Well Played 2.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning - OpenLibra

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the beginning of the game or returned to search it at some point. A visit to Eva’s desk is required for the hole punch, a visit to the street fair for the worms, a visit to the packing room for the foam fluids, a return to the office to send the balloons down to the machine room and more than one trip to the machine room. Perseverance and trial-and-error (the scientific method) is alive and well in GF. This is a game for adventure aficionados or novices with a walk-through guide grasped tightly in their hot-little hands. I cheerfully admit to having used a walk-through myself. The Detailed World of Grim Fandango None of this would work if the world in which the game occurs wasn’t incredibly well-conceived and detailed. Many of the puzzles and the fine touches come from the basis of a world populated by skeletons. For example, Sal Limones and Evaluna don’t want to release Manny to follow after Meche. As a mere administrative assistant, Eva doesn’t have the level of access to the DOD computers that Manny has. The biometric key the system uses to provide higher access is dental scans of the agents’ teeth because skeletons don’t have fingerprints. So, they want to keep Manny around for his pearly whites. To win his freedom, Manny will have to get Domino’s mouth guard (the ex-boxer has a punching bag in his office) and Bondo from Glottis’ tool shed to make a cast of his teeth. Once Eva gets the cast, Manny can leave El Marrow and go after Meche. Another plot device that arise from the characters’ unique life (or postlife) circumstances is the sprouting gun. When Don Copal eliminates Dom he doesn’t “fill him full of lead.” His “piece” is more like a squirt gun, spraying sprouting fluid that transforms animated skeletons to lovely, inanimate gardens. Coroners must root through the gardens to find identifying markers of the dead, florists in the Aztec afterlife are eventually driven mad by the fact that their agricultural avocation is tied to a final death, and Don Copal will eventually meet his end in his elaborate greenhouse. Other devices and set pieces arise from the historical time period in which Film Noir flourished, the 40’s and 50’s. Sal Limones’ character is reminiscent of Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary whose Marxist awakening and revolutionary career began and flourished in the late 40’s and through the 50’s. Many characters and environments are styled in reference to Casablanca and other period films. Film noir isn’t the only period piece referenced in the game. Manny finds poetry, Beatniks and revolutionary texts in the Blue Casket club. He’ll take the texts to inspire the Sea Bees (merchant marine nautical 130
mechanic Elementals that look like big bees) to rise up and agitate for a union. This is part of Manny’s plot to acquire tools for Glottis so they can both ship out on a freighter to pursue Meche, of course. GF’s overall architecture recalls the aforementioned Atlantic City, San Diego and Las Vegas, (depending on the specific afterlife city) mashed up with Aztec and Mayan architecture. It all feels right for the world of the game throughout. The only exception to this “look and feel” is Manny’s brief visit to the land of the living to collect a soul. The city he’s driven through, and the diner he enters, (the scene of the “Code 3” mass gazpacho poisoning) is a hilarious, collaged love-child of Norman Rockwell and Romare Bearden. It’s a great contrast to the rest of the afterlife and it makes the living look truly bizarre. Replay. GF is a game I play every few years as a touchstone for story and puzzle design and just plain fun. In much the same way as with favorite books or movies I’ll find new or forgotten dialogue in the game, find new ways to sequence the non-linear puzzles or discover an Easter egg. Should this inspire you to want to play GF, like many older games it can be hard to get a copy of and have it run on a modern machine. Some patches can be found at the Department of Death website[102] (a fan site that had active postings up til mid 2009) If you’ve got a copy running but get stumped by a puzzle, walkthrough guides still abound on the web. If you can’t find a copy, or get it to work on your machine, check out one of the several sets of play-through videos on YouTube. Just be sure to experience it at least once, and ideally often. ENDNOTES 98 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_fandango 99 “Top 25 PC Games of All Time “ http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/ 1011624p2.html 100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_fandango 101 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth 102 JACOBS, S. 2007. The Basics of Narrative. In C. Bateman (Ed.), Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames (pp. 25-42). Boston: Charles River Media 103 http://www.bigdaddyroth.com/ 104 http://www.grim-fandango.com/downloads.php#patch 131
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Well Played 2.0: Video Games, Value
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Table of Contents Thank You. Well P
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Introduction Well Played 2.0 More P
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Cloudmaker Days: A Memoir of the A.
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abbreviations from the Periodic Tab
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that curtain was. This decision was
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experience. The ambivalence I felt
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special treat: in very faint text w
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storytelling where the topic is act
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16 It’s striking that an experien
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57 http://www.argn.com 58 http://ww
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the level of interactive engagement
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he wants the honor and glory for hi
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cinematics are units that go beyond
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differs from the first checkpoint).
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oom that you just saw in the vision
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Figure 10. Screenshot of the Castle
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fight, the space is large enough th
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scenes have more of a pounding elem
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going to have a successful ending (
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Interestingly, it doesn’t rewind
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note, I actually let myself get kil
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an attempt to inject it into gamepl
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Team XBox. Prince of Persia: Sands
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Gray discs require two adjacent bre
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my own music,[72] or more often, I
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allows five discs before a new row
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Chain Factor functioned as the “t
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I think, what well-designed virtual
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The genius of this system is that t
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haunting (and haunted) games I’ve
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Compared to “Sabre Wulf” and
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altitude) depending on the moment o
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Aside from that thread that explora
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would make anyone feel eager to pla
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learn on how to jump and take the o
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DREW DAVIDSON et al. (2008). Beyond
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her picture. When opening the locke
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The story advances with the explora
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Page 81 and 82: than yourself. Your character is re
Page 83 and 84: on presence, flow, and learning. Ho
Page 85 and 86: oach did not serve as a distraction
Page 87 and 88: game. However, some players felt pr
Page 89 and 90: sugary sweets from the picnic blank
Page 91 and 92: Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Findin
Page 93 and 94: 30 square kilometers around the Che
Page 95 and 96: Deus Ex and System Shock to set the
Page 97 and 98: the dreams,” muses this nameless
Page 99 and 100: fails to realize that the Zone is n
Page 101 and 102: leak, empty land-scape highlights t
Page 103 and 104: The storyline, characters, and even
Page 105 and 106: enough. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warf
Page 107 and 108: developers utilize environmental es
Page 109 and 110: The title of the novel is a referen
Page 111 and 112: And yet the same sun, the same moon
Page 113 and 114: (www.perimeterpartners.com), Bill H
Page 115 and 116: Actraiser Andy Jih While many other
Page 117 and 118: simple to dive into: run left and r
Page 119 and 120: the only task left is to go to the
Page 121 and 122: have ended the game simply with an
Page 123 and 124: For an adventure game to succeed, i
Page 125 and 126: cinematic, Manny despairs of his lo
Page 127 and 128: normal day-to-day life to reach new
Page 129: weren’t completed due to budget a
Page 133 and 134: gameplay mechanics in Fallout 3. Th
Page 135 and 136: with moral dilemmas is done with th
Page 137 and 138: contained vignette will also make m
Page 139 and 140: One of the most discussed Quests in
Page 141 and 142: the grove to help the Wasteland whi
Page 143 and 144: weapons lost will change playing st
Page 145 and 146: nonexistent, and few gamers I talk
Page 147 and 148: Cyan is notorious for baffling play
Page 149 and 150: Figure 2: The Cleft in the desert,
Page 151 and 152: “writing” Ages, housed in “li
Page 153 and 154: ook, that book appears in your Relt
Page 155 and 156: visits to solve, each player needs
Page 157 and 158: them prideful and greedy. The impli
Page 159 and 160: midst and walking down the path. If
Page 161 and 162: Figure 17: Decoding the door in Ede
Page 163 and 164: As mentioned earlier, central to Ur
Page 165 and 166: Immersive Game Design: Indigo Proph
Page 167 and 168: compartmentalizes all of the conten
Page 169 and 170: immediate connection between player
Page 171 and 172: initiating a similar game-ending ev
Page 173 and 174: interactions have even greater sign
Page 175 and 176: was trying to concentrate on inputt
Page 177 and 178: Lions & Jackals: The Politics of Fa
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ealization of what he turned into.
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Maybe 80% of our players are just l
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Jeffries, L.B. “Far Cry 2: The He
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Looking beyond the moments, it is i
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prowess. There is some level of apt
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solid short-term goal, much like fi
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time or exploring the same game lev
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and seamless; the player is whisked
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Rasmus: I have an absolute love for
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feeling that there is something int
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sessions make it easy to get into t
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the game sometimes. Isn’t this a
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Jesper: I would argue that the disc
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incredibly exciting and rewarding,
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playing games — ironic, I suppose
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Sutton-Smith, Brian. 2008. Play The
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dilemma itself. Should I, the playe
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Pool of Radiance Sam Roberts Pool o
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play experience of Pool of Radiance
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probably at what might be called th
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containing a moment of choice, is a
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interpreted, without remaining hide
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Making and Unmaking Place in The Da
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technical accomplishments, the play
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understanding.”[160] Time of day
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ears).[167] Videogames take advanta
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the orphanage, church, warehouses,
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Golden Arm and His Girl Friday, tel
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directions except toward the goal.
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This dynamic is played out in a sho
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169 Celia Pearce, “Narrative Envi
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ilovebees: Playing and Designing in
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Curious parties falling through the
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Columns of paired numbers appear, l
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may be, they may still need to be n
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strength of its developers and its
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Resident Evil 4: The Mercenaries Mi
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skills at RE4 have earned you the p
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Another important factor that adds
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The strongest pressure on the playe
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• Do I have enough health left to
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New Section Francisco Souki It was
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the game stayed true throughout the
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a reflective Mamma mia! You only ne
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point it all took shape in my head.
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neutral planet, the attacking ships
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want to attempt to play at an exper
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abusive language. Most importantly,
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Stephen Jacobs is an Associate Prof
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granted by the EPSON Ibérica’s
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and Second Person. He is cited in m
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of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Sim
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designing and developing cross-medi
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Well Played 2.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning - OpenLibra

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