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Black Ops III often borders on the intangible and avant-garde, but only because warfare has evolved so rapidly that it seems unreal and fictional. Soldiers and terrorists hacking into and controlling armed robots is not merely action spectacle, but a fearful reality. Evoking the language of videogames, the real human targets of drone warfare are marked and dehumanized as “objectives.” … Continue reading Opened World: Metafictional Warfare
For Suda51, videogames seem to be a kind of professional afterlife to working in a morgue, allowing him to creatively re-articulate his prior craft. The very structure of games focuses on cycles of death and revival, in which sequences of play are continually punctuated with “game over” screens. Having dealt with bodies that have expired … Continue reading Opened World: A Living Out of Dying
What Remains of Edith Finch is precisely about the desire to tell stories in any way possible. Family histories are recorded and preserved via diverse mediums including diary entries, photography, letters, poetry, and even comic books. By structuring the game as an exploration of objects that trigger micro-narratives embedded within the household environment, its central … Continue reading Opened World: Fictions Within Fictions
The radio is ubiquitous in the world of Fallout. Accessed via the portable Pip-Boy device wrapped around the player-character’s wrist, the radio transmits a constant stream of music (popular and classical), news, and propaganda. Likewise, it also syndicates radio dramas as one of the popular forms of narrative-based entertainment for the wasteland. Fallout’s emphasis on … Continue reading Opened World: Theater of the Mind
Interview by Miguel Penabella Originally conducted April 1, 2017 Edits and introduction written April 14, 2017 In the short time since the award-winning puzzle platformer demo Little Bug was successfully crowdfunded on Fig.co for expansion into a full game, developer Bela Messex has had his mind on both past and future. Messex’s thoughts are awash … Continue reading Player Two: An Interview with Bela Messex
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days depicts transition, poverty, and the marginalized. In an interview within Heterotopias conducted by Martin and the game’s art director Rasmus Poulsen, the latter underlines an interest in showing unseen parts of the city such as alleyways and corridors lined with trash. Dog Days is a game about the ugly … Continue reading Opened World: Walled City
That everything should be put into a video game simply suggests that the typically excluded banality of everyday life should not be underestimated as a source of meaning. Instead of a focus on action-heavy shooter gameplay or sci-fi indulgence, the turn towards candid gestures like looking out through a window at nothing in particular can … Continue reading Beyond the Ordinary: Why Everything Should Be Put Into a Video Game
