The Xbox One Reveal in Stupid Sound Bites

Don Mattrick, President of Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, probably wasn’t expecting such a poor reception when he revealed Xbox One to the world on Tuesday. Coverage of the system, and the event at which it was revealed, has been mostly negative so far. Plenty about Microsoft’s vision for the console, and the way it’s been communicated, deserves to be criticised. It’s largely the overblown and empty language used to introduce Xbox One that I plan to talk about here, and I want to point out that I’m reserving judgement on the console itself at least until E3. When you read the quotes below, remember that they were said by straight-faced men and women, without a hint of irony. On reflection, this may be the most impressive thing about the entire event.

PS3 Review: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

I've decided to try to make my reviews more critical, coming at games from a particular angle rather than simply evaluating their visuals, sound, story, and so on. This look at 'style over substance' in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is my first attempt.

‘Style over substance’ is a phrase I often see in video game reviews. I came dangerously close to using it in my own review of Metal Gear Rising: Revenegence, and can think of scores of other games I’ve played that it could apply to. But what does it really mean? To me, substance refers to a game’s controls, systems, and mechanics, whilst style covers sound design, art direction, and narrative. A game that prioritises style over substance, then, is one where attention has been lavished on the game’s aesthetic and the expense of its gameplay, or at least one where the selling point is the former rather than the latter. Since the vanilla version of Far Cry 3 is near identical in substance, it’s clear that Blood Dragon’s main selling point is its distinct, 80s throwback style.

PS3 Review: Guacamelee!

There’s an on-going debate amongst video game critics about whether or not games need to be fun. It’s my opinion that they don’t. There are plenty of games that I didn’t find fun, but that I found worthwhile for other reasons, Spec Ops: The Line, for example. Drinkbox Studios’ Guacamelee!, however, aims to be nothing but fun – unashamedly so, and its singular dedication to this goal is difficult to fault.

Video Game Controls as Standard Language

Anyone watching me play through the first few hours of BioShock Infinite would have had a painful experience. When I tried to swing the Sky-Hook, I would inevitably find myself staring up an enemy’s nostrils, having forgotten that zoom, not melee, is mapped to R3 in the game. I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences when a game didn’t control how you expected it to. I think my failure to grasp Infinite’s perfectly simple controls results in part from me expecting the game to adhere to the established ‘standard’ shooter control scheme.

EA Responds To Bad PR With More Bad PR

Once again, EA has received the Golden Poo, the prize given to the ‘winner’ of the Consumerist’s ‘Worst Company in America’ poll. Voted for by the site’s users, it marks the second time EA has topped the poll in as many years.

PS3 Review: BioShock Infinite

Many big budget games rely on the player overcoming violent opposition to progress. Taking place in the floating city of Columbia during its yearly fair, BioShock Infinite’s first hour makes a compelling argument that this needn’t be the case. Columbia is mysterious. Posters bear cryptic references to prophecies you don’t yet understand; ambient dialogue and seemingly innocuous fairground games hint at a culture where racism is rife; stalls show off curiously advanced technology for a game set in 1912. Everywhere you look in BioShock Infinite, scraps of Columbia’s backstory are incorporated organically into the landscape, and each one you discover pulls the curtain back a little further. This process of discovery is so tantalising that you’ll never find your trigger finger itching. When the curtain comes all the way back and the extent of Columbia’s prejudice is laid bare, it’s one of the most incredible scenes in gaming to date.

Performative Utterances (Or Not) in Chris Hecker's 'Fair Use'

Fair Use, Chris Hecker’s hilarious Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) 2013 rant, is essential viewing for anyone sick of video game developers making unsubstantiated claims. Hecker’s rant skewered the worst tendencies of spokespeople in the gaming business, just by giving a few of them enough rope to hang themselves with.  If you haven’t seen it already, you can check it out at Chris Hecker's personal website.

Let’s have a closer look at the clips in Fair Use.

From PR Fail to PR Win: BioShock Infinite’s Cover Art

BioShock Infinite is a great game. So great, in fact, that I’m unwilling to rush through it for review. Instead, I want to talk about the controversy that erupted last year when its cover art was revealed. My review will be posted this time next week.

BioShock Infinite’s cover art went down badly with gamers. Infinite is a game of considerable thematic depth, and it’s difficult to explain succinctly what it’s about. You certainly can’t accurately capture the essence of the game with any single image. Bless 2K, though, because that’s what they tried to do. This is what my copy of BioShock Infinite looked like when it arrived in the post:

Metaphors We Game By - Part II

If you haven't already, be sure to read part one of this article first. It sets up the concepts I refer to here in part two.

Lets go back to ‘systematicity’, and the entailments of the GAMES ARE COMPETITION metaphor. These are, I’ve claimed:

GAMES CAN BE WON OR LOST

GAMES ARE ENTERTAINMENT

GAMES HAVE RULES

I would argue that how closely a game adheres to these entailments influences its reception within the video game community. For example, Mortal Kombat (2011) was criticised because its final boss, Shao Khan, suffers from ‘SNK Boss Syndrome’. This is when an enemy character is difficult to beat because they are able to do things (such as unblockable attacks) that other characters are not. Shao Khan is therefore difficult because he breaks the rules of the game, and players reacted poorly because this deviated from the entailments of GAMES ARE COMPETITION, which is key to their concept of what a game is. Compare this with a game such as Ninja Gaiden. Universally seen as extremely difficult, Ninja Gaiden is nevertheless warmly received because its challenge is fair. Gamers don’t mind the game’s difficulty because it sticks to its own rules, and is therefore in line with the metaphor.

PS3 Review: Tomb Raider

I’m not proud of this, but I’ll be honest and say that I wanted to dislike Tomb Raider. I’ve never been a fan of the franchise in the past, and the knuckle-headed pre-release PR, coupled with my general dislike for reboots meant that I was positively looking forward to this game being mauled by the press. Imagine my annoyance, then, when I found myself enjoying Lara’s origin story more than any other game so far this year.

Metaphors We Game By - Part I

This will be a two-part article. In part one, I’ll introduce the concept of metaphor as it’s understood in cognitive linguistics. The second part will consist of a more critical look at the metaphors below, including a discussion of how the concepts they entail inform debates that are currently raging in the world of video game criticism. You may need to read this a couple of times to fully get the concept - I certainly did!

One of my all time favourite books on linguistics is “Metaphors We Live By”, in which Professors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson examine the links between metaphors, language and thought. This article on metaphor in gaming follows the template set out in the first three chapters of their book.

PS3 Review: God of War: Ascension

God of War: Ascension has everything going for it. It builds on an established character and mythology, and its beautiful graphics and lavish orchestral soundtrack demonstrate sky-high production values. In spite of this, however, a combination of missteps in design and problems carried over from previous games means that, although Ascension is fun to play, it’s rather difficult to get excited about.

In Defence of Derivative Games

 

If you stick with this blog, as I post more frequently you’ll begin to see that I respect straight-talking, honest people in the video games industry. Well, Zynga’s Dan Porter was at least being honest, if not especially admirable, when he reportedly said, “Zynga is often accused of copying games, which is mostly true”. Not surprisingly, this bone-headed statement generated controversy, and this in turn got me thinking about the issue of derivative game design. With its connotations of a lazy, cynical creative process, no criticism is more damning than calling a game derivative. But is a derivative game always a bad one?

PS3 Review: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Metal Gear Solid 4 

PlatinumGames was an inspired choice of developer to help Konami save Metal Gear Rising from development hell. Creators of some of this generation's most revered action games, the studio seemed an obvious fit for a hack and slash spin-off staring the cyborg ninja, Raiden. But what have they brought to the Metal Gear series besides a painful subtitle? Read on to find out.

Welcome

Welcome to the Ludolinguist blog! Ludolinguist basically means 'linguist that talks about games'. Linguistics is the study of languages, and ludo is Latin for 'game' (Ludology is what people who take themselves just a little too seriously call 'game studies'). I studied linguistics at university, and have been playing video games since I was five. 

Don't worry; this blog won't be filled with overly technical analyses of the dialogue in games. I don't want to be a bore for people who don't have a background in linguistics, and I won't use specialist terminology without explaining clearly what it means. Instead, what I will aim for is fun, succinct essays about language and gaming. I may occasionally post things that are only about gaming, with no link to language, but I won't ever go off in the other direction. In addition to regular articles on language and games, I will also post reviews.

Some of my articles will take an idea or observation from linguistics and apply it to a particular game or group of games. For example, I may write an article on 'code switching' (the term linguists use for people who speak multiple languages switching between them), and how games such as Assassin's Creed II use this phenomena to give a sense of authenticity. I also plan to shine a harsh light on some of the sillier video game PR out there. All too often, an obsession with empty jargon obscures the substance of announcements in the video games industry. With this in mind, look out for regular posts examining the meaning (or lack thereof) of 'Bullshit Gaming Buzzwords', as well as eviscerations of stupid press releases whenever they happen.

The plan is to post reviews on Tuesdays and mainline articles on Fridays. As well as reading the blog, you can also follow me on Twitter: @ludolinguist.

Enjoy!

-Sam


P.S. My website was put together by Kate Walker. If you like great writing, photography and art, you should really check out her website, Marquee Lights.