Good Writing About Games

[Cameron Kunzelman]

I'm going to sticky this to the top of the group for when we inevitably end up with a long list of threads.

I want to use this as a general promotion thread. Here's the scenario: you read an article. You like it a lot. You post the link on twitter, but damn it, you REALLY WANT TO TALK ABOUT HOW GOOD IT IS. This is your thread.

One rule: you can't promote your own writing. Feel free to do that in some other thread or something.

This isn't about linkspamming. It is about saying what other people are doing well and maybe writing a few words about why what they did was good.

I want to promote Samantha Allen's recent "Between Pleasure and Reality: Theorizing Video Games as Transitional Objects" over at Medium Difficulty. She's doing something really great in that I think hybrid writing that she has been doing recently is amazing--she's managing to weave experience into games writing through the lens of particular sets of theory that most video games readers and writers are probably not familiar with. I think that is totally rad, and the fact that it all works together and never pulls me out (or bores me) is really, really great. SO CHECK IT OUT.

[Bryant Francis]

In recent history, I really want to give a shoutout to Tiffany Claiborne's "How Diablo III Told Me My Marriage Was Over"

http://kotaku.com/5964584/how-diablo-iii-told-me-my-marriage-was-over

I'm really big on essaying, and I think essaying about games in a public forum is important for discussion. This is a really personal story, and made me take a long hard look at some of the values about relationships I thought I held. That said, I was really disappointed that most of the discussion was "omg you cheated on ur husband u have no value here."

[Javy]

I enjoyed Lana Polansky's piece on Borderlands 2. Pretty cool that Burch actually responded to it.

[Cameron Kunzelman]

So Shane just introduced himself in the introduction thread as a designer and an avid reader of games writing stuff, but I think he undersells himself as a person who writes about games. The newest post of his on "expressionistic gaming" really gives us a good starting point to think about questions of representations in games. More specifically: his point about expectations of "real" Whiterun in "real" Tamriel is sort of a fascinating take on what we could think of as a kind of video game indexicality--is there a thing, a real, that video games are showing us a weird imprint of? Is Skyrim this weird fragment of Skyrim.

It is a weird question, but I think there are interesting questions to be said about the "real" nature of unreal spaces (MMO studies are probably doing this work really, really well already).

[Tony Perriello]

Cassandra Khaw's article about Handsome Jack's paternal instincts and how that correlates to experiences with her mother and controlling parents in general is wonderful: http://www.unwinnable.com/2013/01/31/father-knows-best/. Spoilers if you haven't beaten Borderlands 2.

On Thursday, February 21, 2013 4:17:10 PM UTC-5, Cameron Kunzelman wrote:

[Kaitlin Tremblay]

Wow, that does sound fantastic. I'm going to check it out now.

[Nate Andrews]

I don't know that I'll ever play long enough see those parts of the game, so this is a welcome interpretation.

[Cameron Kunzelman]

I want to say that if anything gets posted in here and anyone has remarks about the piece, feel free to take it into a new thread and talk about it there.

[Maddy Myers]

This piece that Andrew Vanden Bossche wrote recently about how to craft a good game review has stuck with me. He analyzes Arthur Gies's review of Dead Space 3, in particular:

http://www.mammon-machine.com/post/42805935533/review-criticism-a-dead-space-3-review-reignites-the

I'm not sure I do a good job with what he suggests, but I try. The piece gave me a lot to chew over.

[Javy]

Yeah, I read Andrew's piece when he posted it as well. Thought-provoking stuff. I didn't really have an issue with Gies's review, but I definitely jotted some notes down for my own reviews after reading that post.

[Brendan Keogh]

Apologies if this counts as self-promoting, but I run a tumblr where I just post links to games writing that I particularly enjoy: http://brendansharedalink.tumblr.com/ So essentially anything I would put in this thread will be there. I also just wanted to find somewhere on this group to mention that tumblr exists so... yeah.

But I'm going to go for an old piece and post to Tim Roger's incredible review of Earthbound: http://www.largeprimenumbers.com/article.php?sid=mother2 blah blah blah, usualy caveats about how a lot of people don't like Tim's writing, but this essay is, by far, my favourite piece of writing about videogames hands down for the sharp and specific observations he makes, and the way he ties it into this kind of continuum of Japanese videogame development. I love pretty much everything about it.

[Alexander Feigenbaum]

Ian Bogost's Portrait of the Artist as a Game Studio is the article that got me to start seriously reading/thinking about games. Really compelling, and a very interesting way of reporting both the history of the company and insight into how their game's function. 

To bring it back to the other discussion, he does a great job of switching between "I", "we" and "the player" when describing games, which makes it feel personal but still inclusive. Good stuff!

[Amanda Lange]

I saw an article today that I thought was well-done, a bittersweet letter about violence in games: http://gamechurch.com/i-cant-quit-you-a-letter-to-game-violence/

[TheGameCritique]

One of the best reviews I've read in a long time. Maddy Myers on Tomb Raider for Paste. It easily interweaves what the game is about, what she experienced and how it plays along with setting up the discourse for the game. Makes me wish I could write that well. http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2013/02/tomb-raider-review-multi-platform.html

[Maddy Myers]

Aw, shucks. Thanks!

[Bobby Hunter]

I already said as much on Twitter, but I agree. It was a fantastic review that addressed all facets of the game in a thoughtful manner. I already wanted to play it, but I know now I'll look at it in a different light when I do.

[Nathan Altice]

Ario Barzan's articles on Metroid Prime and Metal Gear Solid 3 are some of my favorite games writing of all time, along with Tim Rogers' sprawling Final Fantasy XIII piece. I get why Rogers is divisive, but he does thoughtful, interesting work.

I suppose Ario Barzan is a pseudonym. I can't find much else about him/her online.

[Nick Capozzoli]

I'm diving into that Tim Rogers FFXIII piece right now. Wow that's a great first paragraph.

[hancock michael]

This is a little late, and it's kind of already made the rounds on twitter and Critical Distance, but I really enjoyed Line Hollis' post from March 13th, Game Change: Minigames and Narrative Arcs. She's building on a discussion she and others have had about how the typical videogame is essentially a narrative of progression, where there's no real reversal of fortune for the character because the nature of the game and the expectations of the player doesn't allow it. In this post, she discusses how the experimental minigame can offer alternatives, because their brevity and framing allows for other types of stories. Some of what I liked about this piece was just serendipity on my part; I was reading it at the same time I was doing a speed read of Jesper Juul's new book, "The Art of Failure," and they both consider the issue of how videogames can incorporate tragedy, and what that would mean. Hollis does one up on Juul, in my opinion, in that she really goes deep into the examples she's considering. And even aside from the main discussion, it's a really well constructed post, with plenty of references and links to what has been said on the subject already, and a huge variety of experimental games.