January 26, 2010 – 9:40 am
Here’s an interesting thing about today’s commandment. The proper translation of it is probably “You must not commit murder.” Murder is different than killing, even if humans are your target in both places. The current Catholic Church (according to Wikipedia) translates this commandment as one against killing, which is a broader term than murder. The [...]
January 25, 2010 – 10:20 am
The rain it raineth on the just and on the unjust fella. But chiefly on the just, because the unjust steals the just’s umbrella. –Lord Bowen It was fifteen or so years ago, and my roommates, Ginger and Jason, and I were talking about role playing games. We’d recently discussed the recent announcement that someone [...]
January 24, 2010 – 9:15 am
This week I’m going to delve back into my ideas around Transgression. To recap a bit, transgression is the breaking of a boundary, usually a moral or social one. Sins, therefor, are transgressions and we’ll be looking at some of the commandments this week. I’m not a Christian, though I was raised as one, and [...]
January 22, 2010 – 9:10 am
I think some of it is nostalgia. Some of it is the nature of games to build on what came before. Some of it is certainly the hit driven nature of games, that forces repetition. Too many games I’ve been playing this year echo an older game that I find I’d rather be playing. Dragon [...]
January 21, 2010 – 9:15 am
I’ve done some thinking since I wrote yesterday’s post about frustration in Dragon Age. I think my analysis was wrong, actually. It’s not really about play style. I like run in and bash them on the head games, I like sneaky games. I like tactical games (and the Mage in WoW is a tactical [...]
January 20, 2010 – 9:10 am
I’m having some real difficulty with Dragon Age: Origins. I feel like I want to play it. There’s — not peer pressure, but a sense from my peers that they liked this game. From people with whom I’ve had detailed discussions about games we both liked. In other words, people whose tastes I felt were [...]
January 19, 2010 – 9:10 am
My Goddess Daughter evidently didn’t get the memo that the only thing she should bring home from school was refrigerator art, so all of us wound up catching the stomach flu she shared so well. (Momma always taught me to share, after all.) The good news is that I had a day off for MLK Jr Day, [...]
January 18, 2010 – 10:05 am
By virtue of the magic circle, all games can be said to exist within a liminal space. But liminality is a mental state, you have to have the buy-in of the player to get them into the space. It requires that choice to transgress out of their normal space and into the new one. Otherwise [...]
January 15, 2010 – 9:15 am
A liminal space is an other space, one which exists within the world, and separate from them. I’m interested in these spaces and much of what I practice and am attracted to are about being in them. In a pagan ritual, we “cast a circle” which creates a space in the world and separate from [...]
January 13, 2010 – 9:35 am
Here’s a thought that occurred to me as I was writing yesterday’s post. If Tetris came out today, it’d be a casual game. So, why isn’t it considered a casual game? It’s success on the Game Boy was a lot like other Nintendo successes since then, many of which have garnered them derision for pandering [...]