What makes you believe now I am just talking nonsense?

The theme of Corvus Elrod’s Round Table for this month (which I may as a tendency take as a general monthly theme) is the role of artificial intelligence in gaming. In this context, as I understand it, AI most often refers to intelligent agents specifically; that is, the decision-making processes behind enemies, allies, social NPCs, and any other game objects meant to project an air of sentience.

There’s a reason I tagged that post “empty promises”

Oops! Looks like I failed to get an entry together in time for the May Round Table. It’s half-written, really it is, but I unfortunately ran into a few unaccountably busy days right before the deadline, which should show me for putting it off so long. In any case, I’ll finish it up and post it here next week, and see if I can’t get on June’s Round Table a little faster. There were some really thought-provoking entries there, though, so I’m very glad I knew about it.

I’m also working up a proper schedule to force myself to post here regularly. I’m just so new to this mess!

A new home

Have moved to WordPress from Blogger, and although there’s less visual customization, the great variety of useful control features more than make up for it.  So welcome, and enjoy the fine Skingrad sunset!

Since I started this project in all naïve enthusiasm it has become clear that there actually are some gaming criticism blogs out there, much to my delight (and mild embarassment).  In fact, there even exist “blog-a-thons” like the movie guys have, although with a non-ridiculous name!

So, my current plan is to get an entry in for Man Bytes Blog’s May Round Table on the role of goals in gameplay. A broad and important topic, that, and one on which I’m still formulating my thoughts.

Checking In

Just to keep myself from neglecting this project to the point of giving up. Okay! First of all, via Kotaku I’ve found another link for my sad little sidebar. The new addition is Only a Game, a theory-minded blog from developer Chris Bateman.  His prose is a bit flighty at times but I like how he draws on some broader philosophical and psychological ideas to talk about gameplay. It also looks like there are some good discussions in the comments.

As for my actually saying anything of substance anytime soon, I’ve been doing some background reading in the hopes of expanding on this “gameplay as architecture” idea. Hopefully I’ll have something on that within the week. Also, the household recently acquired a Wii! I’ll see how long it takes me to come up with something pretentious to say about it. But for now, fun!

What on earth am I doing here?

A valid question! Let me argue for my existence, in a roundabout way.

Last year, a writer for Esquire named Chuck Klosterman wrote an article called “The Lester Bangs of Video Games”, which asked why there is still no real videogame criticism out there in the world. Klosterman’s main point is that we lack the language for talking about videogames, and that this arises from the overly unpredictable and dynamic nature of the videogame narrative.