This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including Dishonored's portrayal of women, accepting criticism from non-gamers, and more.

WHO: You

WHAT: Reading This Week in Video Game Criticism

WHERE: At your computer, presumably

WHEN: Right now!

WHY: [OUTSIDE SYSTEM PARAMETERS]

DISHONORED

Joel Goodwin kicks off the week and this ginormous list by addressing Dishonored and the paradox of choice.

Rab Florence hypothesizes applying the stealth fantasies of the game to his real life.

John Brindle isn't playing Dishonored yet, but reading about everyone else playing it had provided him for a launching-off point in talking about what happens when we bring outside objectives into our play:

"If there is an opposition between 'playing to win' and 'being playful', what does the latter mean? Are those who play in alignment with the goals intended by developers playing any more 'truly' than others, or is their alignment of goals merely incidental?"

Robert Yang finds the game's tutorial lazy and disruptive. Meanwhile, Becky Chambers does a deep read on Dishonored's portrayal of women.

KELLAWAY'S FINANCIAL TIMES ARTICLE

Apart from recent game releases, this week's major discussion trends seemed to revolve around this article by non-gamer Lucy Kellaway, writing on her (rather critical) impressions as part of the GameCity prize judging panel.

Our own Alan Williamson is himself highly critical of Kellaway's article but argues that we shouldn't dismiss outsider criticism, noting that "video games are often unashamedly elitist and obtuse."

Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun counters: "Actually, no, I don't think we really need to worry about what non-gamers think of games. And that is because, in this instance, we are the highly educated elite."

Mattie Brice opines that we can't demand cultural legitimacy and then dismiss outside criticism:

"The gaming community, or let's say the ones with voices -- popular developers, media, and maybe celebrities if we have those -- have a cake eating problem. We want to be taken seriously as an artform but don't often value critical analysis."

Luke Rhodes of Culture Ramp, meanwhile, takes the long view:

"If novices like the GameCity panel find it difficult to arrive at meaningful answers to those question, they may find it consoling to know that veteran game critics run up against the same difficulties."

INDEPENDENT GAMES

Brandon Sheffield offers his overview of IndieCade and writes on the subject of its remarkable diversity.

Michael Abbott covers a particular panel talk from the same conference, a discussion among thatgamecompany's Jenova Chen, Naughty Dog's Amy Hennig and Unfinished Swan developer Ian Dallas.

Writing for Wired, Jason Tanz brings us the legacy of Peter Molyneux, including the influence of his parody (and probable looper), @petermolydeux, on his decision to leave Microsoft and go into independent development.

BUY LOCAL

Information dieting seeks to focus on local issues and direct sources rather than consuming our media through a filter. Ben Milton wonders if he can take that even further:

"The question I've begun asking myself is, if I'm taking time to weed out junk information, how can I weed out junk games? What qualifies as a worthwhile game, something that I'll be glad I played afterwards? What criteria can I start using other than, 'That looks fun'? How can I make my gaming life saner, more grounded, and more human?""

FEEL ALL THE THINGS

Alexandra Geraets discovers an uncommon feeling of peace while playing Journey: "A video game is the last place I'd ever look for a peaceful, borderline spiritual experience, and yet I had one, a truly powerful, emotional adventure."

INCLUSION

Maddy Myers brings us a personal account of visiting several local fighting game meets, where she is routinely the only woman in the room:

"'Marvel vs. Capcom? I love this game,' says one of the newcomers. 'You all play this game? You guys all have Xbox?'

One of the other guys points at me. 'I only have a PS3, but she has an Xbox. This is her game.'

The newcomer stares hard at me. 'It's your game?'

Time to go through the motions. 'Yes.' 'You play this game?' 'Yes.' 'You play video games?' 'Yes.' 'You have an Xbox?!' 'Yes.' 'Whoa! You gotta give me your gamertag!' 'No, thanks.' 'What? Why not? You have Xbox Live, right?' 'I do, just . . . no, thanks.'

The guy turns and walks right out of the store. He doesn't come back.

The guy who pointed at me says, 'That was weird.'

'It wasn't that unusual,' I say. 'Not for me.'

'Oh, right,' he says. 'You're a girl who plays video games. And that's pretty weird.' It's not a compliment. He says it with a hint of concern in his eyes, as though he's letting me know that I have a symptom of some larger, mysterious disorder."

PopMatters' G. Christopher Williams surveys the role of the prostitute in games versus in other media.

Katie Williams observes that the gaming scene is changing, and for the better:

"The gaming community has seemed noisy lately, there's no denying it. Every week we pick through the debris of a new controversy. There's already a fatigue in relation to issues of sex and gender, but women have felt fatigued far longer by the prevalence of skimpily-dressed female characters and sexualized violence in our hobby. We're noisy now because we're finally able to speak up."

Krystian Majewski questions pop culture's one-dimensional treatment of mental illness and entreats writers to do better. Meanwhile, the Escapist's Andy Hughes examines several games' fictitious representation of Dissociative Identity Disorder to explore how they do, or don't do justice to their subject.

(HER)STORY

Read carefully, this is important: October 16th was Ada Lovelace Day, so it's my pleasure to point you all to a new blog dedicated to the world's first programmer: Dear Ada.

(HIS)TORY

Sean McGeady offers up his recollections of playing Metal Gear Solid with and alongside his father.

Dan Whitehead pays affectionate tribute to the recently departed Mike Singleton and his impact on games, noting: "If you've enjoyed an epic open world role-playing adventure in recent years, from Skyrim to Fallout, from Dragon Age to Fable, you've benefited from Singleton's prodigious imagination."

Chris Donlan takes his elderly father on a sight-seeing tour of the 1940s Los Angeles of his father's boyhood, via L.A. Noire:

"I'll never forget the moment we found [the Richfield Tower]. Dad could just about remember the cross-streets – 6th and Flower – and I had a little trouble fiddling round in the game's map to set a waypoint. Then we were off. On the drive, dad kept up a low-level muttering trail of recollections and fiercely specific critiques: the lamps on this bridge were right, but the large dumpsters in alleyways weren't like anything he remembered seeing; a gas station's Coke machine was just perfect, but little skirtings of exposed brickwork around the low walls of vacant lots 'didn't seem very Californian'; this was meant to be 1947? Why was that a 1950 Chevy, then? When we finally turned onto 6th, though, he suddenly stopped talking.

Like any son with a father in his late 60s, I assumed his sudden silence meant he was having a minor cardiac event. He wasn't, however: he was simply back in the presence of a building he hadn't seen in half a century.

We got out of the car and circled the mass of black marble. Dad didn't say much for a minute or so, but I was astonished that this forgotten edifice had made the cut in Rockstar's highly compressed take on Los Angeles. As landmarks go, it was long gone in real life, and in California, long gone generally means it's also forgotten. It was never a world-famous edifice [...] It's the kind of building that wouldn't really be missed, and yet here it was, and dad was visibly shaken."

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

Robert Rath is concerned about the treatment-to-date of Mexico's Cartel War in games:

"None of the games I've seen, to my mind, are good depictions of the Cartel War, and most of them mischaracterize the conflict by reinforcing stereotypes, getting details wrong, or telling the story from an American perspective. The worst part is I think you could make a great game about the Cartel War, one that respects the lives lost and educates people about a conflict that's largely experienced by Americans and Europeans through bloody headlines and political spin. This game, however, would look extremely different from the ones that have been made or are currently in development.

Let's look at what might need to happen."

MOVIES AND GAMES

The development of the AAA games industry is intertwined with late-century Hollywood. In particular, Michael Clarkson seems interested in how Die Hard has come to resonate as a film, and how it's gone on to inform so many action games.

Then there's the flip side, when games try to give back to the world of cinema. Rob Horsley takes a look back at the much-maligned Super Mario Bros. film and poses an interesting explanation for its reception and legacy.

INTERESTING READINGS

In addition to film, video games overlap with a plethora of other media and disciplines, which can be very useful for analysis. Here are three which I found especially charming this week:

First for English majors: Matt Krehbiel performs a reading of Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask through the lens of Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces.

Second for the philosophy majors: Stephen Beirne unearths some interesting connections between action-horror franchise Resident Evil and German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

Third for the science majors: Daniel Accardi explores the twisty little passages of quantum mechanics and The Elder Scrolls.

DEFINE: GAME

Adam Maresca advocates for a taxonomy for games:

"Some voice concerns over worries that improving our vocabulary will work solely towards exclusionary ends; they fear the power to call something "not a game" belittles creators and robs them of their merit like pulling at the ends of a slipknot. Some propose that a more refined set of terms to classify and categorize will stifle creative spirits and the coverage they would accrue. They are certainly real fears, but they're clung to with almost superstitious fervor in their desire to not confront the question."

Meanwhile, Kill Screen's Abe Stein questions why discussions of gaming rarely include the most popular fantasy game of them all:

"Game criticism has come a long way in the past five years, and sites like this one are a testament to that growth, and yet I wonder why there is such a glaring blind spot ignoring fantasy sports. Why have we not turned our critical gaze onto these immensely popular, and truly fascinating game systems? Chuck Klosterman recently wrote for Grantland about the effect of fantasy sports on sports fandom, but that is for a largely sports-focused publication. Are fantasy sports not effectively videogames?"

SNEAK KINGS

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running an excellent little letter series on the stealth genre, with contributions from Andy Schatz, Raf Colantonio, Patrick Redding and Nels Anderson.

WHEN WILL SENPAI NOTICE ME

If you have not already listened to this interview between Eric Brasure and former Critical Distance senior curator Ben Abraham, you owe it to yourself to do so.

THE END

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