Tag / Futurismic

by Jonathan M

BG 16 – Mirror’s Edge : The Emptiness of the Short-distance Runner

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.

by Jonathan M

BG 15 – GTA IV : Exploring the Mundane

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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by Jonathan M

BG 14 – The Criticism of Video Games

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.

by Jonathan M

Blasphemous Geometries 13

Futurismic have just put up my thirteenth Blasphemous Geometries column entitled “The Alternative Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form”.

Unsurprisingly, given that title, it is an alternative shortlist of five works of genre cinema that push the envelope a little furthers than the very mainstream indeed hugo shortlist.  I’ll also take the opportunity to link to Mark Kermode’s discussion of Martyrs, which he agrees is an almost unwatchable film redeemed by its transcendental themes.

by Jonathan M

Blasphemous Geometries 12

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.