Drew Davidson’s Well Played anthology is out for purchase or for reading on the web.
What makes a game good? or bad? or better?
Video games can be “well played” in two senses. On the one hand, well played is to games as well read is to books. On the other hand, well played as in well done.
This book is full of in-depth close readings of video games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. 22 contributors (developers, scholars, reviewers and bloggers) look at video games through both senses of “well played.”
Content:
Get Well Played here.
Jeg er netop blevet færdig med Advance Wars-kapitlet, og jeg er indtil videre rigtig glad for de forskellige artikler. Velskrevet, og meget interessante, især den med Super Mario Bros.
Thanks for linking this, what a great source for some actual criticism, as opposed to theory about criticism! I’m working on my PhD in game theory and criticism right now, so I’m both encouraged by the emergence of more work in the field, and frustrated that some people have beaten me to it!
Thanks again.
Glad to be of service, Adam!
Thanks a lot for this, Jesper. I just dropped by to check if you had any updates on your blog and found this. This sort of thing is really great — I was trying to do some similar sort of thing with my paper on STALKER.
I still wish some other games could have a look in … ones with a strong story element like Max Payne etc. Work for me … i suppose ;)
Nevertheless, Well played!
Souvik, yes, I am also looking forward to more readings like this.
I am at the moment working on a series of ‘critiques’ on current-generation games. So far I’ve done Bioshock (big surprise), Assassin’s Creed and Infamous, with games like GTA4, CoD4, Bully and others to come. They are largely going to make up case studies in my thesis, but I am feeling out options to have them published separately as well. My goal is to go in with a ‘general’ attitude to critique the games, rather than as a cultural, media, literary, semiotics, ludological or otherwise framework. Hoping to integrate a lot of those (if not all) to show it -can- be done and that game critiques don’t have to simply mimic the work of those other fields.
They do turn out very long though…