Quest to Nowhere

Playing Red Dead Redemption I found myself thinking a lot about the story, specifically within the context of the objective vs. subjective storytelling (which I discussed in a previous post.) The one thing that I kept coming back to was that within the game it seemed that there were two John Marstons, the one that Rockstar created for the game, and the one that the players create for themselves as they play the game. The players’ John Marston exists between the cut-scenes and in-game dialogues between characters, while the Rockstar John Marston exists in those scripted moments.

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While listening to a discussion the possible controversy that will likely arise from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′s section where it seems that you play as a terrorist. It occurred to me that perhaps one of the possible reasons for that is the term ‘videogame,’ what it entails, and the weight it carries in people’s minds.
The term does a great job of literally stating what it is, it is a game played on a video screen, but the conotation of it being a game I think is what causes a lot of problems. Not just with mainstream media videogame … Continue Reading

I picked up Halo: ODST (which I now read in my head as “Ah-dst,”) a little over a week ago mostly to check out for the story stuff in the game. The story stuff is really interesting, since there are essentially two parts to it.

In the game you are playing as a lone special forces type trooper, who has been unconscious for a few hours after getting dropped into a urban warzone. As you make your way through the city you find items that give you flashbacks to what the rest of your team was doing while you were … Continue Reading

I’ve been reading up a lot lately on stuff relating to storytelling and writing in videogames lately, because it is both something I am doing to an extent/want to do and also because of what I’m working on for my graduate thesis.

Now I was going to write a post here about videogame narrative stuff, but I’m having trouble deciding what I want to say without going in-depth into what I’m working on for my possible thesis.

So rather then trying to come up with something that wouldn’t be too interesting for this post I figured I’d post this video of a … Continue Reading