An Introduction from Spence and a Brief Look at Video Game Criticism

   Hello everyone! My name’s Spence, and I’m one of the writers for GamerGweek! As you may have inferred from the title, the focus of this blog is video games! News, reviews, retrospectives and first impressions will be found here by myself and the rest of the team. Keep an eye out for new content all week, and remember to check out our Twitter as well, @GamerGweek! 

   Today, I’d like to give an introduction on how I plan on writing my articles. Stay Tuned! 

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   As someone who enjoys looking deeper into the nuances of storytelling and art, I’ve always viewed the medium of video games as an incredible opportunity to express oneself. Stories are more poignant and touching when told through a medium that requires direct participation from the player, and few other mediums have the ability to change and evolve as rapidly as video games have over the past 40 years or so. 

   Despite their unique abilities, video games are similar to other forms of media in the sense that they can be broken down into basic, critical elements; Painting is comprised of material and motivation, while literature is built of word usage, story elements, and so on. 

   Likewise,  I’d like to suggest that all video games are comprised of these three elements:

• Interaction - The means in which the player controls or takes part in the game, either through the controller or the way the player is expected to interact with the game; i.e. text entry, button presses, or motion capture.
• Graphics -  How the player is able to perceive the game’s content, which can range from text and 2- and 3-dimensional rendering, among others.
• Mechanics - How the game “plays” or offers as a challenge, which usually also identifies a game as being a part of one genre or another. Arguably the most important of the three elements. 

   If you think about it, you can break a great many games down into these three basic descriptors. Here are a few examples:    

Minecraft: 3D 1st - 3rd person infinite sandbox builder, with simplistic graphics and a creative focus (Image courtesy of neoseeker.com)

Undertale: 2D Topdown retro-style RPG with a heavy focus on narrative and character interactions. (Image courtesy of killapenguin.com)

Call of Duty: 3D First person shooter, with quick time events and cutscenes to present the story (Image courtesy of videogamer.com)

   When analyzing and reviewing games for this blog, I’d like to focus on how these elements are used and how they either function well or poorly with one another. Take Mirror’s Edge, for example. While the Graphics were nice and the game Mechanic of parkour was an interesting experiment, the way the player had to Interact with the game, (through first person,) made it difficult to pinpoint where one was actually going, making the game frustrating to play. In contrast, Bastion had beautiful painterly Graphics, cathartic story and combat Mechanics and a control scheme that made Interaction a true pleasure.

   With this in mind, perhaps it will be easier to understand what a game is trying to say and how it plans on saying it. Remember to keep a critical eye out for details in games story and artwork, along with gameplay and mechanics to understand the game as a whole and as separate elements as well. If enough real thought can be put into understanding games, perhaps they will become a medium of choice for daring new ideas!