News
& Views
7/4/15-7/10/15
Hello and happy Friday! Welcome to The Impact Factor everyone. I know I
haven’t written it much here, but I really
appreciate every single one of you who comes to check out my blog. It means a
lot. This week has been huge for The Impact Factor, too, as I hit a major
milestone in the podcast: 10 episodes! That’s right, I’ve been doing a podcast
with my good friend and fellow scientist Charles Fliss for two and a half
months now! We talk the week’s most impactful video game news. Check us out on SoundCloud and iTunes!
Got a lot of great stuff on this week’s edition of
News & Views. In video game writing this week, I found pieces chronicling
the life and work of Shigeru Miyamoto, a love of ambiguous video game endings,
video games as cultural agents, and how Batman despite his code does in fact
kill people. For all of that and more, check out the stories below!
Spotlight
Cassidee Moser,
KillScreen
Worth
Reading
Raph
Koster, RaphKoster.com
Phill
Cameron, Gamasutra
David
Sheff, Rolling Stone
Catt Small,
Offworld
Rowan
Kaiser, Unwinnable
And the
rest!
Patrick
Klepek, Kotaku
Klepek is a writer whose work is
pretty often featured here. I like the guy. Found myself nodding in agreement
all throughout this piece. I appreciate ambiguous endings in all kinds of
entertainment media, certainly including video games. Sometimes wrapping up a story
into a neat little package isn’t the best move, creatively.
Ben
Kuchera, Polygon
Kuchera is another repeat guest of
The Impact Factor’s News & Views. So sue me. (Please don’t). The
relationship between Lee, Kenny and Clementine evokes such powerful emotions.
Perhaps none so powerful as the role a parent takes in raising, protecting, and
understanding your child. Kuchera touches on how Telltale taps into his
emotional core—something those games really excel at. Do yourself a favor: read
this article, then play some Telltale games.
Laura
Hudson, Slate
I think the summary at the top of
Hudson’s scathing review puts it best: ‘Ernest Cline’s Armada is everything
wrong with gaming culture wrapped up in one soon-to-be-best-selling novel.’
Listening to members of the games media RAVE
about his previous novel ‘Ready Player One’ convinced me to pick up a copy and
read it. While certainly a page-turner, Cline’s writing lacked substance and
pandered to a nostalgia-fueled “gamer” audience that felt nauseating at times.
For those of you who don’t know, I am disgusted with how much nostalgia plays
into the games space (discussions, games, etc). ‘Armada’ looks to double down.
Blech. Hudon’s review is great.
Please read it.
Patrick
Klepek, Kotaku
You all know I love the Souls games.
I’ve written quite a lot about them: a review
for Bloodborne, my
top 10 favorite Souls bosses, and I ranked all four Souls games here
(Day 1) and here
(Day 2). It’s kind of crazy to read that Vaati could be plagiarizing, as he
is one of the most prominent figures in the Souls YouTube community. Hard to draw any concrete conclusions, but the
evidence is certainly compelling.
Ben
Kuchera, Polygon
I’ve been noticing this all
throughout the Batman
Arkham games, but in Knight it happens all the time. Pretty clear that
Batman’s actions are causing people to die, though as Kuchera states, it all
happens off screen. This hyper violent Batman doesn’t bother me, but it’s
something interesting to think about.
Sam Coster,
Gamasutra
Getting through Steam Greelight,
from all accounts, is a nightmare. Coster gives an interesting perspective on
how, just maybe, their zany and memorable trailer helped them to fight their
way through Greenlight in a remarkably short period of time. His game, Crashlands is a game made
out of suffering and is probably
worth a look. Or two.
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