Becoming What You Fear the Most: The Vicious Cycle Within League of Legends
To me League of Legends represents a paradox of conflicting emotions that lie at extreme ends of the gaming experience. On the one hand, it is an incredibly good video game. Some of my finest mouse-clicking memories have been created in it. It’s addictive, satisfying even when you’re losing and […]
Breaking the rules does not create new ones (or: UNDERTALE)
UNDERTALE. Well that’s everybody’s favourite game at the moment, isn’t it? (If you don’t want to read about the game’s ‘secret’s LEAVE NOW.) To be sure, UNDERTALE is a very good game – but I am struggling to see quite why so many people think it’s so good. Full disclosure: […]
Another World: The Art and Games of Eric Chahi
If, like me, you are a desiccated old fossil of a human, limping from one day of bone-creaking agony to another, you’ll no doubt remember both the Commodore C64 and the Commodore Amiga. These were ostensibly some of the first widely available “personal computers” for the average human being, and […]
A subjective response to the style of new games journalism
On Wednesday 26 March 2014, Jake and I went to a panel discussion about the new games journalism – the idea that games writing should be about the player’s experience, not the game’s mechanics. Here are some things it made me think about. The new games journalism, says Kieron Gillen’s […]