News & Views
10/31/15-11/6/15
It’s
BlizzCon Friday! We got a new game mode, 4 new heroes, and a new map for Heroes of the Storm. A new adventure for
Hearthstone that arrives next week. New heroes and a PS4 release
(HECK YEAH) for Overwatch. I’m pretty
freakin’ excited.
This week’s
News & Views contains a bevy of great writing. Check out all the links
below for stories about how video games are about agency rather than power, how
one of Japan’s biggest RPGs almost never made it to the US, sexism in eSports,
and a look at the ‘real’ science behind Halo.
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
Adam Boffa,
arstechnica
Worth Reading
Bryan
Cebulski, Kill Screen
Kevin
Grazer, Gamasutra
Leigh
Alexander, Vice
Keith
Stuart, The Guardian
Jason
Schreier, Kotaku
Colin
Campbell, Polygon
With Comments
Richard
Procter, Forbes
The Archon Team League Championship
was a slow burn, but one that ended as an enormous pyre. The finals were some
of the best competitive Hearthstone I’ve watched. Procter
gives a good look at the inception, execution, and impact of Hearthstone’s biggest and most successful community tournament.
I’m really looking forward to the second round early next year!
Chloi Rad,
Kill Screen
Rad gives a cool look at the
architecture and geography of horror games. It’s fascinating that house-based
and space-based horror are so common. Certainly it touches on the expected
safety of the former and the powerlessness and otherness of the latter. I love
trying to understand how and why horror works so effectively, and Rad’s piece
adds to a growing list of informative literature on the topic.
IGN
I was into fighting games before Marvel vs Capcom 2, but it was the first title that I spent
many hours (and many quarters) into being actually good. MVC2 is a seminal
game in both crossovers and fighting games alike. It’s fun, fast, and frantic.
As Vince Ingenito says, the game is a broken unbalanced mess, but that (among
so many other things) are part of its lasting charm. I guess I should apologize
for playing top tiers, too. I played as Cable, Captain Commando, Sentinel.
Colin
Campbell, Polygon
Academic inquires into the
psychology and sociological effects of video games have been, frankly put,
weak. Further still, the limited work that has been done is predominantly
locked behind paywalls. Campell reports on a new book that hopes to discover
the best studies, demystify some of the works’ conclusions, and put it all in
one location for the consumption of the general public. Looks like something I
should pick up and read.
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