Author Archives: Steve Gillham

Symposium, February 1st: Universal Paperclips (and Incremental Games)

Posted on January 29, 2018

Everything. Everything in its right place. The system has a task. A task and a purpose. For incremental games like Universal Paperclips, that task and that purpose becomes our own as we become both the rules of the system and … Continue reading →

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Symposium, September 7th: Breath of the Wild

Posted on September 5, 2017

As its name might suggest, mythology has always served as the foundation for The Legend of Zelda. Throughout its history, its songs of champions found many forms across the Hyrulean ages, from the sunken legacy of Wind Waker to the … Continue reading →

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Symposium, February 5th: Darkest Dungeon

Posted on January 29, 2017

Our past explorations of procedural generation have confronted the tensions between design of the unknown and its representation. For Spelunky to live, death had to lose its way in the winding tunnels, while the more procedural whims of King of … Continue reading →

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Let’s Try This Symposium Again, October 13th: Super Mario Maker and The Beginner’s Guide

Posted on October 9, 2016

A Skype outage sabotaged our attempt to have this discussion last week, so let’s take another swing at it on Thursday. Here are the notes for the original discussion: https://vghvi.org/2016/10/02/symposium-october-6th-super-mario-maker-and-the-beginners-guide/

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Symposium, October 6th: Super Mario Maker and The Beginner’s Guide

Posted on October 2, 2016

In our last symposium, our examination of play through virtual reality interrogated a viewpoint that is so player-centered that we had to come up with a new aphorism (metaphoric presence) to attempt to describe the player’s role as a disruptive … Continue reading →

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Symposium, March 3rd: Ori and the Blind Forest

Posted on February 28, 2016

With Ori and the Blind Forest, there are thorns for every rose. An evocative opening provides a bittersweet reminiscence, which becomes more resonant as the player retraces and resurrects the storied past of the forest by navigating a tangled hawthorn … Continue reading →

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Symposium, October 1st: Splatoon

Posted on September 28, 2015

In “Effective, but Defective,” music critic Robert Christgau wrote about a perceived critical leniency that was afforded to Tom Waits, whose fractured folk-singing has carved out a memorable — and distinctly anti-pop — niche. Christgau confesses that “yes, [Waits’s] gifts are … Continue reading →

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