This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Cameron Kunzelman on topics including the necessity of winstates, one's enjoyment of power fantasies, and more.
I am not Kris Ligman. I am Cameron Kunzelman, and because of events both dangerous and deceitful far and wide, I am running This Week In Videogame Blogging this week. I don’t have any notes up top beyond the notes that I just wrote.
Oh, actually, I do: Kris does a great job of organizing posts thematically. I don’t. So–
Mark Rowlands doesn’t write about video games at all, but his “Tennis With Plato” is some amazing writing about games in general and their maybe-intrinsic value to someone who is growing older.
Our actions are naturally constrained by what we perceive as not only appropriate but possible. We can’t do certain things with certain technologically mediated forms of storytelling because there are limits to what users can imagine within the context of those media. What I want to emphasize here is that this is a very real problem for anyone trying to do anything innovative with design; too innovative, too unfamiliar, and the user won’t possess the baseline assumptions, imaginings, and understandings necessary to experience the medium in the way the designer intended.
Trigger warning for sexual violence: Mat Jones takes a bullet for us all and does a short oral history of the Reddit game forum and how it feels about Sarkeesian’s Tropes Against Women.
But what about my guilt over enjoying violent power fantasies, given how judgmental the media and politicians and Americans everywhere have been about violent media lately? What is it that I love about holding an imaginary gun and shooting hundreds of avatars in the face? Am I just acting out some Tarantino-esque revenge fantasy on the daily micro-aggressions that I feel from strangers, and even friends, who talk down to me because I’m a wee little baby-looking girl who must need help, who can’t do anything on her own?
