Best of Member Blogs: From Math to Sound

Author: by Staff

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 - The Fall Of Math (Adam Bishop) Member Adam Bishop has been thinking aloud about what he feels is an over-reliance of "math" in games. He suggests that instead of focusing on assigning numbers to choices, actions and consequences in games, developers should give true narrative meaning to those aspects, or at least rely more on logic rather than statistics. It's easier said than done, but he says that games like Indigo Prophecy and Braid have achieved this to an extent. Not all commenters on his blog agreed with his thoughts, but the notion is thought-provoking nonetheless. For his effort, Adam will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine. - The "Living World" Game (Bart Stewart) Between single-player RPGs and MMORPGs, Bart Stewart wants the best of both worlds. In an in-depth blog post, he presents a theoretical single-player/MMO RPG hybrid, and runs down the challenges of designing such a beast. Is such a game plausible or merely a pipe dream? - Pinball Wiizard (Dave Beaudoin) A recent reimagining of The Who's 1973 rock opera Tommy has the titular character playing Wii instead of traditional pinball. Dave Beaudoin objects to the way the recent performance (presumably from Michigan State University's run) portrayed The Who's original masterwork as well as the burgeoning gaming market. There's a lesson to be learned here, he says. - The Debate Goes On...Are Video Games Art? (Gary Hutton) If you're not yet exhausted by the video games as art debate, read Gary Hutton's blog entry, presumably spurred by Gamasutra feature editor Christian Nutt's recent opinion piece. Hutton claims the question at hand should be "Are Video Games Art Yet?" As with more established, widely accepted art forms, creators' contributions to the medium will eventually reach a critical mass where video games' "artfulness" cannot be denied. - World of Warcraft Audio Analysis: A Critique (John Mawhorter) An interesting academic analysis of the game audio in World of Warcraft led to this response by John Mawhorter, who finds a few standout problems with the analysis. Mawhorter's critique draws attention to the sometimes overlooked world of game audio, and how well-done auditory signals can improve gameplay, serving more than superficial aural ambience. - Plus, Richard Cody says $5 is pushing the barrier price-wise for iPhone Apps.