News & Views
1/9/16-1/15/16
Welcome
everyone to a much more normal News & Views! It’s been a busy first full
week back in lab, but The Impact Factor never skips a beat! Really looking
forward to relaxing some this weekend, though.
News &
Views is always here to bring you the best video game writing, stories,
editorials & opinions from around the web. This week, I found great pieces
about drug use in eSports, how a dating app is like Warcraft, why Life is Strange
passes the Spielberg test of games as art, and how H.G. Wells was one of the
impactful pioneers of tabletop gaming. Enjoy!
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
Patrick House, The New
Yorker
Worth Reading
Core-A-Gaming,
YouTube
Christopher
Byrd, The Washington Post
Chris
Pruett, Gamasutra
Ben
Kuchera, Polygon
Michelle
Ehrhardt, Kill Screen
With Comments
Zach Gage,
Gamasutra
What an awesome look into the
analytical mind of a game designer. So many games use, and rely upon, dice
rolls (hidden from the player or not). Gage runs through the evolution of the
dice-rolling system in Tharsis and it’s fascinating. One
of the key points here is the balance of dice rolls leading choices or making a choice and then relying upon dice to see if you can accomplish your goal. It’s the
difference between craps and King of Tokyo. Very interesting and well worth a watch if you have any interest in
board games, video games, randomness, or game design.
Sidney
Fussell, Offworld
Fussell continues to write
extraordinary pieces for Offworld. Here, Fussell ponders what games can do to better
represent black women. The depiction of black women often focuses on strength,
but in the process loses ‘personhood.’ It would be great to see more characters
that are funny or quirky or dark, and less one-note.
Brian
Taylor, Paste
Well, if you needed any more reason
to like (or at the very least appreciate) H.G. Wells, here it is. Taylor
details how Wells championed a tactical tabletop game titled Little Wars, and the evolution of that idea into the modern board game, especially
those that are miniature-based. Very cool.
Gamesradar
Staff, Gamesradar
I’m a big fan of ranked lists. For
example, you can check out a list of my #12-7
and #6-1
top games of 2015. Or my ranking of the Souls
games.
I can’t say this Final
Fantasy list is 100% accurate (since I
haven’t played them all), but I mostly agree with their ordering. Final
Fantasy 6 is the best. Period.
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