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I've spent a couple dozen hours with developer Gearbox's first-person loot-fest Borderlands 2, and I think I've found my soulmate -- insofar as a collection of polygons that respond to my controller inputs to convert imaginary bad guys into imaginary dead guys can fill that role, anyway.

See that gun up there? The Heart Breaker? I will never unequip it.

I received Breaky (which is what I call the weapon in my head whenever it behooves me to call it anything, which is rare) as a reward for completing one of the game's many optional side missions, and we've been "together" ever since. That was a long time ago; I've had at least two complete equipment turnovers since then, but Breaky has remained. Why? Because Breaky has a lot going for it.

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The question was brought up recently in the Mother Jones article “Why It Sucks to Be a Woman in the Video Game Industry” by Interactive Editor Tasneem Raja.

Raja's article examines the sexism women deal with in the gaming industry from sexual harassment and disparity in the compensation structure to having female developers go unacknowledged for their accomplishments. 

One could just brush all that off as some liberal publication trying to preach about feminist ideology. Unfortunately, Raja is not the first writer to bring up the misogynistic aspect of video game culture.

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Laura Shigihara, best known for composing Plants vs. Zombies, released a new music video set in the iconic world of Minecraft. The song starts off all fun and humourous, but it gets surprisingly poignant at the end. I mean, you won't need a tissue or anything. Unless you're a baby. But, yeah, it's cool. You should watch it after the break.

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Something is quite alluring about Hitman protagonist Agent 47. Is it the iconic red tie and black suit? Those lovely Baller Pistols of his? Or is it just his shiny bald head?

No. If anything, it's his attitude. He is a man of very few words but who can inflict incredible damage with whatever tool is at his disposal. He can infiltrate an area with nothing but a fiber wire and lock pick and take out a target with nobody noticing. Yes, Hitman: Absoultion still maintains Agent 47's legacy of being a badass assassin.

But the biggest change to Hitman has to be the fact that it's a lot more story-driven this time around, which literally reshapes the level design.

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If you haven't played the new DmC: Devil May Cry demo yet, you should get on that. I just finished playing it, and I've got to say, it is one hot slice of pie. The new version of protagonist Dante -- who seems like one of the most universally hated character redesigns in recent history if you believe message boards -- already appeals to me way more than the old Dante ever did.

For me, Old Dante will always epitomize that ridiculous cutscene where he's eating pizza, fighting demons, flipping chairs, and striking poses, all while spouting cheesy lines like, "This party's getting crazy! Let's rock!" and "I can already tell, looks like this is going to be one hell of a party!"

He reeked of trying too hard to be cool.

Is new Dante trying a little too much to be edgy? Sure, but I'll take him over old Dante any day.

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I haven’t touched Skyrim in almost a year. What, you ask, could have possibly torn me away from its awesomeness? Getting married in January. To a non-gamer.

My brother gave us an Xbox 360 as a wedding gift, which made me all kinds of happy. Previously, I had had to share gaming consoles with my gamer siblings -- all five of them, excluding one who’s a junior doctor and has no time to sleep, let alone play games. But now, I am Undisputed Queen of the Xbox.

My other brother bought me Skyrim for my birthday. So when my husband goes to work, in between my freelance writing and editing work, I am battling beasts in Skyrim.

Sadly, it’s not the same.

Can Skyrim be enjoyed in total isolation? I doubt it.

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Many questions that children ask can leave parents feeling dumbfounded, embarrassed, and awkward as they attempt to provide an appropriate explanation for mature or complex topics. Equally so, a child of the 80's and 90's asking “Where do games come from?” would have most parents scratching their heads as they tried to figure out how the mystical cartridges actually come about.

As an adult with a far better understanding of the process of creating video games, I've taken it upon myself to discover the true origins of the key titles that defined my youth. This doesn't simply mean creating a list of development studios and teams, I want to learn about the individual people and individual minds from which these important pieces of my own personal history were born, as well as what they went on to do, and where they are today.

Although such a task would have been nearly impossible for my parents in the days before the internet, my access to modern online social media and networking makes it ridiculously easy. However, a minority of bitter gamers who take the ability to interact directly with developers for granted may ruin it for us all.

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This creative short film has everything you'd want in a classic Legend of Zelda adventure, like sword fighting, traveling, a showdown with Ganon, and the rescue of a princess. The big difference is that this story forsakes pixel and polygons for simple, scanned drawings animated over multiple Apple product screens.

FinalCutKing, a group that focuses on creating tutorial videos for the Final Cut video editing software, is responsible for this fun short, which you can watch after the break.

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You could say I’m a bit perturbed. After watching one of the most recent videos from the team at Extra Credits (this one, which I wholly recommend watching), I’m beginning to worry to about the lack of preservation in our industry.

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For his keynote speech at Gamercamp in Toronto, game developer Shawn McGrath gave the floor to his Twitter followers, who overwhelmingly asked about the technology that went into his psychedelic abstract shooter Dyad for the PlayStation 3. But time ran out before he could circle back to the topic he really wanted to tackle: how storylines in video games are "a worthless endeavour."

That's an especially controversial thesis considering that many of the discussions at Gamercamp centered about elevating narratives in games.

I spoke with McGrath after his talk, and it became clear that his potentially controversial take was really an outright rebuttal. McGrath doesn't believe traditional narratives have any place in gaming.

Jonathan Ore: You mentioned that linear narratives aren’t exactly your thing. Could you talk about that?

Shawn McGrath: I think linear story and interactive anything are completely diametrically opposed. They make no sense together at all, and any attempt to put storylines in games in any traditional sense is completely idiotic.

Mass Effect attempted it, and people praise it. It’s horrible. It’s horrible because the choices that you make are so meaningless. People say, “Oh, but it’s getting to a point where the whole galaxy is going to change based on your decisions,” and I say, no, that’s impossible. That’s an NP-hard problem. That’s a computer science problem where the problem is not computable. So attempting that is a worthless endeavor. Games are really fucking awesome. We can tell stories through entirely interactive ways instead, with no text.

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Over the past few months, illustrator Laura Bifano has been running a side project through Tumblr in which Pokéfans describe their favorite pocket monster, and the artist will draw it based on what she may or may not remember. She claims not to have seen a Pokémon since she was 12, so the accuracy of the final piece depends entirely on her own recollection and the strength of the original description.

For example, you can see her take on Lickitung above, along with the official art by original artist Ken Sugimori. The fan request read:

Would you mind illustrating the Pokemon, Lickitung for me, please? Lickitungs are chubby with a round shaped head w/ small black beady eyes and rounded shaped belly w/ yellow semicircular markings and has stubby arms. It has a thick, tail - that’s about the same size of it’s body mass. But the most important feature of the Lickitung, is it’s long, large, tongue that’s always hanging out of it’s mouth and almost over it’s belly. It’s also bipedal. Thank you!

You can check out a couple more examples after the break, or you can head over to the Tumblr page to see the lot of them.

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For a lot of us, games supply the feeling and the emotion of conquering problems. Franchises like Grand Theft Auto and The Legend of Zelda have an explorative progression, providing escapism just like movies, books, art, vacations, and even cartoons.

So, what happens when a game or movie features the feeling of loneliness? Most titles that take this approach are more survival horror in nature, and that, for me, takes away from the notion of being truly on your own. Yes, you are by yourself, but somehow, you come into contact with other survivors. That brings more relief, which destroys the implied purpose.

See, loneliness isn’t about being solitary in an environment and looking for someone or something. It’s a mindset that can fill you with defeat. Knowing that, the stories we take our characters through in a game could force us into a state of loneliness.

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