Category Archives: Respondents

I was able to go to Keaven Freeman’s 3:00pm workshop on “Quest Crafting.” Freeman is the Senio Designer at BioWare Mythic.  What he primarily talked about was the complexity of creating quests for MMO games.  In video/computer games, the ability to storytell without … Continue reading →

At the Writing for Games Conference today, I attended the “Inspiration and Game Writing” session from 3:00-4:15pm.  The session was led by Rowland Cox, Community Director at BioWare Mythic.  He presented very briefly and the rest of the session was … Continue reading →

I attended the 1:30pm session done by Ken Rolston. Ken gave a very quick but detailed presentation on what tools are useful for a narrative game designer. Some points that particularly stood out to me were the ideas of tactibility … Continue reading →

In class on Tuesday, we created a bit of a laundry list of certain historical events that would result in a controversy if a videogame was made about them. This included anything from the Challenger disaster to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. … Continue reading →

One of the things talked about with Videogames for the Oppressed, which was brought up by one of the first posters, is that it was felt that video games are best suited not to traditional story-telling but rather to simulation. … Continue reading →

After comparing our class discussion with Frasca’s article I agree that games can help us gain a better understanding of social and political issues. The major differences discussed in class were between how games and books raised social and political … Continue reading →

I talked a bit about how games can be in a sense “meditative”.  I mentioned particular examples that use repetitive button pressing or timed actions to create a zoning out effect similar to that experienced by deep breathing meditation.  I … Continue reading →

HNRS 353 Tuesdays class left many of us discussing the concept of Kitsch in relation to videogames. I was pretty puzzled when reading this portion of the text, wondering if this was truly a category worthy of being a chapter. … Continue reading →

The post “Relax!” talks about relaxation, agreeing with Bogost that casual games seem geared towards providing relaxation. However, I think that in some ways more hardcore games can be relaxing as well. For example, Team Fortress 2 is a game … Continue reading →

One of the resounding sentiments seen in the first readers’ posts as well as comments in Tuesday’s class is the limitless definition of art. Many students have said that art “lacks a definition” and have “undefined boundaries”. But to what … Continue reading →

In light of the recent reading from Ian Bogost’s How To Do Things With Videogames, I wanted to address an issue discussed in class today. In the reading and in the In-Class Hosts’ presentations, the issue of whether or not … Continue reading →

At the beginning of class on Tuesday We took that in class poll to show us what the gaming habits of our class looked like. We then started talking about the differences between casual and hardcore games, and gamers. We … Continue reading →

One of our First Readers this week tacked on a sixth characteristic to Jesper Juul’s five characteristics of a video game that determines its audience: motivation. The motivation, this First Reader claims, is to escape reality, and that can be … Continue reading →