Much of my time this summer has been spent playing games from a bygone era. Because I have only recently started gaming on the PC a few years ago, there is a whole backlog of games, both old and new, that demand my attention. Of those older games on my backlog, I have mostly been playing some of...
There are many different people working in this industry. They all bring their own perspectives and biases regarding video games and what make them good. This is no less true for the designers of video games. Each design team and each person on those teams brings different ideas and different...
Warning: Fallout: New Vegas and DLC spoilers A few weeks back, I discussed characterization in Fallout: New Vegas. I said that the “villain” faction (because the player will almost always be directly opposed to it), Caesar's Legion, was one of the most poorly written groups out of the games...
Any game enthusiast who goes onto the internet is familiar with this particular topic. Everyday, someone, somewhere in the world argues that “games are not realistic enough.” Although this assertion is made often, it is a somewhat disingenuous one. When game players say that they want games to...
If there is one thing that my previous articles have made obvious, it is that I approve of games giving players choice with regards to how their own experience plays out. I love being able to impose my own morality on the world and its denizens. However, there is one particular type of “choice”...
This is a topic that I have touched on in the past, but recently, I have been given the opportunity to talk about it. A couple of weeks back, David Jaffe, creator of Twisted Metal and God of War, said, regarding to storytelling in video games, “If you've really got something inside of you that's...