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JENS KAUFMANN

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On Aaron Thomas' Mobcast Episode 49

"The common theme in this episode seems to be the struggle between games that are build around a mechanic or build around a narrative. What the guys call soul is often the ability of a game to take you to a place you like, so I think. To give you the sense of a coherent place. And therefore you will find much more modern games that have a soul. In the first video games that had any kind of story, it was often bolted on to theme some mechanics that were cool or new. Story was support. In allot of today's games it is the other way around. Take bioshock of example the shooter mechanics are completely forgettable but the sense of place in that game is amazing. So the actual game mechanics became the support to the story delivery.

I don't think that this is the conclusive answer to what make the soul of a video game, but it explains my perceptions to a large extent. A counter argument would be that I think many newer indie titles have soul as well. And those are very often mechanics driven.

I have not arrived at a point yet where I feel I can grasp every aspect of the discussion. But I am not sure if anyone of us is."

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

On Aaron Thomas' Mobcast Episode 42

"bitmobers Dan, About the comedy games I think that you perform your argument why there is no really comedy game in your question very well already. You were asking why there is no genre of comedy in games like there is in films. And then you were naming game genres: shooter, RPG or driving games ;then film genres: horror, comendy or action. So I think you explained why this is. The film genres describe and classify the content of the piece. The game genres describe and classify what you do in the game. Therefore playing a comedy game would mean you have to perform comedy and as you discussed later it is kind of hard to mould this into a mechan"

Monday, February 22, 2010