Category: Essays

Things that don’t fit anywhere else.
January 24, 2014 / / Essays

The Problem with Nintendo

What’s the problem with Nintendo? Sales went down the tubes. My earlier article proved a total nonstarter, of course. Obviously, neither I nor President Iwata understands the market his company once helped create. Nintendo faces a structural problem, but also a market based one, a terrible product, and bad self-promotion; a variety of factors led to this points, ones which go beyond the rose-colored lens of Nintendo nostalgia and into the cold, harsh, objective light of day.

The problem is not really a problem with Nintendo. It’s a problem with the audience and a problem with Nintendo’s messages to the consumer. Let’s dive deeper.

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January 23, 2014 / / Essays

Preconceived Notions of Fighting Games

Since it seems the Christian game community suddenly finds itself on the idea of preconceived notions and judging things on face value, allow me to say a few words: Maybe we all judge the traditional video game on face value.

I can say, for a fact, that fighting games scare me with their dexterity, execution, mind games, and mental speed requirements. Even though I always was and remain a great fan of most two-dimensional fighters, I can’t say with any confidence that my modicum of skill could fit into any category other than “noob”.

noob-saibot-mortal-kombat
No, not this kind of Noob.
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January 22, 2014 / / Essays

Brothers and The Two-Fold Miracle

WARNING: Full spoilers regarding Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons ahead. To read an article on the game with more subtlety, check out what M. Joshua Cauller wrote about it.

Ever since I was young, my mother told me that I had an older brother. Sadly, certain unfavorable circumstances eliminated his chance of seeing this world for himself, which eventually left me as the only child of the family.

Being alone had its perks. Yet in retrospect, I realize that I was fairly lost growing up, especially due to the fact that I lived in three different countries during my primary school years. Combine that with a father who was mostly absent, I never had any male role model to look up to — or just a mentor figure that I could talk to — in all my years of childhood and adolescence.

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January 21, 2014 / / Essays

Being One With Video Games (and God)

10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10

I believe, rather solidly and definitively, that video games only hold you by their aesthetics for only so long. I know plenty of games that strike you with their art styles, but immediately falter. I prefer that experience to something far worse when the game’s flaws become apparent to the player in the last vestiges of the developer’s intended pathway.

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January 17, 2014 / / Essays

Melodrama

I tried to explain this before, and perhaps in one other instance, but I notice a recent rash of “realness” in the gaming community. Or, at the least, the circles in which I frequent see video games constantly avoiding “reality” as a construct of the Western mindset. See, when Haggar in Final Fight regains health through eating meat on the ground, rather than reconstructive surgery on his tailbone for all the piledrivers he gave those Mad Gear Gang fools. This sort of symbolic representation makes people angry; realism comes second to mechanical depth, for reasons that make perfect sense. Realism isn’t often “fun”.

So, in that spirit, we can easily define video games as less “real” and more “melodramatic”. Huh? Let me explain.

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