Weekly Links #160

Hello, everyone! With the recently concluded Game Developers Conference keeping everyone busy, I don't have as many links today as for the last two weeks. But hey, as Michael Cook points out, not everyone could make it, and what they have to say is no less interesting. Like this article about ahead-of-time versus runtime procedural generation. Or this essay on videogames and genre, which comes up with a novel angle: in games, because they're interactive, genre has two axes, not just one like in static media. In other words, it's a field, not a line. Which explains why everyone, myself included, have had such a hard time getting a grip on the concept for so long.

In other news, over on Eurogamer Alexis Kennedy writes about game endings (via K.D.). Pretty ironic for someone famous for creating a neverending text-based MMO. I don't agree with his position, by the way: while Undertale's habit of remembering past playthroughs blew everyone's mind, it also frustrated a lot of players who found themselves locked out of the best ending because they played too violently at first, as they've been conditioned to do for two generations. And sure, that's how real life works... but the whole point of games is that they're not real life. He also seems to forget that MMORPGs (including his own) had to compensate for the players' inability to save and reload by making death inconsequential, also in order to avoid frustration.

When what you do has permanent consequences, however virtual, it's no longer fun and games. Not that games have to be fun. But consider what exactly you're putting in front of an audience.

Last but not least, via Emily Short, here's a Kotaku article about black people in videogames. Unsurprisingly, the gist of it is that we're still limited to stereotypes and caricatures, and that's a terrible state of things this far into the 21st century. Especially as Unesco just hailed videogames as a great way to foster empathy between human beings in a world plagued by violent bigotry.

But that takes us into really dark territory. See you next week.