Tag Archives: video games

Community

#followfriday: Some Content Creators I Love

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There are lots of wonderfully talented people on the Internet!

These days I tend to find that it’s passionate individuals, not commercial, corporate sites, that provide the most interesting and enlightening content about the things I’m into. The people who do it for the love rather than for the metrics.

Whether it’s posting informative articles about anime, entertaining videos about gaming or interacting directly with their community by streaming, I thought it was high time I shared some of my favourite content creators with you. Hit the jump for a non-exhaustive (just in case I forget someone!) list, in no particular order.

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Community

On the Age-Old Question of Video Game Violence

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Over at The Well-Red Mage, which you should really be reading if you enjoy thoughtful and well-considered writing about games without sociopolitical showboating, the Mage posed an interesting question.

It’s one we’ve been over many times since the medium’s inception, and yet at the time of writing, it’s once again a hot topic thanks to recent gun-related atrocities and the surrounding discussions.

So let’s talk about it a bit. I am, of course, no expert on psychology, so I’m not going to speak for anyone else; instead, I’m primarily going to focus on my own experiences here, and contemplate how they perhaps came to be. Feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts in the comments, and be sure to drop by the Mage’s site to see some other takes on the matter.

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Community, One-Shots

Game Chasing: The Retro Hut, Southampton

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Although “gaming YouTubers” have been around for a good few years now, I’ve only really started exploring their work in earnest recently.

One of the channels I’ve grown to be particularly fond of in the last couple of months is The Game Chasers, where two friends named Billy and Jay, who have known each other since the ’90s, travel around various flea markets and game stores in search of retro video games to add to their collection. Their headline videos are inspired by TV shows such as American Pickers, but they’ve carved out their own identity over time and have established themselves as an immensely entertaining channel that is a bit different from your usual Let’s Players and suchlike.

One thing I frequently find myself feeling while watching their videos, however, is a slight pang of jealousy at the awesome retro gaming stores they seemingly have within reasonably easy reach of them. So I was very interested to discover by accident that there is actually a store like this in my neck of the woods. Naturally, I went to investigate.

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Announcements, One-Shots

Extra Life: Game Day is Soon!

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November 4 is Game Day for this year’s Extra Life — at least for me.

You can find some information about the event and my contribution to it on my fundraising page — as well as make a pledge — but today I wanted to share a bit more information about what I’m planning for the day itself.

I don’t tend to do a lot of streaming, but my 24-hour stint playing Final Fantasy XIV for Extra Life two years ago was a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to this session too! I hope you’ll join me for some of the day.

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Cover Games, Stormblood

Stormblood: The MMO as Musical Theatre

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cropped-sb-header-4555862This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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“Video games aren’t movies.” That’s a line of criticism that those who prioritise mechanics over narrative like to level at cutscene-heavy games, particularly those by creators such as Hideo Kojima and David Cage.

And while it’s true that making effective use of games as a form of interactive media tends to emphasise actual interaction over passively watching cutscenes, one can hardly deny the spectacle offered by strongly movie-inspired titles, and the flexibility that entirely computer-generated scenes and characters can provide creators.

Which makes it all the more unusual that so many games focus on movies as their primary inspiration rather than other forms of media. Sure, some role-playing games might be rather operatic in tone, visual novels are effectively “Books Plus” and rhythm games provide a new way of experiencing pieces of music, but video games have never embraced the idea, of, say, musical theatre.

Or so you thought…

This article is also a video! Hit the jump to watch it, or catch it on YouTube.

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One-Shots

How Video Games Might Have Saved My Life

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With today’s news about the suicide of Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington, I thought now might be a good time to reshare a very personal piece I wrote a while back on my now-defunct personal blog.

Its link to Bennington is tenuous at best, I’ll freely admit, given that it’s an article about video games, but there’s an important core message in here that is relevant.

There are times in our life when we feel like we’re suffering, like things just can’t and won’t get any better. During those times, it can be tempting to contemplate taking drastic steps, up to and including ending your own life.

But, and you’ve probably heard these words a lot today already: don’t suffer in silence. Reach out to people and ask for help if you need it. And if there’s something that helps you cope, make use of it. Taking this advice is why I’m still here today.

This piece was originally written in April 2016, so some references may be a little dated! Oh, and here’s the source for the header image.

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