malvasia bianca

Player of Games has always been my favorite Iain Banks novel, but I’ve never been sure how much of that is because it’s good and how much of that is because it presses my buttons. I like the Culture quite a bit as a universe, and I’m also pretty obsessed with games, so it’s only […]

This year, I’ve been a little touchier about games than in the past. I’m tired of violence in games: yes, it’s a classic theme, rich in narrative possibilities; yes, it lends itself to a myriad of success/failure conditions that are rich in gameplay possibilities; but even so, does it have to be quite so dominant? […]

If I’d played Trauma before Dominique Pamplemousse, I’d probably have ended up writing the same blog post, just about a different game. Because Trauma is also a very good game, and one that impresses me in a way that I wish I didn’t find so out-of-the-ordinary: it’s one person’s singular vision, it’s very compelling, it’s […]

I’d been a little curious about Versu ever since it came out, and a talk I heard at GDC this year did nothing to reduce my enthusiasm. So I figured I’d try it out on the plane ride to Japan. Unfortunately, there was a flaw in my plan: when I downloaded the game, I realized […]

The iPad version of Mirror’s Edge seemed like a pleasant enough game: mostly good enough mechanics (albeit not ones that particularly excited me), good level design. I played through it once and then went through the first few levels again trying to get speed runs. Having said that, there was one mechanic that I didn’t […]

I can’t say that I understood Starbloom. It’s nice enough to look at and to listen to; there’s a bit of gameplay there, but that gameplay didn’t grab me in terms of the game’s explicit goals. (Either in thinking about how to approach those goals or in the mechanics of carrying out that approach.) Which […]

When I first heard about Dominique Pamplemousse (or, to use its full title, Dominique Pamplemousse in “It’s All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!”), it sounded charming: what’s not to like about a claymation musical adventure game? Even so, I was blown away how much I cared about the finished product. And I wasn’t the […]

One of the better talks I went to at the first GDC I attended was by Randy Smith, so I was curious about the studio he co-founded. Unfortunately, their first game didn’t grab me; their second game, Waking Mars, sounded like it might have mechanics that were a bit more to my taste, so while […]

I played The Dreamhold on the plane ride to Japan. I guess these days the genre label that the game fits within (or the mechanics label—I’m not entirely at peace with how the term “genre” is used with games) is “parser-based interactive fiction”? Which is something I played a lot when I was growing up; […]

While I was on vacation, I only played iPad games; I’ll write a post about each of them, but they were mostly short, so I don’t always have a lot to say. Hundreds is a good example. (Though actually I really played it during GDC.) It’s a puzzle game; I’d heard good things about it […]

I don’t normally blog about Flash games or Twine games that I play (for no particularly thought-through reason), but I was thinking I should make an exception for Grow Maze: it’s wonderful and it’s as long as some iOS games that I’ve played recently that do fall into the bucket of “games I blog about”. […]

The Friday talks. Bringing a fine GDC to an end; this is the first year where I haven’t gone to a single talk that I felt was a mistake for me to attend, and several were excellent. And powerful: two or three of this year’s talks brought me to tears. 10:00am: Turning Comedy of Manners […]

The talks I attended on Thursday; all were good, but the Walking Dead one was particularly enlightening. 10:00am: Our Games, Our People, Our Community: What Do We Owe Each Other?, Dustin Clingman 11:30am: Saving Doug: Empathy, Character, and Choice in The Walking Dead, Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman 2:30pm: Sex in Video Games, David Gaider […]

My notes for the Wednesday GDC 2013 sessions: Ideas per Second: How Double Fine Optimizes for Human Performance, Nathan Martz Empowering the Player in a Story-Rich World: Co-Directing Dishonored, Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio #1ReasonToBe, Brenda Romero, Robin Hunicke, Elizabeth Sampat, Mattie Brice, Leigh Alexander, and Kim McAuliffe Strange Love: Game Theory vs. Game Design, […]

Here’s my best guess at my GDC 2013 schedule; I’m sure I’ll end up at some talks not on the list (am I really going to skip the microtalks this year?), but it’s a start. In general, I’m pretty free for lunches and dinners, so get in touch or grab me at the conference if […]

The Experience Points folks suggested replaying Journey on the anniversary of its release; I did that, and I enjoyed the experience enough to return to it again a few days later. Journey is a wonderful game for many reasons, of course, and its short length lends itself very well to this sort of return. I […]

I am not into stealth games. In fact, before its recent resurrection, the only Vintage Game Club game that I didn’t finish was Thief. I was excited to play that game, but when it actually came down to it, the experience was just too much for me. Some of that has to do with personal […]

My guitar playing—my relationship to/with my guitar, really—has continued to change over the last few months. A lot of that is a steady drip of improvement, but my feelings towards bending strings have been a bit more of a state change. Bending strings was probably the most significant technique that Rock Band 3 didn’t model […]

This is going to a hard post to write. Normally, I play a game, finish it, and write about it here; but I’ve been playing Rock Band 3 for more than two years, and I’ve been playing one game in the series or another constantly since the first game came out back in 2007. So […]

The Vintage Game Club has been dormant for a while now, but the recent release of System Shock 2 on Good Old Games was too much for Michael to resist, so he’s organizing a playthrough! So, if you’re thinking of giving the game a try yourself, please consider playing along with the VGC.