This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including Wii U's antisocial message and indies helping indies.
You can see the Wii U being socially divisive with the very first scene in the video; some dick walks into a living room and declares that it's "time to watch the baseball", changing the channel without even giving the gamer time to pause and forcing him to carry on his game on the controller's small screen. It's a pretty depressing scene; the gamer doesn't participate in the baseball-watching, nor does baseball-dick care about the videogame. The Wii U, then: two men sitting in a room together, not talking or sharing in the same entertainment. All the warmth and camaraderie of a walk-in clinic.
Over on PopMatters Moving Pixels, G. Christopher Williams chats a bit on building a more plausible apocalypse -- to whit, why is Metro 2033 so unhygienic?
Over on Boing Boing, Peter Bebergal introduces us to the rise in old school Dungeons & Dragons play, as a response to the franchise's modern transition away from roleplaying to combat focus.
Rami Ismail opines that established indies may not be in the best position to promote other independents. Elsewhere, Michael Brough concurs:
[H]ere's the deeper problem with putting the responsibility of lifting up newcomers on those who are already successful in the field: even if they're completely willing to take risks on things that might not pay off, they're only interested in things that interest them. The gaps where things are really getting missed you don't even see, because they're not things you personally care about.
THE EXCITING WORLD OF WEB PUBLISHING
First Person Scholars' Jason Hawreliak interviews Killing is Harmless author and Critical Distance's 2012 Blogger of the Year, the beardful Australian Brendan Keogh.
Francisco Dominguez of Haywire Magazine suggests the verbs afforded players in BioShock Infinite are so narrow, they reinforce the game's sociopathy:
This would be why his dialogue is so utilitarian and deductive, always targeted towards a goal. This would be why his distinctive verbs are so narrow: he eats, shoots and cleaves. Even pandas get more agency. Nothing suggests he’s given to pleasurable activities, only the compulsively satisfying.
Fantastic. We’ve solved the ludonarrative conundrum. Now let’s make all our characters callous assholes and let’s never talk Greek again.
Two people having lunch both staring at their smartphones sounds "anti-social" to me...
"Enough of this couch co-op, multiplayer Nintendo Land, kids. Send your friend back home and do your homework. Time for daddy to watch the big game with fantasy football on Xbox One. Go tinker around on yer Miiverse."
The Wii U is no more anti social than the smartphone / tablet market. And someone doesn't just walk in to a room and change the channel while your using a game. Goes to show who has a device and who just talks about things they don't own.
"Enough of this couch co-op, multiplayer Nintendo Land, kids. Send your friend back home and do your homework. Time for daddy to watch the big game with fantasy football on Xbox One. Go tinker around on yer Miiverse."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glhc6XcUeFk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaiHMrzZtwo