Archive for the ‘Video Games’ Category
Futurismic, Blasphemous Geometries, Video Games, David Hume, Lyrical Essay, Creative Non-Fiction
In Column, Me Stuff, Video Games on July 21, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Futurisimc have my thirtieth Blasphemous Geometries column entitled “Roleplaying Games and The Cluttered Self”.
The column is both a defence of Consumerism and an examination of the ways in which we express, formulate and find ourselves through the process of playing games. It is also the longest piece of writing I have ever published, clocking in at over 6,500 words. It is also the first piece of writing for which I took photos (the photos in question are of my old room at my mum’s house, which I have been clearing out over the past few months).
Aside from these minor formal experiments, the piece also marks something of a departure from my traditional critical stomping grounds and towards something a good deal more personal in that I try to use my thinking about games to shed some light on some thinking I have recently been doing about myself. I’m not entirely sure how effective the experiment has been, but it was certainly an interesting experience trying something so different.
Blasphemous Geometries, J. G. Ballard, Video Games, Microsoft Kinect, David Foster Wallace, Viktor Frankl, Playstation Move
In Column, Science Fiction, Video Games on July 1, 2010 at 5:51 am
Futurismic have my 29th (!) Blasphemous Geometries column entitled “Microsoft Kinect: The Call of the Womb”
The Kinect is really nothing new, much like the Playstation Move it is a rather blatant attempt to tap into the market for casual gamers uncovered by the Nintendo Wii and its much vaunted non-standard controller. However, while Sony were busy Me-Too-ing in a way that is weirdly unconvincing (if I wanted that kind of play experience, I would still buy a Wii despite the fact that I’m sure that Playstation Move can and will do everything the Wii can do and more), Microsoft decided to renew their long-standing desire to use their games console as a means of securing complete dominion over a house’s entertainment media.
Again, this is nothing new as it is arguably what the original XBox was designed to do, but there is something incredibly bleak in Microsoft’s vision of a future in which everyone socialises through a games console. Something so bleak that I had to write about it.
The column taps into some of the recurring themes of my writing but it is particularly linked to themes explored in other columns I have written including the banal and unpleasant nature of our escapist fantasies and our desire to have a group gaming experience without actually gaming with other people.
Blasphemous Geometries, Dead Space, Futurismic, Marxis, Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine
In Column, Science Fiction, Video Games on May 26, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Futurismic have my latest Blasphemous Geometries column.
As I promised last month, this column moves away from my recent tendency to use games as launching pads in order to provide a detailed analysis of one particular game – the zombies-in-space third person action game Dead Space. This piece was quite a lot of fun to write, hopefully you’ll enjoy reading my analysis of what is possibly the most furiously Marxist video game ever produced.
Blasphemous Geometries, Escapism, Football Manager 2010, Futurismic, Video Games
In Column, Politics, Video Games on April 29, 2010 at 5:57 am
Futurismic have my latest Blasphemous Geometries column.
It is a development of some of the idea expressed in this column from a few months ago but rather than looking at Fantasy as an avenue for escapism, I decided to look at the more modest and mundane ways in which people aspire and escape. A trend embodied in TV programmes like Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and games like Football Manager 2010.
I’ve also decided to take a slightly different approach with next month’s column. Recently, I have been using games as springboards to look at wider issues. This is partly a result of my own game-laying experience of late which has seen me bouncing out of new games and returning again and again to games I have already written about like GTA IV, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age. However, I think that it would be good for me to keep my feet on the ground with regards to writing about games so I have decided that next month at least will herald a return to a closer examination of one particular game.
American politics, Battlefield : Bad Company, Battlefield : Bad Company 2, Blasphemous Geometries, Cal of Duty : Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare, Millenarianism, Video Games
In Column, Science Fiction, Video Games on March 31, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Futurismic have my twenty sixth Blasphemous Geometries column entitled “The Changing Face of the American Apocalypse : Modern Warfare and Bad Company”.
The column looks at the plots of the Call of Duty : Modern Warfare and Battlefield : Bad Company series and finds not only some interesting similarities but also a question that will be familiar to science fiction fans, namely how far can you go before lapsing into the fantastical? The column considers how SFnal thinking is now absolutely central to the output of Western political think tanks.
Blasphemous Geometries, Essentialism, Mass Effect 2, Race, Racism, Tolkien
In Column, Science Fiction, Video Games on March 3, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Futurismic have my twenty fifth Blasphemous Geometries column entitled “Mass Effect 2 and Racial Essentialism”.
It’s quite a long piece as it is looking at, in my opinion, quite a broad problem with the way that works of genre engage with race and racism. Namely that by using relationships between different species to represent relationships between different races, religions, cultures and nationalities, works of genre are legitimising not only the idea that there are real differences between these social groups, but also the idea that it makes sense to infer something about someone based upon the colour of their skin or the kind of religious service they choose to attend.
Avatar, Bayonetta, Blasphemous Geometries, criticism, Futurismic, Social Role Theory, Video Games
In Column, Video Games on February 3, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Futurismic have my twenty fourth Blasphemous Geometries column entitled We Are All Sheep : Avatar, Bayonetta and the Hypnosis of Low-Brow Culture. The column draws partly on some of the thinking I did for my recent Ozu piece and partly on some of the things I said about the Hugo awards last summer.
The piece was motivated by the intense and viscerally negative reaction I had to Bayonetta. I hated it. I hated it more than any game I have played in recent memory. In fact, I hated it more than any cultural artifact I have recently rubbed my brain up against. I was going to put together a hatchet job but then I took a step back and realised that my reaction to Bayonetta was no different to the one film critics have had against Avatar, and that my tendency to explain away the opinions of people who enjoy games like Bayonetta is disingenuous. So, instead of saying that Bayonetta is low-brow or stupid, I thought I would put forward a way of looking at the process through which opinions are formed in the first place.
Blasphemous Geometries, Dragon Age Origins, Facebook, Futurismic, MORPGs, Video Games
In Column, Science Fiction, Video Games on January 6, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Futurismic have my twenty third (!) Blasphemous Geometries column entitled Redefining Friendship : Facebook, MMORPGs and Dragon Age : Origins. It deals with the capacity for well written computer characters to effectively stand-in for human players in what were once considered group activities and in particular how console RPGs like Dragon Age : Origins seem to be trying to do to MMORPGs what a previous generation of video games did to real-world sports.
Assassin's Creed II, Blasphemous Geometries, Futurismic, Video Games
In Column, Video Games on December 9, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Futurismic have my 22nd Blasphemous Geometries Column entitled “The Future is the Past”.
It’s kind of a thematic overview of the game Assassin’s Creed II and how that game relates not only to history but also to the concept of Sacred History via the use of prophecies and apocalyptic symbolism. It was a lot of fun to write but not nearly as much fun as playing Assassin’s Creed II, which is easily one of my games of the year. Particularly impressive is the way that the game’s Renaissance Venice manages to capture the same duality as classic Horror film Don’t Look Back. Go one way and it’s towering churches and magnificent palazzos. Turn another and it’s sordid and cramped little streets.
Baldur's Gate, BioShock, Blasphemous Geometries, Deus Ex, Fable, Fallout 3, Futurismic, GTA 2, Hitman, Jeremy Clarkson, Knights of the old Republic, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, Oblivion, Saints Row 2, Video Games
In Column, Video Games on November 11, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Another pair of fortnights, another new column! Futurismic have my 21st Blasphemous Geometries column entitled “The Mechanics of Morality : Why Moral Choices In Video Games Are No Longer Fun”.
It is a little bit longer than my usual BG columns but I felt that I had quite a bit to say about this issue. I am particularly proud of what I am calling The Clarkson Effect :
In order to be fun, transgressive behaviour requires the existence of a strong moral code to transgress against. However, when the transgressive opinions and behaviour become an accepted and recognised way of being, the behaviour ceases to be transgressive and thereby ceases to be fun.
Consumerism, Gears of War, God of War, Prototype, Slavery, Video Games, XBoX 360
In Column, Video Games on October 14, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Futurismic have my 20th Blasphemous Geometries Column.
One of the reasons why my column has shifted to a more wide-angled approach is because, while I have played a number of games recently that I’ve enjoyed (NHL 10, for example, is superb, as is Patapon), none of them have really been meaty enough to support a column. So, in search of greener critical pastures I’ve been playing more Big Action games than I normally would and I was struck by how utterly unsympathetic the characters all are. This is something that also occurred to Charlie Brooker in his recent Gameswipe programme. As a result, I decided to try and work out why it was that these characters were so profoundly unlikeable and I discovered certain similarities with the real world…
Blasphemous Geometries, Column, Futurismic, Horror, Resident Evil, Romero, Transhumanism, Video Games, Zombies
In Column, Horror, Links, Video Games on September 16, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Futurismic have my nineteenth Blasphemous Geometries column.
It deals partly with the Resident Evil games but mostly with the evolution of the zombie genre. Originally, I was planning a much more expansive piece that also took in the games Dead Space and Prototype – as they also have a rather reactionary attitude towards the shifting conceptions of identity found in transhumanism – but I decided instead to focus my analysis a bit more.
District 9, film criticism, Neil Blomkamp, Planet of the Apes, Psychological Warfare, Racism, review
In Film, Science Fiction, Video Games on September 6, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Summer 2009 saw the birth of an interesting piece of terminology. Reflecting the success of titles such as Iron Man (2008), Terminator Salvation (2009) and the Transformers series, “robots hitting each other” has become a short-hand way of referring to the kind of shallow and crassly commercial genre film-making that is currently dominating Hollywood release schedules. Films not merely unintelligent but actually hostile to thought. Films designed to eliminate critical distance through the sensorial onslaught of bloated running times packed with explosions, violence and spectacle. Films that are the cinematic equivalent to the US using loud music to drive Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican embassy during the invasion of Panama. Given a cultural climate in which Hollywood is essentially using psychological warfare against its own customers, it is only natural that many of us should yearn for something more. Ever since the first trailers dropped, Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 has presented itself as a summer film with that little something extra : Science fiction that rises above robots hitting each other to become genuinely thought provoking and intelligent. However, the reality of District 9 is that what ideas it has are used up in the first twenty minutes, after which the film collapses into a mire of clumsy metaphors, poorly written characters and the kind of plot you would find only in the most hollow-skulled of video games.
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Blasphemous Geometries, City of Heroes, Fable II, Fantasy, Futurismic, Video Games, World of Warcraft
In Column, Science Fiction, Video Games on August 19, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Futurismic have the 18th edition of my Blasphemous Geometries video game column.
It was an interesting column to write as it marks the first piece of sustained thinking I have done on the Fantasy genre in a little while. I was pleased to note that while my politics seem to be drifting leftwards, my attitude towards escapism has mellowed hugely. There was a time when I considered escapism to be a cowardly and childish retreat from the real world, but my views on it have changed markedly.
Blasphemous Geometries, criticism, Futurismic, Mars, Politics, Red Faction, Red Faction : Guerilla, Video Games, XBoX 360
In Column, Video Games on July 22, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Futurismic have my Blasphemous Geometries column about Red Faction : Guerilla.
This piece was slightly wild. I initially took as my inspiration Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces : A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), one of my favourite pieces of writing about music. the first chapter of the book begins with a song-by-song and almost line-by-line examination of the music of the Sex Pistols and I was struck, as Marcus was, by the enduring power of the opening line of Anarchy in The UK : I am an Antichrist, I am an Anarchist. That desire to destroy and reject everything struck me as central to a proper understanding of Red Faction : Guerilla. But then I came up with the idea of the idea of a suicide bombing simulator and was amused by the similarities and I let that Idea simply carry me home.
criticism, Futurismic, Mirror's Edge, Video Games
In Column, Video Games on June 24, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Futurismic have my 16th Blasphemous Geometries column.
As a piece, it is a lot closer in style to the kind of criticism I have been producing for this blog. Hence the use of YouTube videos and a viewpoint that is a lot closer to the text of the game, rather than standing outside that text and using it to illustrate more abstract ideas. I’m not sure if I’ll be sticking to this style for Blasphemous Geometries in future. I’ve decided to focus on a game per column but quite how each game will take me is difficult to predict.
Futurismic, Game Criticism, GTA IV, Shenmue
In Column, Video Games on May 27, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Futurismic have my fifteenth Blasphemous Geometries column.
It is not only the first of the columns to appear under the new direction the column has taken, it is also my first piece of video game criticism. I had been looking forward to writing this piece for a little while and when I finally got round to writing it, I was surprised at how pleasant and natural an experience it was to play a game and think about it critically. The more I played the more aware I became of where Grand Theft Auto IV fits into the history of game design.
Having filed the column it occured to me that I had left out one very obvious example of the mundane in video games… Shenmue.
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Blasphemous Geometries, criticism, Futurismic, Video Games
In Column, Video Games on April 30, 2009 at 8:14 am
Futurismic now have my fourteenth Blasphemous Geometries column.
It is quite a bit shorter than my usual BG columns but this is because it is kind of a meta-column. Instead of grappling with a substantive issue, this month’s column announces (and explains) my decision to re-orient Blasphemous Geometries away from being about genre criticism and towards becoming a platform for video game criticism. My views on the state of video game writing and the challenges facing all decent criticism has already prompted a typically spirited response from John Scalzi whose interesting take on the subject of video game criticism can be found here.
I have been toying with the idea of writing about video games for a while now (it has, in fact, already inspired a BG column) and am quite excited at the prospect.
Blasphemous Geometries, Charlie Brooker, Column, Escapist, Futurismic, Game Damage, Games, Yahtzee Croshaw
In Column, Video Games on March 5, 2009 at 10:36 am
My latest Blasphemous Geometries column has gone up over at Futurismic.
It’s an attempt to lay down some thoughts on a different way of looking at story-telling in video games, but it’s also an excuse for me to make wise-arse comments about a number of different games I’ve played over the years. Speaking of being a wise-arse I was intriged to discover a YouTube pilot for an Australian TV programme called Game Damage. Starring The Escapist‘s answer to Charlie Brooker, Yahtzee Croshaw. It will be interesting to see whether the show will be picked up because I think it highlights the problem with game commentary in a nut shell. If you watch the pilot you’ll see Yahtzee pouring scorn on what is evidently the contents of a press release while the other two scramble to say something positive. One the one hand, everyone who plays games knows by now that games companies are entirely self-serving massively dishonest and mostly incompetent. On the other hand, ‘Yay! New games!’.
VideoGaiden came close to solving this problems by being mostly weird and curmudgeonly with interludes of interest and enthusiasm but I think the problem is that gamers and TV people have tended to be on different pages. Gamers want to express their culture and that culture involves a good deal of snark and cynicism to counter-act the heavy handed and manipulative marketing techniques used to ensnare them. TV people, want something that taps into the popularity of games and you generally do this by being up-beat about the thing you’re covering. Result = generation upon generation of games-related TV that genuinely struggles to move past reading out press releases and playing game trailers.
In Column, Video Games on February 4, 2009 at 3:40 pm
My new Blasphemous Geometries column has gone live over at Futurismic.
It is entitled “To a Delightful Weekend in the Country” and it’s an attempt to detect emerging trends in British SF before they happen, it is entirely motivated by my growing sense of frustration with SF and my need to move discussion on from the current generation. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I think that some authors are no longer worth the pixels devoted to them.
In Column, Video Games on January 7, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I just noticed that my latest Blasphemous Geometries column has just gone up over at Futurismic.
It is entitled Super Hero Fatigue – Why I am Tired of American Rubber. It deals with my growing irritation at the ubiquity of super hero films and the ways in which they have influenced American political discourse.
I’ll also include a link to Strange Horizons‘ review of 2008 as I contributed a small entry to it.
In Column, Video Games on December 10, 2008 at 11:01 pm
My latest Blasphemous Geometries column went up at Futurismic today.
It deals with the idea of including critical essays in re-published works of SF to serve as a kind of ‘DVD extra’ for science fiction. It suggests that publishers look to the Criterion Collection as an example of how to brand and re-sell older works.
In Column, Video Games on November 13, 2008 at 3:01 am
My latest Blasphemous Geometries column went up at Futurismic.
It deals with the question of whether there can be such a thing as a “correct” interpretation of a work of fiction and the benefits of interpreting a work in terms of what is known about its author.
