Links

Reading for the Week

Things have been pretty quiet here at GDA for a few weeks, so I just thought I would pass on some of the things I’ve been reading that might be overlooked.

The first is a piece by Chris Bateman over on iHobo where he does a great job of summarizing some of the research that has been done on how the human brain reacts to games.

Over on Applied Game Design, Brenda Brathwaite has an interesting post on the difference and tension between a game’s system (what she calles the ‘database’) and its story. Be sure to read the comments!

Taking a closer look at narrative in games is Emily Short on her blog. The question here is what is the most effective way to use dialogue to create characterization in interactive fiction. However, what I found most interesting were the parts discussing the reaction of ‘casual’ gamers to dialogue trees.

On the other side of the system/story coin we have David Sirlin’s thoughts on Street Fighter IV. Sirlin gives the sort of expert opinion that’s always necessary with games as complicated as Street Fighter.

Finally, the last link isn’t a specific post, but a new blog that our friend Noah Sasso pointed me towards: SHMUPtheory. Dedicated to shooters, it’s just started and only has a few posts up, but hopefully the author will keep going!

Hope you all get as much out of reading these as I did!