Novelty is difficult to find in AAA videogames. The prevalence of a few major game engines has led to a standard toolbox of mechanics which are combined like building blocks and then given marketing-friendly art direction in order to ensure that production times are shortened and player expectations are never irritated. The moment I tried […]
In the latest episode of The Greatest Game, host Chase Williams is joined by his original co-host, Max Kelleher, to discuss video games and aesthetics, what makes video games unique, representation capabilities of game software, and the concept of authorship and artworks. Hosted by InnoGames’ Chase Williams, The Greatest Game is an OK Beast podcast mini-series dedicated […]
In the latest episode of The Greatest Game, host Chase Williams is joined by artist Mark Ferrari (Thimbleweed Park, The Secret of Monkey Island) to discuss pixel art as an art movement. The pair discuss pixel art’s likeness to poetry and its parallels to impressionism, the movement’s separation from a gaming context, whether or not pixel art […]
In the latest episode of The Greatest Game, host Chase Williams is joined by Jedrzej Czarnota, who has a PhD in Economics, to analyze video game economies in games like World of Warcraft or EVE Online, discuss the tension between play and the desire to provide utility to other players in a video game environment, and […]
In the Season 3 premiere of The Greatest Game, Chase Williams is joined by InnoGames’ Mosche Wallach to discuss how cognitive science applies to gaming, how universities approach the academic investigation of video games as a distinct media, and the nature of aesthetics and artwork. Hosted by InnoGames’ Chase Williams, The Greatest Game is an OK Beast podcast mini-series […]
This is just a tribute
Videogames are more than code on a disk; subject matter is a major ingredient in providing interpretive possibilities for gameplay. Themes and motifs uniquely mingle with art styles and music and then combine with systems and mechanics to create novel experiences inside games. The words we use to describe these elements have a historical, cultural, […]
FromSoftware occupies a unique position in their territory which reflects a consistently renewed legacy that has earned a footnote in the history of game design. The conventions discovered in the foundational Dark Souls series and their successful reorganization in Bloodborne cast the critical shadow which blankets the entire “soulsborne” genre and comprises the prism through which we decide if […]
In the Season 2 finale of The Greatest Game, Chase is once again joined by NASA’s Max Kelleher to explain how experiencing artworks is similar to experiencing nature, that the experience of artworks is temporal, and that playing video games is performative, and reference Papers Please in the process. Hosted by Sony San Diego’s Chase […]