News
& Views
8/8/15-8/14/15
Oh man am I excited today! So much goodness is happening. First and
foremost, today is my girlfriend’s birthday. Happy birthday Justine, I love you
so much! Got some sweet dinner plans in store for tonight. Also, PlayStation just
announced that they’re doing PlayStation Experience again this year! The first
of it’s kind, PSX is a conference tailor made for fans. And, in even bigger
news, PSX is in San Francisco this year! So, yeah, I’m definitely going.
Already bought my 2-Day pass! Expect to see plenty of coverage and thoughts and
pictures here on The Impact Factor from the event when December rolls around.
As usual, I’ve also found a ton of great pieces from around the web this
week. Check out below for great writing about gameplay loots vs story loot, how
a Bioware RPG touches on immigration and identity, how women unlearn their love
of video games, and Pokemon’s utopian economy.
And of course you can check out the brand new episode of The Impact
Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if
you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re
on YouTube too!
Spotlight
Katherine Cross,
Gamasutra
Worth
Reading
Bea Malsky,
The New Inquiry
Sylvia
Monreal, FemHype
Cameron Kunzelman,
The Cage is Worms
Patrick
Lee, A.V. Club
Greg Toppo,
USA Today
With
Comments
Katherine
Cross, Gamasutra
Partially inspired by a great
piece by Austin Walker I linked in a previous News & Views, Cross
examines what games can do to make their cities feel alive. My recent
experience with The
Witcher 3 reinforces her hypothesis that
cities need non-violent ways to be interacted with. I enjoyed this piece so
much, Charles Fliss and I discussed on the most recent episode of The Impact Factor
Podcast.
Michael McWhertor,
Polygon
What I wouldn’t give to have some
way to directly access to Hidetaka Miyazaki’s mind. He’s brilliant. I love how
he talks game design, and the ways in which as one of the game’s directors, he is
using Dark Souls 3 as the turning point in the Souls franchise. I couldn’t be more excited.
Suriel
Vazquez, Paste
Vazquez writes an extensive,
excellent piece covering the recent struggles of Mike Watson and Super Arcade.
Watson’s leadership and community building has created one of the U.S.’s only thriving,
profitable real arcades. Due to
archaic ideas about “arcade culture,” Watson lost his fight with the city of
Azusa to expand Super Arcade. Ugh. I wish all of the Super Arcade community the
best in moving forward.
Juliet
Kahn, Offworld
This is something that’s so tough to
read, but that I’m so happy it exists. Kahn’s excellent piece on Offworld asks
one simple question; why can’t games be for girls exactly what they are for
boys and men: easy to love. Kahn believes that “we need more games featuring
women, made by women, willing to tell stories about pop stars, witches and
queens, willing to work in palettes beyond army drab.” Totally agreed.
Patrick
Klepek, Kotaku
Klepek always finds the best crazy
gaming videos. Who would have thought beating Dark Souls on a Rockband guitar
controller would be so passé? Now all the cool kids (read: one extremely
patient, skilled, possibly masochistic guy) are beating Dark Souls using voice commands. What makes it all the
more impressive is that his voice inputs had a substantial almost 1-second
delay. Holy crap. Hats off to you, Dark Souls expert.
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