Author Archives: Steve Gillham

It would be easy to take one look at the byzantine UI prompts and the arcane systems of territorial stewardship in Crusader Kings and conclude that the game was a purely abstract exercise, a grand strategy game far too grand … Continue reading →

EMILY: (To Ben) One of the first uses of the term grotesque to denote a literary genre is in Montaigne’s Essays. The Grotesque is often linked with satire and tragicomedy. It is an effective artistic means to convey grief and … Continue reading →

As we’ve made our way through various roguelikes in symposiums past, we’ve often discussed how discovery of their mechanics is one of the genre’s most satisfying rewards. Deckbuilders and collectible card games operate within a similar design space, but they … Continue reading →

What is surrealism in video games? Is it the subversion of expository traditions through ludic conventions? Is it the perversion of ludic conventions for expository effect? Is it a five-act dog opera? We’ll discuss the meaning of Oikospiel, the means … Continue reading →

It was nearly half a decade ago when we played Subset Games’ first release, FTL, and discussed its capacity for player-created narrative. The intervening years have seen a great deal of change, especially with regards to the prevalence of procedural … Continue reading →

One of the earliest pieces of “serious” games criticism that I can remember reading on the internet was a sprawl of text from Tim Rogers about Earthbound, a role-playing game released for the Super Nintendo in 1995. Pinballing wildly from … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →