Added: 17.03.2014 21:32 | 7 views | 0 comments



Monday at GDC, if you don't already know, is the best day of the entire conference. Not for news, or for panels with famous speakers, or for behind-closed-doors appointments with games you haven't even heard of yet, but for breathing room. The rest of the week is chock full of people, and as Cartman would say at an amusement park, there's nothing worse than the lines, the lines, the lines.

Instead, Monday is reserved for summits, the Game Narrative Summit in particular, whose panels are reserved for the story and dialogue of video games, the part that's unfortunately often neglected. It is here that William Pugh and Davey Wieden of Galactic Cafe, the indie developer behind the breakout, existential platformer The Stanley Parable, posed numerous questions about choices. At the beginning of the game, what are the decisions or self-negotiations that happen in your head before you chose the left door, thereby following the narrator's instructions, or actively disobey his orders and head toward the right door? Since choosing one or the other doesn't seem to have an advantage or disadvantage, the choice seems pinned to merely who you are as a person.

That instantly provoked me to ask whether your very first playthrough of a game, before you know the consequences of making any decisions, is truly a reflection of who you are as both a person and a player. If you choose to sacrifice the first Little Sister in Bioshock without knowing the difference between how much ADAM, does that mean you're inherently an egotistical maniac? If you decide to save Megaton in Fallout 3 the first time through, are you inherently a person who believes in good karma? If you're an evil prick throughout all of Fable III, but then change your mind for one instance to save an NPC character because he's been a friend, are you a bastard with the heart of a softie when it counts?

This question of your morality in the face of lack of knowledge can be blurred of course if you're the type of player who wishes to role-play as the avatar given to you by the developer. Being cast into the role of, say, a paladin might color your decision to follow a heroic path, just as playing a muscular anti-hero with anger-management issues might make you shoot first and ask questions later.

Also, the influence of wikis and strategy guides can distort your decision. I'm the kind of player who hates dying and, if a boss gives me considerable trouble, will scour through forums for information before confronting it once again. I will even look up the consequences for making one choice over another, though even with a guide, I tend to pick the good option, in part because it usually makes the game harder and because I think I'm a nice person (hey, don't roll your eyes at me!).

So how about you? To what extent do the moral choices you make during your first playthrough in a game say anything about you? Are you a prick in games because you feel like you're being too nice in real life? On the flipside, are you generally cooperative and helpful in games because you feel like you're too much of a prick in real life?

Added: 15.03.2014 3:16 | 10 views | 0 comments


Gamerheadlines looks at the characters we're going to meet in Burial at Sea - Episode 2. This is the last we're going to see of Bioshock in a long time since Irrational Games are shutting down, and it's been stated that there will be plenty of characters from both Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite in Burial at sea. who will be there as we wave goodbye to Bioshock?

Added: 14.03.2014 15:15 | 10 views | 0 comments


Mac Gamer HQ writes: Most of you have heard about the shocking news that Ken Levine, the genius behind the Bioshock series, said he was burnt out creatively and that he is scaling down to himself plus 17 others (from over 200 people during BioShock Infinites development). I believe this is a symptom of the whole AAA issue in general. Let me explain, the term AAA didnt even exist until this console generation. Current games have reached complexity levels so high that if you want to make a genre defining game such as Bioshock infinite, you have to have a Hollywood blockbuster budget.

Added: 12.03.2014 5:28 | 6 views | 0 comments


Got a spare $250?

Added: 11.03.2014 10:15 | 10 views | 0 comments


Will Borger for Endless Backlog writes - "When I beat Bioshock Infinite, all I wanted to do was talk about the ending. I spent days thinking about and discussing the way Irrational shaped the games narrative, pouring over all of the clues the game wove into its world, dialogue, and characters that were so obvious in hindsight, and so easy to miss on the first playthrough. After a time, however, I stopped thinking about endings, and started thinking about beginnings. And after Bioshock Infinite, the question was obvious: What would Irrational do next? I would have never predicted that the answer would be 'nothing'."

Added: 09.03.2014 15:19 | 7 views | 0 comments


Kill Screen Daily: Year in and year out, men, and typically white men, dominate the narratives of the best selling videogames. Looking at the games that have been critically and financially successful over the past few years, theres no shortage of brooding, heroic and flawed male leads: The Uncharted franchise. GTA V. Every single exhausting iteration of Call of Duty. The Last of Us. Assassins Creed. The lone exception might be the Tomb Raider reboot from 2013, but that game doesnt exactly boast progressive gender perspectives. This quality is not, of course, unique to videogames. All forms of media struggle with proper representation, including movies, TV shows and novels all predominantly crafted around straight white people. Few videogame covers have captured the whitewashed, testosterone-driven media landscape the way the box art for BioShock Infinite has.