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This whole thing was a terrible miscarriage of justice. I get that the person taking the call bungled things (caller said it was probably a kid and the gun was probably a fake weapon prop--dispatch said it was a man with a gun), but man, that officers reacted in the way that they did with no trial resulting speaks to the horrible, horrible bullshit that the police system will do to protect its own at the expense of the public.

My top games this year are in no particular order, and are quite a hodgepodge, which makes ranking them, even for something as arbitrary as my preferences this year, even more worthless. Ori and the Blind Forest -- Very good platforming, and gorgeous art makes this just work SO WELL for me. Invisible Inc -- While the art is also incredible, the xcom stealth gameplay is just so damned perfect it hurts. Fallout 4 -- I don't really believe myself when I say that this is one of my favorites, as it's really just FO3 but a little bit more, but this game made me neglect grad school so I could loot another house and kill some more ghouls. It fulfills an itch in such a great way that I am sold. The Witcher 3 -- Incredible Writing, beautiful, greatly improved gameplay and an open world that actually feels like a logical, consisent world, with quests that are surprisingly fun to complete. Undertale -- What a clever, fun take on an old genre. I hate the way it looks, but stop caring 10 minutes in. I missed some big ones this year, still haven't played Pillars of Eternity, Satellite Reigns, the new Assassin's Creed or Halo, or MGS 5, etc. Which is a shame. I would catch up on some of those if I weren't still roaming around the wasteland in FO4 like a goddamned addict.

I'm sorry, another story "deeply rooted in the Islamic culture"? A murder, in which religion plays almost no part, aside from young kids hiding their relationship from parents is not even close to "deeply rooted in the Islamic culture." And a soldier running off is not "deeply rooted in the Islamic culture" either.

I'm really excited about how season 2 is going so far, and I'm glad that there is no whodunit aspect to this case. The basic facts are all pretty much in agreement on all sides and the real question is in the details, motivations, etc., which I think is really compelling and what is best done in the long form format. I feel like it's not going to get the listeners quite as engaged as last season though...

I'm going to go ahead and plug my friend's Patreon. Go check it out. It's great. Andrew is a poet and fiction writer (MFA from the University of Florida, PhD from the University of Houston -- two incredible programs). His book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 book award,and his poetry can be seen in places such as Agni, and The Kenyon Review (as well as tons of other places), and was recently included in 2015s Best American Poetry. His fiction has been published in, likewise, a ton of places, but here are a few of his stories: The Mountain, The Rats, The Judges, and You Have Been Murdered (had to get away from titles beginning with "the"). If you like fiction that tends towards Sci-Fi and a little horror, and has a pervasive edge of weird and inventiveness, you should love his stuff.

Hey everyone. I'm teaching a Video game themed first year writing (composition and rhetoric) course next semester, and I'm looking for game suggestions to switch into my syllabus. A few things to explain. The course is really just that first year writing course that all freshmen are required to take, unless they did very well on the English AP exams. The focus of the course is on teaching the students critical reading and writing skills, as well as research strategies. They'll be playing games and reading about games, but this is not at all a Video game appreciation course, or a game design course, etc. The focus here is on how games are communicating meaning, how students can understand that meaning, and how they can, in turn, respond, as well as apply that to "real world" and academic forms of communication. Also, as these are freshmen that more often than not will NOT have access to gaming PCs or x or y consoles, they will NOT be very talented gamers, and they will NOT have 15 hours to play a single game. This means that all games must 1) Be playable on low-end hardware--ideally browser based 2) be SHORT. 5-30 minutes is best. 3) be relatively easy to get through--a game like canabalt or swing copters is fine because the student can get "through" all of the content, even while failing miserably. A game like spelunky, however, would not work. I will expect my students to "beat" every game, so huge skill gates would sabotage the class. 4) Ideally, the games are free, or at least very cheap. The university supports me and is excited to see how the class is going, but is not going to give me any money. Further courses? Yeah, sure, if this goes well, but an inflated first year writing course? No way. So I don't really have a budget for this class and can't in good conscience, expect students to buy $200 of video games--especially when many are just trying to fulfill a requirement and have no interest in games. For example, while I would LOVE to have my students play something like Portal, the hardware requirement, skill requirement and amount of time it would take some students means that it simply is outside of the scope of this course. Here is a list of games on my list, or being considered: Canabalt Small Worlds (the platformer, not the social game) Loneliness The Marraige Maninchi Dys4ia Back tot he First Date Facade Swing Copters Today I Die Flow Real Lives Passage Every Day the Same Dream Unmanned Aether Cart Life Depression Quest The Graveyard Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing The Entertainment. Papers Please (the most expensive game in the course) As you can see, I am VERY open to what we're calling a game, and I completely favor narratives. It's a rhet/comp course, so obviously, this is interested in what games are SAYING through their gameplay (instead of being interested in the inherent beauty/art of the gameplay), as well as how that gameplay interacts with/creates narrative meaning. I'm most interested in non-fiction games and didactic ones as well as games that SEEM to have no narrative meaning, but communicate a fairly explicit narrative idea (ie: Passage, The Marriage, Real Lives, The Graveyard) through the gameplay. I know you folks are much more away, collectively, of the tons and tons of games I've missed, so I'm hoping to see lots of great gems!

Man, people really seem into frog fractions. I've tried to use it in the past, but found that most of my students just bounce off of it. There isn't really much going on in the game unless you happen to be very widely familiar with the history of a variety of games. It's a lot of fun for the people who get it, but mostly tedious for those that don't. I was pretty bummed that more didn't enjoy it. Oh well. I'll definitely check out the games listed, like Save the Date and Birdland, though I doubt I can make qwop or sportsfriends work (despite it being super awesome). @prettyunsmart: What advergames did you use? I'm especially interested in ones that got a particularly useful/productive response from your students. I'm also curious what reading you used from the Bogost books, as while they are marvelous, they are also a bit tedious to assign the whole book. I'm actually going to be using his later book: How to Do Things with video games, as it is very much an extension of Persuasive Games, but is infinitely more approachable (and, as each chapter/essay is pretty short, I can combine it with the rhet/comp readings and in-class essay-writing instruction). I'd definitely love to hear about the first year writing course. I can be contacted through gmail, jisaacdaniels (that should defeat spam spiders, right?), and I'm always happy to see what kind of materials people are using, and how they're aligning their course goals with the interactive segments. And for anyone else: please keep recommending games. The course won't start until January, and I can tweak my syllabus all the way up until then, pretty much.

The reason I don't really like Dear Esther is that it relies mostly on the writing and I don't think the writing is very good, and I find that gameplay to be, while a necessary part of the game, to be not particularly well thought-out either. Calling it a videopoem doesn't fix the bad writing, nor does calling it an experience or whatever change how the interactive systems feed into the narrative whole. I think it's just not very good--period. I think it's a petty and simplistic thing who only likes something if it is called something else. Again, for me, the most important thing about if something is a game or not is whether or not it is called a game. That's it. Pinchbeck wants to call Dear Esther a game? Well, it has many qualities thereof, so, yeah. I suppose if someone released a novel and called it a game I wouldn't call it a game--though I would be interested in WHY they said that. As for Kinetic Novels, I literally have never engaged with them, but aren't they literally just videos?My understanding is that there are no systems, just words, pictures and sounds, and that the people that put them out don't call them games. So, no, if it has no systems and no one calls it a game, then I would not consider it a game. I'll go further. Do I think that most interactive fiction, or choose your own adventure stories are games? Nope. Do I, however, think that things like Depression Quest are games? Yep. How do I justify that? You guessed it. In one, people are saying this is a game, and the game has systems to play. In the other, people are saying: this is just a story/novel that you are able to make choices in. Because who the fuck cares if I think it's a game or not? I have my own opinions, but so what? I'd rather spend my time thinking about how something that is called a game is succeeding or not in its own way than getting into a pedantic argument with the creator over their genre conventions.

Great, you don't think that it is structured play. I guess we can quit there. That's pretty hilarious. Either it isn't play (what then is it? work? Something else? Play is, simply, an activity you do for entertainment of pleasure) or else it isn't structured (which I can't even get into). I honestly have no idea what you think a game is, and honestly? I find your trying to be exclusionary at best. You disagree with mine. Okay. And to be quite blunt: I don't like Dear Esther at all. I think that Pinchbeck is a terrible writer and the game's mechanics to a terrible job of integrating the narrative into the gameplay--though let me be blunt: I think the linear nature and ABILITY to wander off of the path, but the disheartening nature of doing so (it's a waste of time) to be essential to the game, and a big part of the gameplay. I think it's a bad game that is at least interesting in being bad. I find A Machine for Pigs to be even less interesting, though the mechanics are more engaging (because they're just Amnesia, for the most part), though I haven't played his latest one for the PS4. I just think that things like names are important, and that as soon as someone rallies around throwing something OUT, they better have a good reason why. I think you have terrible, half-baked reasons. I'm sorry you feel like you're being attacked in this thread. I think, however, your thread is an attack, and people are simply responding to it. I think the problem isn't so much that we want you to call everything else a game as it is that people object to you calling things not a game. I minor distinction, but important. Oh well.

I'm sorry, but while I love me some Gould, just you REALLY just claim that it's less preachy? That man can RANT like none other, and is incredibly condescending and alienating to anyone that isn't 100% on his side. Hell, I'm 100% on his side, AND I enjoy his writing and he still pisses me off.

Look, you say that it doesn't matter that a game like Dear Esther, or whatever, isn't a game, no matter what the creator thinks about it, because it doesn't meet enough criteria and that it doesn't matter what a creator thinks, and then you argue that it's actually a video poem because "it feels like a poem to me, and because using that word seems to be a good way to express what the creators were intending " Which, you know, was even more ridiculous, so I decided to engage in your point that for x reasons, y example isn't a game, and ask you why it was what you were claiming. Because this is what this thread is attempting to do: to delineate what is and is not a game, and to reclassify some of the things that snuck in. You'll also notice that my argument is NOT "most things which create a realised virtual world and let you navigate it are called games" but rather that when a piece of software fulfills all of these similarities AND it claims to be a game, then it makes sense to CALL it a game. I am not trying to classify the raw files of the next Pixar film a game because there is 3D space, a method for controlling it, etc., etc. and I would call out someone who tried to insist that it WAS a game as being a bit off. You keep (deliberately) missing context. My cry is NOT that everything is a game, but rather that: should someone call it a game, it is more interesting and useful to consider WHY it is a game and what that does for us than to come out with an abstract set of rules for the purpose of disqualifying something. Am I arguing that since a novel is a textual work that is generally above 50k words and is a unique premise with unique characters, told in prose, that an extended prose poem is automatically a novel? Nope. Nor am I arguing that a war map is a game because of resemblance, etc., etc. None of this impinges on the work of others at all, because even though the definitions are fuzzy, should one try and get at them in an abstract, context-less manner while SIMULTANEOUSLY ignoring the author of the works--well, that's an insane way to look at things. We have fuzzy definitions that must be taken in context and with the input of the creators. Your notions of what a game is are shallow and ill defined, your definitions of what a video game is are even less defined and even more flawed, yet you, already, are excluding titles. And the sum total of this thread is...what? To quibble over details? Here is a simplistic, but useful definition of game (from wikipedia): So what is a Video game? It is, very simply, the electronic version of a game. Sometimes this means that it is competitive, but other times not. It is a structured form of play. What do we gain from inventing other definitions? None. Does this steamroll virtual worlds? Nope. Does it overrule practical simulations? Nope. It is a wide definition, anthropologically supported (I'm thinking of Thomas Malalaby and the like), and honestly the most useful. A person must be expected to use common sense, but is that so much to ask in such a discussion? I'll go into one of your last claims. I think one of the most useful things for definitions is that they be as useful as possible. It is NOT useful to break out certain games as not-games and put them into an undefined category. I think it IS useful to categorize them as games, and then create a sub-category that best explains them. I mentioned the commercial aspect because, quite frankly, the commercial aspect is HUGELY IMPORTANT for games. There is very little arts funding for games and the vast majority of interesting games are not coming from major or semi-major studios. These games are reaching to the same audiences that play other games, and include the same design languages, the same inputs and the same hardware for, largely, the same purposes (to entertain and inspire, etc.). This does not in any way, shape or form mean that they " automatically have commercial success" (really? You think that being allowed to classify your game as a game means automatic commercial success?), but rather, it simply avoids the marginalization of the form. I have no idea how people who make VR projects that do not claim to be games are somehow marginalized by me letting in people that WANT to be called games? I think that this matters because these ARE games, they are from the tradition of games, use the mechanics of games, etc. (I did more examples in the paragraphs above), and move games forward. I think that it is important that gaming embrace innovation rather than hiding from it, and I think that literally saying: THIS IS NOT GAMING, GAMING IS X Y AND Z AND NOTHING ELSE is literally avoiding the innovative. You think it's important to preserve a definition. I mean, apparently at least. Not really sure why. I am arguing with you because I think the whole project that you (and others way before you and way after you) are embarking on is deluded. It has no real end in mind, but will wreak havoc nonetheless. Why not have a novel that includes Don Quixote and V. and The Puttermesser Papers and Ava and The Penelopiad and The Hours, and The Book of Ruth etc.etc. etc. instead of one that is stifled and samey? Why not have video games that include The Path and Endless Forest and Dear Esther and Grand Theft Auto and Solitaire and Kinect Party instead of one which only includes a smattering of the choice? I get your argument that there isn't necessarily, no matter what, a value judgment in whatever term whatever a thing is called, but you are wrong to think that it isn't meaningful, and that, frankly, there is no market or subculture for games that are not games. But I guess I'll leave you to your crusade without a real point. Just, you know, more exact definitions (well, except for what a video poem is. That doesn't get a definition. Just, you know, NOT a Video game).

This is all fair. I did, admittedly, mostly skim over it, hence my mistake about the negative reviews. I steamrolled over the break where you talked about the positive comments. You're wrong about the difficulty aspect, however. From "Implicit disagreement (casual use of "game", major critique of lack of gameplay or disaparaging use of "walking simulator"): 4": link 1: "You can do nothing but walk and walk; there are no enigmas or riddles (I expected that), and basically you walk on a closed and forced path that eventually leads you to the end" which is clearly about challenge. link 2:"Not only are they actually games that require an input from a player," which doesn't go into the idea of difficulty, but I would argue IS about that--as the erroneous comment that it requires no input from the player (demonstrably false) implies an expected bit of input that belies reactions, solving a puzzle, etc. link 3: doesn't mention gameplay at all. link 4:" The two monumental issues that plague this game however, are its linearity and the speed of progression." again, linearity (and the game is very linear) is not directly about difficulty, but the idea, in combination, is that the game is dull (held out by the rest of the review. From "Outright disagreement (either outright "not a game" or comments like "this is a work of art"): 18" Link 1: "However there is absolutely no interaction within this game, you walk, you can float up in some parts of deep water and you can fall off things. I don't know if this even counts as a game, it's a story where you get to move the camera around." link 2:"There is little story, and even less gameplay. You're mostly railroaded along a path, where you will hear and see things." link 3:"Dear Esther feels like less of a game, more of an experience.... I say experience more than explore. As much as you can walk around and think you're doing your own thing, you're really just on a set path that is highly detailed and winds through coastal beaches, caves and cliff sides." link 4: "n Dear Esther, you'll wander beautiful environments with no interaction or objective while listening to soothing ambient music..." and I'll stop there to not pull from literally every single one (which would grow tedious for everyone). I didn't make notes on each one here, obviously, but would make the same argument. What we are seeing is a coded response to: I wanted a game, as I have typically understood a game, which means challenge/difficulty/excitement. It is easy to walk in this game, it isn't particularly hard to find the right path, there is no intrinsic reward for wandering in the game (and it takes foreeeeeeever to get back to the path if you've wandered very far at atll), etc. You are, again, 100% right that I didn't pull that from your reviews. Unfortunately, I had moved on to my own point, while still being linked to your argument. This was entirely me fucking up. Apologies. I think that your data is a strong set of information that is informal, but obviously took some work, and definitely doesn't show what I was claiming here. While I think my claim was accidental, rereading that shit, it was obviously there, and definitely not true. I'm also willing to grant you the empirical data point. I feel that you have taken this as a disparaging remark as to your work, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. The nomenclature of the word "empirical" when referring to evidence is pretty fluid. It can simply mean: data, evidence, but it is most often used in such interactions to mean evidence which clearly supports the claim--and was being used by aoanla with regards an "empirically determined scope of a word" which simply isn't what it is. It is an informal survey of the latest reviews that disproves a specific point (that the majority of reviews consider it a game). I think your work is evidence enough for that, but not how it was being claimed. Again, fast and loose on my part (and you may still disagree with me after my explanation), but there you go. On a related point, if only 21 of 46 engaged in the idea of whether or not it was a game, wouldn't the implicit understanding, in a game review, be that the majority felt it was a game to the point that they didn't even NEED to explicate on the subject? Your post was a minor footnote in my comments, and through the simple process of me keeping my responses as short as possible, got fucked up. That's on me, but I most certainly wasn't trying to twist all of this in my favor. I will reemphasize my point. Your data shows that more people make the argument that it isn't a game, than that it is (in that particular sample). I believe, having looked at those reviews, that those arguments are founded on an implicit (and often heavily implied) belief that a game must be more difficult. I think my favorite example from the later negative reviews claiming it isn't a game is this: Dear Esther is not a game. It is an interactive experience. It's also quite depressing and - despite some beautiful visuals - quite dull. More of an art experiment, "Dear Esther" has you following in the footsteps of a would-be suicide as he mournfully regrets the loss of his deceased wife. It's neat how the game randomly picks parts of the narrative to play to you as you wander the moors; no run through will get exactly the same experience. Is not a game...it's neat how the game. They are having an argument about how something they inherently believe is a game (it's neat how the game) is not very interesting and has few challenging systems (is not a game), but since they have little vocabulary to describe it are reaching, mostly at random, at some "other" thing that the game is, while mostly defaulting to referring to it as a game. This, again, is NOT a point your data makes, explicitly, and again I was wrong for not more clearly separating this, but it IS the inference I drew from the data you compiled. Anyways, I hope this clears up some of the stupid errors. They were made in good faith, though I think that we may still be in disagreement regarding the substance of my corrected viewpoint.

Oh God, the blocked out quote sections instead of responding to an argument as a whole. Fine. I heard you, hence my Barthes comment. Here is what I am saying: it is not WORTH examining "The Wasteland" as a novel, and the author's point of view is the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of this. What good is it to argue that the author is using the wrong word? What is gained? It is using definitions to prove the author of a work incorrect about their work, rather than asking how this IS what the author said it is, which is a much more interesting perspective. This does not require, as you imply, that we must change the definition of the word, or let it be controlled (as Saussure argues to be pointless), but rather is an important and useful frame. Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Dear Esther "leverages imagery, explicit and implicit, to achieve emotional states in those interacting with it." What the hell does that even mean? What a meaningless phrase! I mean, sure, many poems have imagery in them, but then, so do novels and short stories and essays, so do speeches, so do plays, so does painting, so does dance, etc., etc, ad infinitum. Not a single thing you have said corresponds, really with a poem. What are the "deep" resemblances to poetry? Honestly, I can think of none. Perhaps that the game is short? That it is somewhat abstract? I see none of these things as inherent to poetry, exclusive to it, or even having some sort of majority case that would call these things "deep resemblances." It is possible that you have specific examples in mind. Please, if you have any actual examples, this might be useful, but for now, this is more abstract and ridiculous that I can even fathom. Let's, on the other hand, look at it as a game. The navigation of 3D spaces with a wasd (or gamepad) setup, while not EXCLUSIVE to games, is MOST OFTEN used in them. The navigation of paths in this 3D space to progress towards the end, is not exclusive to, but is most often used in games. The navigation to specific locations, which must necessarily be reached in order to continue the game and reach the win-state, again, most often used in games, etc. Compare, for instance, Dear Esther to the game it originally was a mod of: Half-Life 2. In Half Life 2, the player navigates via wasd and Mouse, investigating areas, but proceeding, if they wish to "win" the game, through set paths, which are clearly demarcated, though allowing for off-the-path exploration (which will NOT result in the player getting to the win-state), where, at certain checkpoints, will receive an audio, or audio-visual "reward" in the form of plot, and will then be ushered to the next checkpoint, etc. Throughout this, part of the game is in observing the surroundings, to get more world building plot points (ie: people in dismay at train station, newspapers of war at rebel base, etc.), part of the game is the defeating of enemies, via shooting, other parts are figuring out how to get to the next part of the path, generally via small puzzles (such as finding a wheel to turn a crank). You will notice that Dear Esther does not have shooting, and does not require the player to pick up objects and put them in obvious object-missing locations, but has literally every other element. You will notice, also, that Photoshop does not have these elements, that Maya does not have these elements (though it does have navigable 3d space, should the object be created for it), that my web browser does not have this, etc. The similarities to games--in fact to MOST games--are pretty obvious. Not only are they obvious, they are inherent. The player may wander, they may explore on their own--and there is a set of systems in place to ALLOW this, but there is ALSO a ruleset that dictates that the player MUST complete the game according to a certain method (of finding and reaching the checkpoints) in order to win. Also, these require thought and interaction on the part of the player. The game will not do this on its own, nor is the path forward always obvious and certain. You say that if I'd read your argument about blahblah physical experience, blahblah, but I would very MUCH call an interaction with set rules, that require I fulfill certain requirements before being allowed to proceed, etc. as a game. It would not be called a Video game, as it would not be on a computer, but it would sure as heck be called a game. Would it be a "fun" game? Possibly, though probably not, if you regard fun as challenge. Would it be a hard games? Nope. But according to most definitions of what a game is, yes. You're right, you have no explicitly said that some games do not deserve to be called games. You have merely argued that they are an offshoot that doesn't qualify as a game. You see a necessary and important distinction between the two, I do not. You have created a ghetto of things with no names (overblown video poem is definitely not a name) and then you claim to have made no value judgments. Please. You are. You did not literally bring up the example of children--I did, as an analogy to show the ridiculousness of your argument--but you are making analagous arguments. Which, you may have noticed, I address directly in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE. The use of other examples in conjunction with the main argument is not in any way a strawman argument. You are deriding one kind of play (the play that happens in Mountain and Dear Esther, etc. as opposed to the play in Solitaire, etc., because the one does not have AS MANY or AS CONCRETE of rules as the other. This is where you are most mistaken. My argument is not: EVERYTHING is a game (particularly not your ludicrous example which is an expression of your anger more than even a semi-coherent argument). My argument is that your particular distinctions are 1) Wrong (videopoem my ass) 2) Reductive to the point of absurdity (how many puzzles must one have to be a game? What counts as a puzzle? etc.) 3) Harmful I've pretty much addressed the first two, so let's touch again on the third. Do things like Dear Esther and Mountain have many conditions that games have? They Do! Is anyone in any way harmed by them being lumped into the category of video games, which ranges from shooters to simulations to cardgames to puzzles? Nope. Is anyone harmed by excluding them to a nameless ghetto? Well, yes. In a commercial sense, this would be extremely harmful to the games in question, as they would be isolated and excluded in a damaging way. From an artistic sense, it's harmful to the entire artform of video games, because it says that anything which includes most of X variables, which we associate with games, but are also different and push the boundaries, no longer count as games. It self-limits what the medium can do. Again: the novel allows for such an incredible range that is completely and utterly beyond the initial definitional scope (I won't repeat the whole argument here, but feel free to go back to my post for the LARGE number of examples I gave), and this has greatly enriched the novel, made it fresh and new and marvelous many times over, so that even what we might see as a "traditional" "realist" novel, like Netherland, is filled with the innovations, experimentations and conversations that populated other, more experimental, less traditional ones. Okay, now for your final point, re: the saussurian meaning of words. First, stop calling what Ninety-Three did an "empirical study" It was a random sampling that was not actually random, and it was only of negative reviews. Not empirical. Next, note that nearly all of these people, while coming to an answer (yes/no/or indifferent, more or less), they are ALL engaging, out of the blue, with the idea that this is/isn't a game. A game that "isn't a game" is still a game. What I mean is this: they are disagreeing that Dear Esther fits their personal conception of what a game SHOULD BE, even while they are privileging the fact that it is a game via the larger discourse. They also tend to have wildly varying reason's that it "isn't a game," and most of them have to do with a conception of difficulty or failure. In other words, even in a not-empirical study, there is no consensus that this is not a game--but rather that the discourse about how games "should" be fun, or hard, etc. is being brought up in games that push the boundaries. But I'll end it with this, because it says it better than anything else:

It's super likely I accidentally stole some of your points. I read the first three pages a few days ago and then skimmed a bit before posting, so I don't doubt I gleaned some of your points along the way. If so, I do really apologize. Related: blundering miasma is a bit harsh. It's mostly just a dumb, though fun, story with a painfully blunt Rand rebuttal, as well as various nonsensical twists (if you're a robot who must obey, why, for instance do you try to "save" the family? Nothing was even accomplished there) with a great twist that then completely undoes itself (you're no longer a robot, now do this this and this). It's really a perfectly acceptable story, overall, with some neat moments, but mostly it stands out as being better written and more intellectually engaged than most games, which is frankly just SAD for the medium. I blame the harshness on the late hour, as I was desperately trying to clear my brain of a Derrida essay I've been rewriting for the last week.

I'm going to wade into this, having read all of the first three pages, then skimming the forth and mostly reading the fifth. I think that the idea of separating out the "game" from the "Video game" is completely and hilariously pointless, as well as falsely intellectual. I can think of no better example of this, by the way, than the ludicrous example you gave, aoanla, of calling "The Wasteland" a novel. Why? Simply because it was called a poem, and not a novel, and there is no particularly compelling argument that could be made to change the nomenclature. Likewise: why are games that don't feel gamey to some people still called games? Because we call them that. It's really that simple. If the author calls it that, it is. And I swear to god, if you trot out some Roland Barthes like it's a revelation, I will write you off as a fool. Because here is the thing: these distinctions are meaningless. What, for instance, is the difference between a romance and a novel? What made Daniel DeFoe an innovator? Largely, the accepted definition is that a romance was a retelling of another tale, a slave to the "great" stories, whereas the novel was a new (hence: novel), original story with completely new, original characters. So, if Ulysses is a retelling of the Odyssey, does that mean it's not a novel? Is Atwood's Penelopiade a romance also? Or how about John Gardner's Grendel? There are thousands of examples. No. Why? Because despite what may have been the original case when the phrase was coined, it dramatically and quickly expanded. Is Jennifer Egan's Visit from the Goon Squad a novel or a collection of linked stories? Egan called it a novel, so it's a novel. How about Molly Gaudry's Novel/novella We Take Me Apart? It won a bunch of poetry awards, so is it a really long prose poem, or is it a novel? The latter, because that's how Gaudry has named it (and how the awards have celebrated it). How about people like Julie Otsuka, Lance Olsen, Ben Marcus, Michael Martone, Andre Breton, Julio Cortazar, John Ashbury, Alaine Robbe-Grillet, Dimitru Tsepeneag, Pamela Lu, Carol Maso, I could go on for a VERY long time. Works that are called poetry or prose depending on what the author has decided to call it--work that exchanges in a dialog between genres, and will be mentioned "outside" the genre it is claiming itself, but is still what it claims to be? Is Dear Esther like a poem? I mean, I guess? It has words, and poems often have words. It's not particularly long, and sometimes poems aren't particularly long. It confuses some people, I guess? Is it like a story? I mean, I guess? It has words written in prose, composed in sentences and gathering narrative meaning through their accumulation. It uses structural patterns to build meaning like some stories also do. Is it like a game? It has rules and systems composed, that, if followed, can lead the player to a win-state of completing the game. It follows many of the conventions of a game, from control schemes to path structure, reaching various checkpoints triggers a reward (in this case more narration). So...I guess it could be attributed in some small way to any of these, no? Categories that are created in order to exclude are terrible categories. They serve no purpose outside of creating a sense of (false) superiority among those that create the exclusions. To decide that some video games do not deserve to be called that is both petty and foolish. Are categories useful for consumer purposes? Absolutely. This, by the way, is why the derogatorybutnot subcategory of "walking simulator" was created for such games, to classify what KIND of Video game things like Dear Esther are. It's a silly name, but it makes sense to identify it, and it still avoids silly exclusionary games of intellectualism. You are free to argue that a game must be X, Y, and Z, and that children aren't "Playing games" when they compose a random set of rules onto an activity with no real win or lose states. You would be wrong, as the word has a socially constructed meaning that makes sense and is in wide use, but you could make that anti-saussurian argument, I guess. You are free to argue that things like Dear Esther aren't games, though that you want to call it a videopoem (as if it is somehow closer to a poem than a game--seriously, what set of rules did you use to determine that? It seems mostly that you are ignorant about what composes a poem and then just jammed it over there), and I understand your logic in composing such an argument, but it is pretty ludicrous. It's like arguing that poetry must be narrative, or that it can't be narrative. That a novel must contain all or mostly "new" characters, or that it has to be a "new" plot. It goes on. Instead of wasting our breath trying to exclude things from being a Video game (I hate the space between when people write video game, but that's another pedantic argument for another time), why not better spend time discussing what about video games interests us, or confounds us? For instance: I find Dear Esther to be a frustratingly loathesome game: a neat idea with some beautiful work done, but a pandering buildup and poorly done ludic element. Or: how is it that stories in games are so pathetic and childish that Bioshock is still held up as a narrative success instead of a cute few moments and an otherwise blundering miasma of twaddle?

Hey. I'm new here, even though I think I created this profile a year or so ago? Which probably points out I've been listening to the podcasts for a while and not doing the forum thing. I'm a PhD student at the U. of Utah, and hate the poor, pathetic beer and liquor situation in this otherwise beautiful city (SLC).

I have it for the xbone. It performs great and looks great, etc. and has a really high install base. The problem is that PS4 users simply get more content because of timed exclusives. Mostly these are an extra strike each release, but they add up. It sucks. If you CAN buy it for PS4, do it, but if you only have the xbox, it's still a great game (well, that part is debatable on any version) with lots of players active.

There are truly a lot of incredible places for short stories online. What are you looking for? I'm particularly fond of Juked, but there are so many it's almost not even possible to list them all. Other great places include Narrative, Pank, Lunch Ticket, Paper Darts, Guernica and Fail Better. I've published in a few, so my opinion is obviously suspect, but I really like all of these a lot.

You're right, I think that he had the perfect outlook for the assignments he had. I don't think this is an example of bad writers (especially since I think Tom is an excellent writer), but rather unfortunate systems where the studios don't seem to understand that narrative is more than words an actor speaks (or GUI text) and so they only bring in a word monkey to slap some writing into the spots. Tom and Michael point out that smaller games do this well and Naughty Dog has been a huge game company that has consistently put forward interesting, strong narrative elements with huge, AAA blockbuster games. To reiterate my main point, I don't look at Tom's GoW output and say: what a bad writer, I look at it and say: I can't believe that someone like Mr. Bissell had so hard of a time finding game writing work, and, further, it's upsetting to me that even someone like him only had so much input into the game. It really makes me wish that more studios had more respect for the narratives they claimed to have and had a narrative designer from the get-go (every AAA game should have a design lead, an art lead, a lead programmer and a narrative lead on every project, and they should be there as early as possible--smaller games obviously have to make due with who/what they have on hand much of the time). Agreed, but with a caveat: I think that too many games pay too little attention to the tone their gameplay creates. In other words, while too often the narrative is too narrow in the message it wants to get across, too often does the gameplay give TOO BROAD of a tone with too many possible meanings. It isn't that a breadth of possible meaning is bad, but rather that it should be narrowly structured so that it doesn't feel schizophrenic. In this way, the players can create a large depth of meaning, but it is carefully constructed by the developers so that the meaning is pointed in a direction. Without belaboring the point: the Far Cry 2 episode was wonderful because it shows not only how much authorial control there was in keeping a consistent tone, but how Steve (and many others) could end up with an interpretation of that game that differed from Hocking's original intent (regarding the nihilism point Steve made). This is what great novels do, allow the reader to have different interpretation of something through strong authorial control of things, and I think that great games will obviously give the player more control (it is a game), but that control will be tightly managed within a narrative construct.

I've not read that many new releases this year, as I've been playing a lot of catchup, but I would say that this is almost good because I can tell you about the tragically wonderful Sad Robot Stories by Mason Johnson, which is not only beautiful in every sentence, but was surprisingly rich.

Tom Bissell is everything that is wrong with game writing. That's not true at all. I'm lying. This is my first post, and I'm a liar. Sorry. I don't believe that, really, and I really enjoy Bissell's writing (well, love his nonfiction, not really in love with his fiction). In addition, it sounds like he's depressed and/or really tired, but at the same time, I DO believe that the approach he has taken to game writing is a destructive and problematic one and I was really glad to hear that Michael called him on it. BTW, what a star studded episode! Abbott and Bissell on the same cast? Exciting! The problem with most game writing can be boiled down to two things that Tom Bissell correctly points out. Much of the time the writer is someone called in to put words on paper to fulfill a very basic purpose of conveying information to the player. This is what Bissell has had the unfortunate experience of doing, and he's right when he points out that it is a problem. The other problem is that when writing is done from top to bottom as part of the design, it's generally done by one of the developers who is the lead on the project and also just happens to write. Sometimes this works very well (Gone Home is brilliant, as is Braid, for instance), but often it doesn't, because this writer is often pretty terrible. Why is this so bad? Let's look at movies. I know, video games are not movies, but they share a LOT of similarities. On projects that have crappy, throwaway, uninteresting writing, what often happens is that the director and/or producer (sometimes on their own, sometimes at the behest of a studio) decide to make a movie about, say, Transformers, and then they go find a writer and say, hey, here's x amount of money, here's what the movie will have in it (main characters/plot arc/whatever) and it will probably be starring these people who are attached, so go write that. The result is writing that is terrible, generally. Or else it will be a small indie project and the director and the writer are the same person and you either end up with something that is amazingly directed, but terribly written (Gondrey's The Science of Sleep. Ugh. Go back to Charlie Kaufman and always have him write your films!), or else the director is actually just a writer who couldn't get anyone to pay him for that and so decided to direct it himself, and so the film is pretty poorly directed (anything Kevin Smith). There are so many examples of bad films that fall into these categories where the writer isn't involved or else is simply already involved in the project. Here's the thing though: We have so, so, so many examples of when things CAN work. What happens here is that the writer and the director work together. The writer is brought in early and either they write and then take it to the director, or else they work with them and the main idea is hashed out that way. THEN they are also involved in the process as the realities of film hit, as budgets grow or shrink, or actors change, or scenes aren't working, etc., writing as the film is being made, telling the director when something isn't working (sometimes this works, sometimes not), making sure that the project is the best that it can be. Anything Charlie Kauffman has written is a great example for this, but most movies that are a wonderful unison of writing and visual storytelling/acting/etc. is the result of this collaborative process. So going back to me picking on Tom Bissell (I hope I'm making it clear that I think he's woefully wrong but also not that he in any way is responsible for the industry's bad practices): He sighs and throws up his hands and says he's just the carpenter and he isn't writing in games for any artistic fulfillment. Again, I can see how the dude is tired and burnt out, but wow. This hurts, because it is so wrongheaded (I would argue it's even more than the ludicrous argument (which I'm glad he recanted) that game stories in the future would be entirely procedural). Writers should be game designers or creative directors, helping to shape the game, not just someone hired to write words. They should be the art leads, not the person who was contracted to do textures on the guns (caveat: the lead writer should be this. If there is a team, there should be the guys just doing the tiny stuff, but they should be lead by a writer who is in there from the very getgo). Going back to films (which again, is imperfect, but works very well, as it is a collaboration in which the writer isn't even the top 3rd most important person in the process and is about working together to make many parts come together), the writer doesn't just write the dialog (though at times they have to do just that), they work to shape the vision. They're not the director, but they still talk about how shots are framed or how a performance should go. Writers in games NEED to be like this, not being the lead game designer, but talking about how the game should be designed to best work with all of its component parts. Tom is working on three projects. That's insane. The reason he's working on three projects is that right now studios only want someone to write some words, then do nothing for a while and then do some rewrites, but again, this is wrongheaded. What needs to happen more often is that the writer should be hired for the entire duration of the project (or, better, FULL TIME with the freaking company) so that they can talk about game decisions and not just play through the level when it's created and then figure out what framework might fit there. What made Deus Ex: Human Revolution as good as it was (and it's a flawed game in a number of ways) was that even though it had problems and rough edges, it held together more often than not, and even though a really tight budget and timeframe sabotaged it at times (the ending, the boss fights), there was still an incredible amount of work marrying the narrative to the design so that it wasn't just words that the writers were making, but systems, and the result was a game that felt integrated at every point (except, again, when time and money created huge problems--entirely because that collaborative process was undermined and the result was those discordant areas). Seriously, that Mary Demarle was able to wrangle such a tight narrative into such a sprawling game built of system interactions is a marvel, and she is a hero of mine. So yeah, Tom Bissell isn't what's wrong with game writing at all, though a number of his comments were a bit frustrating, but he IS illustrative of some of the HUGE problems that plague it. I mean, seriously, games, a talented, smart, proven, dependable writer couldn't get work, and what work he COULD get was only coming in and trying to cram some words into levels? Too often do people get asked to write because they're there (again, sometimes this works out great, but most of the time, I mean, seriously, writing in games, as a whole, is a joke), and then spend a plurality of their time on the writing. Instead, writers need to be brought in and then they need to do more than scribble words, they need to sit in on design (and, okay, it'd be helpful if they had some design experience to supplement that). Hell, this is the reason I'm learning to program despite having a graduate degree in writing and decent publishing history, because no one will hire a writer, but if I can program my way out of a paper bag (it's the limit of my skills, that's it) and have a few games designed I have more of a chance getting a job than I would showing them a publication history and a devotion to good writing in multiple forms. This kind of involvement with the writer is how plays work, it's how movies work, hell, it's how good graphic novels work, it should probably work with games. This massive rant aside, however, I thought that this was a marvelous episode and I'm enjoying everything in Tone Control so far. I'll probably end up using bits of this and the Neil Druckman episodes in a class I'll be teaching next semester. Really interesting, worthwhile stuff here.