I recently beat Morrowind again. It’s one of those games that I come back to every couple years or so, and in fact Morrowind might be my favorite game of all time. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is an open world RPG developed by Bethesda and released in 2002, when I was 10 years old….
Tag: video games
Pokémon and the merits of vague aspirations
I recently defeated the Pokémon League in Brilliant Diamond and I was thinking about how the Pokémon franchise characterizes end goals for Pokémon trainers. Most obvious is the Pokémon League championship: this is essentially the “main quest” of the mainline games. It is upon becoming champion that the credits roll. There is also the secondary…
Stories in ludology & narratology (part 2)
In Part 1, we discussed the origin of play, the relationship between game mechanics and interactive narrative, and the specific examples of Tetris and Monopoly. In this post, we’ll take a look at what happens when gameplay and narrative clash, what can be done to avoid it, and how it can be used to the…
Stories in ludology & narratology (part 1)
Ludology and narratology are the two sides of the coin that is the study of games (in the non-mathematical sense). Ludology is the study of game mechanics and rules, and narratology is the study of story and setting. Ludology is closer to math, while narratology is closer to literary analysis. Narratology of games is particularly…
thoughts on mind 