of that, certain genres—particularly military shooters and horror games—have developed a reputation for stigmatizing people with mental illnesses. Too often these games equate people who have a mental illness with monsters and/or villains. For example, Silent Hill (Konami, 1999) … Continue Reading →

Video Game Spaces

Images Play & Structure in 3D Worlds by Michael Nitsche

Michael Hancock

Game designer Warren Spector once said that well-designed games “provide compelling problems within an overarching narrative, afford creative opportunities for dealing with these problems, and then respond to players’ choices with meaningful consequences” (Jenkins and Squire). The term he chose for this matrix of creative design and player choice was “possibility spaces.” Space is a constant across almost all videogames, and it comes up frequently in videogame discussion in a variety of different ways: stage design, level structure, gameworld, playground, virtual world, sandbox, hub, PvP zones, instances (in an interesting conflation of space and time), arena battles. For all these frequently bandied-about terms, there’s a relative lack of theory surrounding what space in games means. Von Borries, Walz and Böttger’s 2007 anthology Space Time Play does an admirable job displaying the scope of the issue, but the book is more a survey that aims for breadth rather than depth. Michael Nitsche’s Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Game Worlds goes beyond their starting point in order to fully investigate how players and designers orient and narrate journeys through 3D game worlds. While the book can meanderat times, at its best it is a detailed analysis that raises new perspectives and tools for discussing videogames. Continue Reading →

The Game Culture Reader

Edited by Jason C. Thompson and Marc Ouellette

Michael Hancock

Jason C. Thompson and Marc A. Ouellette’s edited collection of essays The Game Culture Reader begins with an attack on established game studies—or perhaps not so much an attack as a very pointed prodding to shake off existing lethargy and “game culture by culturing games” (5). To that end, each of the twelve essays making up the collection investigate game studies within broader humanities traditions, from gender studies to Burkean rhetoric to Bourdieu’s cultural capital. Continue Reading →

Interview – Chris Bateman

Part II - Imaginary Games, Hobbyists , & Mass-Market Players

Michael Hancock 1 Comment

First Person Scholar book review editor Michael Hancock recently interviewed Chris Bateman to talk about issues related to games including realism, mimesis, mythology, and game design in indie and AAA studios. Chris Bateman is a philosopher, game designer, and author – and has a doctorate (pending corrections) in game aesthetics, to boot. He has written a series of books on game design and philosophy, the most recent of which are Imaginary Games and The Mythology of Evolution. In game design, he was lead game designer and writer for games including Discworld Noir, Ghost Master, and Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition. Bateman researches and lectures at the University of Bolton. Continue Reading →

Interview – Chris Bateman

Part I - On Realism, Philosophy, and Artgames

Michael Hancock 1 Comment

First Person Scholar book review editor Michael Hancock recently interviewed Chris Bateman to talk about issues related to games including realism, mimesis, mythology, and game design in indie and AAA studios. Chris Bateman is a philosopher, game designer, and author – and has a doctorate (pending corrections) in game aesthetics, to boot. He has written a series of books on game design and philosophy, the most recent of which are Imaginary Games and The Mythology of Evolution. In game design, he was lead game designer and writer for games including Discworld Noir, Ghost Master, and Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition. Bateman researches and lectures at the University of Bolton. Continue Reading →

DOOM

SCARYDARKFAST

Michael Hancock 5 Comments
Introduction: There Are a Lot of People Totally Opposed to Violence. They’re All Dead.

There are a great many videogames that can justify some claim or other for being seminal works that changed the course of the game industry, but id’s 1993 DOOM makes a better case than most. It pioneered the first person shooter genre, it popularized the shareware method of distribution, and, perhaps most significantly, it created a gamer culture, as its multiplayer brought people together in attempts to shoot each other to pieces. It is an appropriate subject, then, for the University of Michigan Press’ Landmark Videogame series, and for Dan Pinchbeck’s book, DOOM:SCARYDARKFAST. And while the book occasionally seems uncertain of its intended audience, in general, it is an excellent study of DOOM and what the game means for the first person shooter genre at large. Continue Reading →