Best of Member Blogs: From Cutscenes To Murder

In our weekly Best of Member Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game community who maintain Member Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. Our favorite blog post of the week will earn its author a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra's sister publication, Game Developer magazine. (All magazine recipients outside of the United States or Canada will receive lifetime electronic subscriptions.) We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs - Putting The Cut In Cutscenes (John Mawhorter) For all the talk about the decreasing reliance on cutscenes and greater focus on complete gameplay immersion, there actually remain extremely few games that follow through on that philosophy. Here, John Mawhorter rails against that state of affairs. (This topic seemed to become a minor Member Blogs trend this week.) For his effort, John will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine. - Unscripting The Scripted Event (Jaime Kuroiwa) Scripted sequences have a lot of power and utility in games, to convey information or provide elaborate showpieces. But Jaime Kuroiwa argues that, in the decade since Valve's influential usage of scripted sequences in Half-Life, the technique has become stagnant. - TOJam #4 - Day 0 - Upset Bowels, Sun Battles, A Lack of Bricks (Jim McGinley) Everyone's favorite game event correspondent (well, my favorite anyway -- what, you don't have one?), Jim McGinley, is back with his first day of coverage of the recent TOJam #4, the fourth annual Toronto Independent Game Development Jam. This is just a pre-event warmup; more reports are promised. - On Murderous Video Games (Stephen Dinehart) Why do we enjoy horror games? Stephen Dinehart takes a stab (har har) at answering that question, by delving into the psychological roots of fear, sadism, and masochism. Also, are we all just a bunch of hypocrites? Perhaps! - Help! I Think I Peaked (Benjamin Quintero) Developer Benjamin Quintero reflects on whether his current status as "project lead" is an indication that he has hit a limit to his upward mobility. Does this indicate a broader trend across the industry? Might it suggest one reason why employees so often split off and create new studios? You be the judge.