If you really examine the story of many of the most successful videogames you will find that they ask a great deal of the player. When playing the average triple AAA title, the player must constantly to suspend her disbelief so as to enjoy the story. Too often games ask us to take out entire military bases with an assualt rifle and a couple med kits. We know this is ridiculous and we embrace the joyful escape that games provide. However, this brings up a host of questions. Can games provide us with meaningful experiences beyond mere escape? Are there emotionally resonant moments in these big name games worth experiencing?

So how can we encourage developers to move their game stories in more meaningful directions? There are of course many answers to this question. Every dollar we spend is a vote and we can commit our money to the Team ICOs and the Jonathan Blows of the world. We need to recognize, however, that for every Tale of Tales game that is sold millions more copies of the latest dudebros game are purchased. Games are not going to change over night. First person shooters and action RPGs are safe bets for publishers and developers. Games made in these genres tend to both fun and over the top. Of course there is nothing wrong with fun. However, if games are ever to provide us with enduring narratives their stories must lend credibility to their mechanics and vice versa . In other words, story must mesh with play.

Stealth games are often the worst culprits of asking us to suspend our disbelief as we play. They often give a false sense of immersive authenticity in the way they ask us to sneak and silently take down enemies. In Splinter Cell or Deus Ex, the player is rewarded for finishing missions without taking any casualties. Thus the player sneaks from cover to cover, silently punching guards in just the right places in order to incapacitate them. I can do this to every single guard in the complex–I hide their unconscious bodies so as not to alert the other guards. I take them down one by one by one and in the  course of a half hour, I have subdued every guard in my path. That means that none of the dozen guards ever thought to check in with each other, heard me punching their comrades in the throat, or happened to walk into any of the many corners where I sloppily hid their friend’s bodies.

Don’t get me wrong–I loved the Splinter Cell trilogy and I worked hard to look past the horrible boss battles of Deus Ex: Human Revolution–these games are certainly fun. But their stories are only resonant in so much as we determine not to consider the implications of what we are actually doing on screen. This is why I was tickled by the stealth portions of Batman: Arkham City–it’s narrative gave weight and purpose to it’s mechanics.

There is much to be said about Arkham City’s sheer impossibilities, like taking on 50+ armed thugs at once, but we have an easier time suspending our disbelief as Batman, who is superbly trained and impeccably equipped. However, the game constantly highlights Batman’s humanity. Any time you come across an enemy with a gun, it only takes one misstep for Batman to die. These encounters require thoughtful stealth and ask the player to plan his attacks and calculate their consequences. These encounters are given distinct narrative weight as well. When you manage to silently take down one of the Joker’s armed goons, Joker knows it. He has equipped them all with heart rate monitors–so with every victory the game becomes more difficult and requires greater precision from the player. Take out another enemy and Joker threatens his guards from an overhead speaker and warns Batman that he is watching. In this moment my heart p0unds and my breathing quickens–I fear Joker yet I determine to best him. In this moment, I am Batman.

I can’t say that Arkham City represents the best of videogame storytelling of 2011 but I can say that the game succeeded in making it’s stealth battles meaningful. Though often hard to find, there are meaningful stories that have been told in games and I trust that I will have the privilege of experiencing many more. This moment in Arkham City gives me hope because it was a moment of truth. A moment when the world worked as it should and my determination to save it was tested.

Lately, however, I’m starting to wonder if there are games and forms of competition that not only aren’t good, but are fundamentally antithetical to a Christian vision and existence. Like some cultural activities, there are games that perhaps the Christian should refrain from playing. With such games, abstinence might be the greater exercise in Christian obedience and formation. Catan, I think, is such a game. Playing Pictionary and basketball can be profitable; the same cannot be said of Catan.

Catan brings out the worst in people. And not just people in general, but good people — fluffy, kind, gentle people. It’s an insidious masquerade of a game that causes the most placid and civilized to degenerate into the most tempestuous and belligerent. It is a spacious vessel that transports masses into the dark abyss of nothingness. It causes you to have the fierce urge to backhand someone you would never raise your voice to — like your mother. I kid you not, I have spoken to couples who have split up because of Catan. Indeed, “irreconcilable differences” has taken on a whole new meaning. I no longer play with my wife.

I’m not calling into question the factual (perhaps a bit overstated for effect?) claims Bennet makes about how Catan often results in arguments and strife. I myself have seen the game give rise to arguments among friends and family. There’s no question that the competitive nature of Catan can get to some people. The question at hand, though, is whether Catan is responsible.

The answer to this is kind of obvious, right?

Most of us know the feeling of getting just a little too angry during any game. Those who play sports are particularly familiar with this. The nature of any game is that we allow the stakes to be artificially higher for a period of time, during which we all pretend to our utmost that the outcome of the game itself somehow matters. But deep down, we all know the truth: it really doesn’t. Unless we’re playing college or professional sports and have a career on the line, there is little reason to experience any true emotional trauma because of the game. But then, sometimes, we do.

Some games really do reward that unchecked aggression. Football players are often encouraged to “save it for the field” and instead, channel all of their personal grudges towards some guy wearing the opposing team’s jersey. But that is not Catan. Bennet has it all wrong. While he claims that Catan is “designed with the most conniving and destructive intentions and methods ever conceived,” and that it “forces you to seek the misfortune of your opponents,” he’s talking about the fact that in order for you to win at Catan, the other players must obtain less resources and have less opportunity to score points. He’s right about that — but this is the case with almost any game. Astoundingly, he claims that “[p]laying Pictionary and basketball can be profitable; the same cannot be said of Catan.” I don’t understand the difference, and he never shares any secret knowledge in the article that clarifies what makes Catan so unprofitable.

The truth is that, yes, some games are more profitable than others. Some push our ethical limits. Balderdash asks us to “bluff”. Games like Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica often force one player to be the “traitor”, sowing mistrust in the group. Many videogames ask us to “kill” other players for points. None of these games are inherently “antithetical to a Christian vision and existence” because as long as they remain games, they take place in a separate context than the rest of life. Like a digital avatar on a videogame screen, the actions we take in a board game are mere representations of real-life actions: they are not the actions themselves. If we are able to keep that perspective, not only are we able to play them with a clear conscience, but we will be able to learn from them.

This is far more than a mere compartmentalization of life or an easy excuse. It’s an acknowledgement that games are practice for reality, rather than reality itself. Games provide us with an opportunity to experiment with the cause and effect of our various choices. In the context of games, because the stakes are actually false, so are the virtues. Because the virtues are false, so are the vices. Otherwise, we would find ourselves unable to play chess (a game with the ultimate goal of assassination) in any way that is remotely justified.

Games are only as profitable as we allow them to be, and in order for them to serve their purpose, we must first approach them rightly. Perhaps the #1 rule of approaching a game rightly is as follows: take it seriously, but keep your perspective. The stakes may seem high at times, but they are not high in the context of our real lives. It seems almost certain from this article that Bennet struggles with this rule:

A lot of playing happens, but I can’t say the same about fellowship. About fifteen minutes into the game, the fellowship often ends. Abruptly. Discussing struggles and praising physical, mental, or spiritual triumphs of the previous week is usurped by droves of expletives. And I mean droves. I’ll be honest, after Monday nights, I have to repent.

To be honest, the whole article is kind of heartbreaking for me. You won’t see me arguing that Bennet should suck it up and keep playing: it’s clear that playing Catan is resulting in a string of bad experiences for him, and that’s just unpleasant and not worth the trouble. But perhaps he should consider addressing the root of the issue: that he takes a game, on a board, with little wood houses and roads and in supposedly friendly competition with friends, as seriously as he might take an election or a church meeting or a war. They are not the same. Take a breath, consider the outcome, and just have some fun.

Bennet says he loses a lot. So do I. I love games, but I am awful at pretty much all of them. But I appreciate them nonetheless, because of the way they break the ice with friends and strangers, because of the way they illuminate our personalities, and because they provide a low-stakes playground in which we can experiment with and evaluate our values system without fear of actual transgression or relational hurt.

Settlers of Catan is about more than the ruthless destruction and usurping of our friends’ stuff. It’s about demonstrating patience long enough for that eventual windfall. It’s about exercising stewardship over limited resources. It’s about sucking it up and adapting when your plans don’t pan out as you’d hoped. It’s about learning to be kind when you are able so that your rival won’t be preoccupied with sticking you with the robber. It’s about managing pride, because no one likes a threat. Like any game, Catan is about winning. But it’s also about patience, discipline, humility, and kindness.

My friends and I have gotten frustrated, even angry at one another during a game of Catan. I’ve seen yelling matches, game-long pouting sessions, and even game pieces fly across the room. But in each of these games, we learn something about one another. We take those lessons and move on. We don’t dream of carrying the burden of the game into the rest of the week. We know, ultimately, that our rivals in Catan are not our real rivals. We take our frustrations and leave them on the wheat field.

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne.

If you have a story to tell, videogames might not be the best medium for you. I essentially agree with Will Wright (lead designer of Sim City and many other successful games) who says, ”Games are not the right medium to tell stories . . . video games are more about story possibilities.” Before you list your the top 5 story-driven games that changed your life, think for a moment about what it is that you like about those particular games and what those games ask you to do.

When we sit down to watch a movie–we expect to be passive, when we sit down to game, we expect to participate in the action. We expect that what we do “in game” is going to matter. We like to play games because they engage us in ways that other media can’t. That does’t make games better or worse than books or movies, it just makes them different and I think the best games emphasize this.

Consider Bioshock, one of the greatest narrative-heavy games in recent memory. What makes playing Bioshock a memorable experience? It is not so much Andrew Ryan’s monologues or Atlas’ radio messages so much as it is a combination of those elements and your own experience of the world being spun by them. The “story” of Bioshock exists somewhere in between the expositional narrative being laid down by Ken Levine and company and your unique participation in it. Andrew Ryan is undoubtedely one of the great characters ever envisioned in a game. However, were it not for the hours spent defending ourselves from crazed splicers swooping down on us from the ceiling, learning how to best handle each Big Daddy, and determining what to do with the little sisters–Rapture would not come alive to us. The contrast between Ryan’s vision for Rapture and it’s actual state might be seen but it would not be experienced.

In fact, what makes Bioshock‘s story particularly memorable is that the game’s narrative breathed new life into the idea of the silent protagonist. Bioshock asks us to do a lot of seemingly mindless shooting but in the game’s climax–all that mindless shooting  makes sense. So many games require mindless shooting that it is all too easy to take such actions for granted–Bioshock highlights this and gives such actions weight and consequence.

On the whole, Bioshock isn’t particularly dynamic in terms of player choices. There are really only two: either save or harvest the little sisters. And yet everyone who plays the game will have a markedly different experience in the world depending not just on how they interacted with the Little Sisters but based on every move, bullet, and plasmid. Their experience will be colored by every sign they stop to read, every corner into which they wander looking for supplies, and every window out of which they look to take in their surroundings. Bioshock is a special game because of the tremendous detail devoted to each of these elements such that most everything the player does contributes to bringing Rapture to life and making the player feel like an essential part of that world.

So if a game is going to attempt to tell a story, it must do so in a way that significantly involves the player in its telling. This is why most game stories are terrible–because the mechanics (namely what you spend most of your time doing in game) do not add anything to the story itself–they are mere tack-ons or fillers to transition us from one piece of expositional narrative to another.

When Will Wright says that “games are not the right medium to tell stories” and that games are more about “story possibilities,” I think the Sim City creator highlights what makes games special. The best games give us a sense that we are making our own story and our place in that story is absolutely essential. Games engage us most when we assume a key role in that story’s telling.

Videogames’ interactive nature requires that they tell stories differently than any other medium. Of course given the medium’s short history there is no shortage of games that have tried to adopt the storytelling methods of longer standing mediums like books and movies. Before gameplay visuals reached high definition resolution, games were constantly setting aside interactivity for visual impact. This is why games like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid 2 invested so intently in their cut scenes. The result was that many games most significant narrative moments were taken out of the hands of players. This is unfortunate because what makes videogames unique is their tendency to invite the player to participate significantly in their story. We could hope that such tendencies are being phased out of videogames, but games like Uncharted 3 seem to indicate that many game developers are not yet comfortable letting games be games. This isn’t to say that cut scenes have no place in games but rather that sole reliance upon for the advance of a narrative represents neglect of videogames greatest asset–namely interactivity. This begs the question–how should games tell stories?

I won’t pretend to be intelligent or learned in game design enough to know games can best tell stories.  What I can share with you, however,  are some ways in which games are currently telling stories admirably. 2011 saw the release of number of excellent examples of smart, intuitive, and interactive stories, so in a short series of posts, I intend to highlight some examples of smart and meaningful storytelling in games.

The most obvious example of great storytelling in games from 2011 is The Binding of Isaac. While the basic premise of the story is laid out in the games opening video, it’s the world of the game that brings Isaac’s story home. The game is a loose modern retelling of the Biblical narrative of Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him per the Lord’s command (Genesis 22). In the game, Isaac’s deeply religious mother, who has an unholy fascination with charismatic christian television, receives a vision from the Lord telling her to sacrifice her son. Isaac discovers her plans and takes refuge in the basement of their house.

Isaac is a rogue-like, meaning the game is different every time you play it–every dungeon is randomly generated as are all the items you find as you progress. This is where Isaac’s story comes alive. The items you pick up tell the story of an abused and neglected little boy. “Brother Bobby” and “Sister Maggy” are ghost-like drones that follow you and mirror your actions doubling your abilities. Who are these drones? Perhaps Isaac isn’t the first of his family to be threatend by his mother. Find the “paddle” and Isaac will immeidately be able to run faster reminiscent of a child running from an abusive mother. When you find the “coat hanger” it lodges itself into Isaac’s head and allows him to shoot his weapon faster which happens to be his own projectile tears. If I am to survive I must pick up this coat hanger–I need an improved weapon but as I pick it up, I can’t help to consider what that coat hanger represents for Isaac.

Item pick ups are essential elements of rogue-like games and yet The Binding of Isaac manages to take this essential element and infuse it with significance.  At times, the game is deeply unsettling but this is appropriate. There is nothing pleasant about child abuse. The Binding of Isaac tells a powerful story, not by foisting cinematics or lengthy exposition onto the player but by simple letting the player explore Isaac’s basement and discover the various objects long discarded there. Isaac  respresents a stellar achievement in storytelling by taking something as simple as “powerups” and using them to shed light on the troubling world in which a young boy lives.

If there is any one thing that will motivate me to put down a game never to pick it up again, it is “grinding.” For those of you nongamers out there, “grinding” refers to the practice of delaying progression in a game in order to focus on menial tasks required to make the player strong enough to advance. I rarely have to  grind in games because games rarely require grinding anymore.  So many people hate the idea of grinding that most games don’t require the practice. And yet lately, I have found myself willingly spending most of my time in Skyrim doing just that.

I have been crafting weapons, enchanting them, selling them for more materials to craft more weapons and enchant them again. I did all this long enough to get two perks that would make my character tremendously strong. There is nothing particularly exciting about the time I have spent in Skyrim traveling from merchant to merchant and smithy to smithy. It’s mundane and oddly enough, nothing about the game itself required me to do this.

The fact that Skyrim broke me of my anti-grinding ways is a tremendous compliment to the world that Todd Howard and his team at Bethesda have created. The world of Skyrim is so rich and vibrant that 8+ hours of smithing, enchanting, and selling seems like a cat nap.

Brendan Keogh recently wrote about how Dark Souls requires grinding but manages to do so in a way that feels productive and meaningful:

People have told me Dark Souls is about the journey, not the destination. I think this is more true than they realize. I can’t imagine Dark Souls even has an ending. Partly, this is because story-wise I wouldn’t have a clue what is actually going on or what my goal is. And, partly, because there is little hope of me ever actually finishing it. Even as I progress from one area into the next when I finally defeat a boss, the singular open-world nature of the game steals even a sense of spatial progression away from me. It still feels like I am trapped in the same place, even when I move on. Dark Souls is about the journey. One long, neverending journey.

And so grinding is okay. That is my purgatory. Not just mechanically but thematically. Some souls sells wares off rugs. Some souls drum hammers onto anvils. Some souls run the same paths ad infinitum, defeating the same enemies over and over and…

While I think Skyrim manages to give the player a much more concrete sense of progression than Dark Souls appears to, at the end of the day, I am not so sure I really care about the impact of my acts of heroism on the world of Tamriel. So why did I spend so much time grinding in Skyrim? I think it was because I found the world to be compelling and grinding these two perks served to make exploring it all the more simple.

I think this is the first time I have ever worked so hard to make a game experience less challenging. Skyrim’s dungeons are so beautifully imagined and its mountain are so majestic that I hit the grind until I could make my time there more like a vacation and less like a quest.

10. Forget-Me-Not (iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC)
How many times have you pulled your favorite childhood game out of storage, only to find that it pales in comparison to the game that was lodged in your memory? Games have come a long way, making what we consider to be classic games often seem surprisingly dull or frustrating as a result. But what if that game you pulled out of your closet was everything you remembered and more? That’s Forget-Me-Not.

Originally an iPhone standout, Forget-Me-Not is something like a cross between Pac-Man and Rogue, a score-based maze game that finds all of its punch in its enemies. The extremely varied characters you’ll run across say nothing, mean nothing, have no motives – but they do some extremely crazy stuff, throwing you out of whack at every turn. Forget-Me-Not becomes a minimalist adventure, charging the player with split-second adaptation, to do everything they can to get the highest score possible and advance to the next level. It’s one of the few games that seems refreshingly simple at first, only to open up and expand with each play-through. -Richard Clark

9. Battlefield 3 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
We’ve been talking for a long time about wanting a war game experience that will probably never come. We hoped for a game that would treat war with nuance. One that would refuse to categorically glorify war and at least nod to its devastating consequences. We didn’t get it with any of the previous Call of Duty or Battlefield games and we were disappointed to find out that we weren’t going to get it with Battlefield 3. And with the recent release of a slew of similar war games, I really did not want to like Battlefield 3.

And in many ways I didn’t. The campaign is largely predictable and there are aspects of the game that I am pretty sure I will never be good at (is it just me or are the helicopters ridiculously hard to control?). But to be honest, Battlefield 3 is great for one reason–it offers a compelling and robust team-based multiplayer experience. B3 goes out of its way to reward survival, foresight, and teamwork in rather unconventional ways. The best players in a given game are often not the players with the highest kill/death ratio, but the players doing most to actually aid their team as a whole–the players who are actually committed to teamwork and survival. Success in multiplayer requires that players trust each other.

I am still tired of war games and I think Battlefield 3 could have done more to honestly deal with the sobering aspects of war, but none of that changes the simple fact that Battlefield 3 is the most satisfying multiplayer experience of the year. -Drew Dixon

8. Portal 2 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
Unlike other attempts to incorporate heavy cinematic influences into games this year like Uncharted 3, Portal 2 managed to do it through excellent voice acting and dialogue writing. Throughout much of your journey through the Aperture Science Enrichment Center you are guided by the eccentric robot Wheatley, whose voice work is performed by British comedian Stephen Merchant. Without ruining any surprises, just know that the writers at Valve prove once again to be masters at character development. Wheatley, in many ways, was even more frightening to me than GLaDOS from the original Portal — featuring fumbling monologues and dark humor that could come right out of a Woody Allen film. It was such a refined single-player experience, that I couldn’t help but automatically add it to my favorite games of the year. – Luke Larson

7. Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360, Playstation 3)
In terms of modern game design, Batman: Arkham City is the perfect game. It’s great to look at, fun to play, tells a surprisingly memorable story, and adequately pays tribute to Batman and his iconic enemies.

What makes the game special, however, is how it constantly makes the player have to think critically. While much of the action appears as nothing more than traditional brawling, the combat in Arkham City is deep, complex, and dynamic. To successfully take on 50 guys at once you must constantly adjust your tactics, utilize gadgets, and take advantage of the environment. Batman has a ton of gadgets to use against his enemies—these gadgets are intuitive and can be combined with one another. Coming up with the right combination of gadgets to accomplish an objective is deeply satisfying. In a year that offered some of the most catastrophically bad boss battles, Arkham City manages to offer boss battles that feel natural and utilize gadgets and tactics that the game has been teaching players as they progress.

Batman might not be the most meaningful or spiritual game of 2011 but from a pure gameplay standpoint, it’s definitely the best. – Drew Dixon

6. The Binding of Isaac (PC, Mac)
It’s not exactly a story-based game: The Binding of Isaac is primarily a dual-stick shooter rogue-like, all about finding powerups and dodging enemies so you can make it to the end of the game before dying. Still, what makes the game such a stand-out experience is the subtle, and minimal story elements that are all the more affecting precisely because of their understated nature. It’s hard to express just how disturbed you might be once you realize what it means for a coat-hanger to cause Isaac’s projectile tears to fire faster. Why would a wooden spoon cause him to run faster? Why does he seem to be haunted by an unborn little sister?

These are questions tied to the misguided faith of his mother – introduced at the beginning of the game to be overly obsessed with televangelists and mistakenly submissive to voices in her head. It’s easy for Christians to withdraw from this game, assuming it’s not for them. After all, we can probably make the assumption that the creator of this game isn’t a fan of the faith. Still, there are valid criticisms here, and a story that simply must be told. These things, unfortunately enough, do happen. Playing this disturbing, humorous, truthful game reminds us that as kids and adults, sometimes we have to laugh and play so that we don’t cry. – Richard Clark

5. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (iPhone, iPad)
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my taste in gaming this year, it’s that I will always gravitate toward games that aren’t afraid to throw out everything we’ve ever known about gaming to pursue the creation of ambitious, new gameplay experiences.. Plenty of games on this list exhibit this quality, but none more than the iOS indie game Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP. Judging by the name and description itself, when I came across Sword & Sworcery it was easy for me to attach the same old predictable terms to it: pretentious, contrived. After all, the developers refused to call it a game, but a “psycho-social audiovisual experiment” instead.

At its heart, though, it’s an point-and-”touch” adventure game, of which there are many standouts in the iOS App Store. But in Sword & Sworcery, instead of finding and managing items or trying to escape from rooms, I found myself checking NPC’s twitter-like thought feeds, battling a Deathless Spectre, and solving environmental puzzles based in music and sound. At first, I was a little turned off by its incredibly self-aware tone, feeling like it might take me out of the experience a bit. But within the first few hours of gameplay, I was completely submerged in the world and impressed by the risks the developers took.   Visionary isn’t a word I often use to describe games, but my time with Sword & Sworcery felt like a breathe of fresh air in an industry so attached to fulfilling expectations and genre cliches. - Luke Larson

4. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (Xbox 360, Playstation 3) 
No character has dominated my thoughts this year like El Shaddai‘s protagonist, Enoch. A classic Christ-figure, Enoch is sent from Heaven to rid the world of sin – yet unlike most officially dubbed “Christian” games, the right thing doesn’t always feel right here. Often playing the role of Enoch ridding the world of evil feels more like setting the world back thousands of years, destroying progress and those who made that progress possible.

Answers are provided, but so are frustrating counters to those answers – your mind goes back and forth between faith and doubt until the very end. Sound familiar?

In a year filled with frustrations and fears, I latched onto Enoch as someone who found faith difficult but plausible nonetheless. His key ability was to find the “power of the Lord” wherever he looked. He showed mercy to his fallen friends, but understood the inherent need for justice. He persevered, in the face of physical and psychological warfare. Because of all of these traits, Enoch is my favorite hero of 2011 – it was an honor and a joy to play as him. – Richard Clark

3. Bastion (Xbox 360, PC)
Right from the beginning, I always felt that Bastion’s dynamic voice-over was more than just a novelty. It felt deeper, like a disembodied conversation between the game’s creators and I — or like a movie that was being made completely on-the-fly. At any rate, the narration in Bastion had me completely sucked into its story and it’s world, which is what kept the game on my mind long after I finished it.

You play as The Kid, whose job it is to help put the broken world you wake up in back together. The world is beautiful and filled with color, but has been ravaged by a catastrophic event called The Calamity; an apocalyptic event that left the world in shambles. I couldn’t help seeing parallels between Bastion’s story and the story of our own world. Its a simple, but beautiful story of redemption, but its one where we’re presented with choices that certainly do matter. Do I care about the world I live in or do I simply exist, waiting to move on to the next one? More than the beautiful art style or the voice-over narration, this question was what made Bastion such a memorable experience to me. - Luke Larson

2. Skyrim (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
Let’s be clear: I’m not a fan of the excessive exposition that you are regaled with when first entering a city. I find the broken seams of Skyrim to be an unfortunate scar on some moments that are meant to be full of meaning and wonder. Townsfolk often regale you with dry exposition, companions follow you around making stupid mistakes and saying idiotic things, and people wander back and forth illogically, often getting stuck on a rock. But somehow, Skyrim overcomes those things with the sheer force and will of the studio that produced it. It’s clear that Bethesda set their sights incredibly high with this one, planning for a game so full of lore, life and opportunities for unique experiences that someone could play the game for years without feeling bored.

1. Minecraft (PC, Mac)
At times I couldn’t sleep, I skipped meals, and I stayed up much later than is healthy for a working man of my age. I don’t think I have ever truly been addicted to a videogame—as a games writer, I make a special effort to make sure my wife, family, and friends always come before games. Minecraft, however, gripped me more tightly than any other game ever has.

It is a rather simplistic game of survival, exploration, and creation. A lack of stated goals allows players to set their own course, create their own structures, mythology and even culture. Playing on a server with friends is where Minecraft shines brightest. Multiplayer Minecraft is a unique communal experience where instead of competing against each other, players share, rule, and build the world together.

I am not proud to say that I was obsessed with Minecraft for a time, but I am also very aware that that inability to handle Minecraft was my fault. My problem with Minecraft arose because the beauty, wonder, and community of Minecraft were too much for me to handle. My excessive emotional attachment to the game is a testimony to its brilliance. I have recently returned to Minecraft, equipped with a bit more self discipline. I am glad I did because when I visit Minecraft, I find a world I want to help build and friends I want to share it with. - Drew Dixon

The Left-Overs
Not all great games can make a yearly top-ten list. By our count, only ten or so can. But we felt the need to sneak one “runner-up” into the video game wrap-up. So, here are the Games We Wish Made It onto The List, But Sadly, Didn’t:

Rat On A Snowboard (iPad, iPhone)
Possibly one of the most criminally unrecognized games of the year, Rat on a Snowboard is no joke. It may seem simple at first (control amounts to a simple tap, causing the mouse to jump), but prolonged time spent diligently improving your mouse-jumping skills will lead to an obsession that seems, miraculously, justified. Outsiders may view this game as a pointless distraction on the level of Farmville – they’re both wrong and right. The sequel to the much-loved-by-me Rat on a Skateboard, Rat on a Snowboard takes a proven formula (something like rat + vehicle = fun) and iterates on it ever so slightly, creating an experience that amounts to darn near perfect for what it’s trying to do. And yes, what it’s trying to do is distract you. But unlike some of the more insidious games with this as its’ sole purpose, Rat on a Snowboard manages to pack an immense amount of depth and exhilaration into a tiny, affordable and momentary package. Play it once or twice and you’ll have enough fun. But keep playing and you’ll find the game providing opportunities for various strategies, opportunities and events within a little, high-score focused game. All it takes is one tap, one snowboard, and one daring rat. – Richard Clark

Dance Central 2 (Xbox 360 Kinect)
Every other Thursday night when I come home from coaching soccer, I find a group of girls dancing in my living room. My wife hosts a girl’s fellowship at our house. She cooks them dinner, they have a devotional, and afterward they play Dance Central 2. Though I am a terrible dancer, I usually join them. As a pastor, I have to be careful about how I interact with the girls in my church and consequently my relationships with them suffer. I have found one of the most natural ways to build camaraderie with these girls is to make a fool of myself dancing in front of my Xbox.

Dance Central 2 is the best game to date for Xbox 360′s Kinect–it feels great to dance free from the burden of the controller. Additionally Dance Central is one of the few games for Kinect that consistently feels fair–it nails feedback. I hope that Kinect provides us with some more creative experiences than dance games but if it doesn’t at least we can still enjoy making fools of ourselves trying to dance to Bad Romance with our friends. -Drew Dixon

When games take on religion, it is usually from a cultural standpoint. Games like Fallout, Dragon Age or Red Dead Redemption illustrate how religion influences and shapes culture but they don’t actually tell us much about any particular god or goddess. Game worlds rarely give us interaction with the gods or goddesses of their worlds, save for games like God of War where the goal is to kill them. Of course, as Christians, we know that none of the gods and goddesses of such games actually exist–these are purely fictional worlds so we approach them in a detached manner, as cultural artifacts rather than characters or beings.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is brimming with lore, most of which is tied to a complex pantheon on goddesses and gods. The country is currently in the midst of a civil war because of religion. Thus I looked upon these gods and goddesses as examples of how religion can and often does misguide people and even results in deep seated conflict.

As I was exploring Skyrim, I was attacked by a band of cultists dedicated to the god “Boethiah.” Upon defeating them, I learned of the location of their cult and out of curiousity, decided to go investigate it. When I found the priestess of Boethiah, I learned that the cultists had been luring innocent people to their shrine and killing them in worship of their god.

There was no option to report the cult to the governing authorities, so I decided it was time to bring some vigilante justice to these murderers. I carefully planned out each of my attacks and took out each of the 6 cultists who were stationed near the shrine. Just as I took down the last one and was beginning to feel as though I had done something good to protect the innocent citizens of Skyrim, my screen blurred and I heard a voice from the heavens shouting,  ”WHY HAVE YOU KILLED MY SERVANTS!”

It was disturbing to say the least. In a moment, a god, who in my mind only existed as a cultural artifact, came to life. I couldn’t have a detached relationship to Boethia because in the world of Skyrim, he actually exists and I found myself face to face with him.

Boethia threatened to kill me if I did not perform a horrible and murderous deed in worship of him. Because I was so taken aback by this transcendent experience of communing with a pagan deity, there was no way of knowing whether he was bluffing. I accepted his offer while thinking in the back of my mind that I would simply run away and never come back.

Of course I know Skyrim is just a game and there is no reason for me to take this experience personally. However, in this moment, Skyrim was working to encourage me to take this personally, to deal with the existence of a personal deity and determine how I would interact with it. While this was certainly a disturbing moment, I applaud Bethesda for including it. By doing so, the game is forcing players not only to recognize its spiritual realities but to respond to them. Detachment is not an option.

In light of our recent podcast on the year in videogames and our upcoming list of top games from 2011, I thought I would hand out a few more awards of my own–ones that will not make the list. Today I want to present to you my most disappointing game of 2011 as well as my favorite game review of the year.

That game is L. A. Noire and the review is Kirk Hamilton’s “paranoid existential videogame freakout” for Kill Screen Magazine.

First I will share my own disappointments with Noire then I will discuss Hamilton’s review. I was probably more excited about that game than any other release from this year, save for maybe Skyrim. I understand why people love the game. Noire is a very ambitious and I love much of what it is trying to do. Navigating free-to-roam 1947 Los Angeles was a unique and sometimes harrowing experience. Additionally, the facial animations in the game are the best I have ever witnessed on a console. Initially, this allowed for the game’s “reading people” mechanic far more interesting than I had expected it to be. The first few hours of L. A. Noire were fascinating, delightful even–I really wanted to be swept away by the world of L. A. Noire. Unfortunately Cole Phelps and the world around him messed all of that up.

The “reading people” mechanic which started out strong quickly became unpleasant. I can’t honestly decide if it was the character design of Phelps or the mechanic of interacting with people in three basic ways that ruined my Noire experience. When questioning people during investigations, you can either determine people to be telling the truth, lying, or you can doubt them and at the end of each interview, you will be told how many questions you got right. What killed these interviews is how Phelps responded to each person, when I would select “doubt” or “lie,”  in exactly the same way–he gets in their face, threatens them, and accuses them of being the perpetrator. I found myself cringing every time I felt that I should doubt someone’s story, like I was approving of Phelp’s incessant bullying.

After accusing a distraught husband of murdering his wife, Phelps pats the man on the back and kindly asks him to call if he has any more information that would help in finding his wife’s killer. These types of jolting mood swings are so prevalent in the game that “face reading” mechanic quickly became torturous.

Additionally, the incessant comments from the residents of Los Angeles about Phelps don’t help:

It’s that guy from the paper! Solved the big case!

That’s him! The dirty cop. I hope his wife takes him for all he’s worth.

When I play videogames, I expect the story to center around me, however the best open world games present us with worlds so vibrant and complex that they seem as if they could easily go on without us.  Playing L. A. Noire, however, never felt this way–after the illusion was broken, I realized that every citizen of the game existed to provide commentary on my progression and every interview only further simultaneously exalted Phelps as the city’s chief obsession, savior, and tyrant.

As Kirk Hamilton aptly put it, “This world exists for one purpose: to observe and—at limited, specific times—to react to Cole Phelps.” The sad part of all of this is that Cole Phelps does have a fascinating back story and there is part of me that wants to see him redeemed but the world of the game makes this impossible as Hamilton points out:

Cole Phelps is not looking for criminals; he is looking for absolution. He must make peace with his failings before he can finally let them go, and this gauzy straitjacket of a city will not let him rest until he has done so.

Maybe one day, I will garner the courage to revisit L. A. Noire and perhaps then I will appreciate the ambition with which the game was made. For now, however, playing L:AN just makes me feel like a jerk.

If there’s one thing that humans have been proven to be good at, it’s survival. Our history is made up of stories of people enduring even the most adverse conditions. However, that gift bears with it an unfortunate side effect. We are also very good at settling for less. There is something in every person that yearns for more, something that dreams of “life and life more abundantly.” But when we don’t see those dreams become reality, the temptation is often to simply keep dreaming or fantasizing, and stop hoping and believing. Somewhere along the way, many people become disillusioned with reality as we know it and so descend into a sort of sub-reality, full of entertainment and escapism. As a Christian, I’ve felt that pull myself, away from community and into isolation. Away from the vigor of a life worth living and into mere passive existence. So why do we do this to ourselves? And is there a way out?

A couple of years ago I saw Avatar for the first time. If you recall, the film is about a crippled Marine who is given another chance at heroism as he mentally inhabits the body of an alien by means of advanced technology. Of course he ends up saving the day, but something didn’t feel right to me. I had too many questions about how such technology would affect our world if it really existed. What if through technology you really could live out your life in another body? I realized that I was not alone in my musings, but rather had stumbled onto a major theme in contemporary thought. Namely, the nagging fear of what we might become if we settle for living a fantasy. You find it in other films too, such as Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, Inception, which asks: “What would happen if we got so confused by our created worlds that we forgot which one is real?”

Super Brothers: Sword & Sworcery EP would be a lousy game were it not for its stunning sound track. I mean that as the highest form of flattery. I think too often videogames tend toward stunning visuals at the expense of things like music and sound design. S&S‘s music sets the tone of the game throughout — it is literally enchanting and endows the most mundane tasks in the game with significance.

Of course, you could probably say this of just about any game — take away the malaria pill from Far Cry 2 and the gun jams from Far Cry 2 or GLaDOS’s dead pan banter from Portal and those games would not represent exemplary achievements in game design. However, I think we rarely say this about a game’s musical score. In fact there are tons of games that I can think of that probably wouldn’t suffer from no music at all. In the case of S&S the music brings the world to life and imbues it with awe.

Were it not for Jim Gutherie’s perfectly paced score, the player would spend the majority of the game randomly swiping at stuff and tapping junk on screen . . . OK, technically the music doesn’t change what you are actually doing but it does give it meaning. Don’t get me wrong, there is much to love about S&S apart from its music but none of them would be worthy of note on its own. The 8-bit people, environments, and enemies, when placed alongside the game’s music, invite the player to use his imagination, and simple tasks like moving from screen to screen or even opening up a menu feel transcendent rather than mundane.

Most of the game is spent trying to figure out various musical puzzles by tapping and swiping various objects on screen. The goal behind each of these puzzles is literally to coax pixies out of their hiding places and release their magical power. If you feel a little bit ridiculous reading that last sentence you should probably know that I felt ridiculous writing it. The greatest achievement of S&S, however, is never making the player feel ridiculous for doing these things.

I write about games every week; it’s a hobby and part-time job of sorts. I rarely find myself lacking in words to describe what makes a particular game special. In the case of S&S, I was blown away by how a simple thing like the perfect musical score totally revolutionized the game. I rarely say this, but my words really can’t do it justice — you really just need to try it. In this case, hearing is believing.

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Best Rawk Show: The Bazan Band, New Brookland Tavern, West Columbia, SC — Jonathan Sircy

David Bazan runs a tight ship, something that’s probably even more true now that he has ditched the Pedro the Lion moniker. The last four times I’ve seen him with a band (twice as PTL), he has had his mates precise and locked in: a quick run of songs (frequently with tour updated arrangements), a respite to answer questions from the crowd, and repeat. Touring behind 2011 release Strange Negotiations, this Bazan Band was leaner than last year’s incarnation which featured a second guitarist/vocalist, Blake Wescott. But they didn’t sacrifice a whit in sound. Bazan attacked his guitar with a ferocity I haven’t seen before, and when the volume peaked, the band hit like the atom bomb, filling up every nook and cranny of West Columbia’s premier rock club dive. Bazan’s voice has gotten more gravelly with age, but he hit every note he need to (aided by harmonies from bassist Andy Fitts) and more than adequately brought the emotive goods.

I tend to gauge a rock show by the drummer. Is he silently mouthing the words along with the lead singer? Is he making periodic eye contact with the bassist that says, “I LOVE this part of the song”? Does he know how to properly mix precision and fluidity depending on what the song requires? Drummer Casey Westcoat’s mouth wasn’t moving, but his eyes were feverishly intense the entire night. He was by turns pounding on set opener “Second Best,” propulsive on “Magazine,” polyrhythmic on a new arrangement of “Gas and Matches,” and backbeat-tastic on Strange Negotiations standout “Eating Paper.” The set-list was a treat for Pedro the Lion fans: two songs from 1998’s It’s Hard to Find a Friend (“Of Up and Coming Monarchs” and “Big Trucks”), EP deep-cut Criticism as Inspiration, and the two aforementioned songs from Control. He even threw in an obscure Tom Petty cover (“Climb that Hill”) for good measure. His between-song digressions included thoughts about the news media (not to be trusted), the Occupy movement (the first bit of hope he’s seen in years), and bands he loves (Beatles and Fugazi). The show was positively heavy, and Bazan’s ability to go from satirically scorching (“Second Best”) to loving (“Won’t Let Go”) and then to existential questioning (“Strange Negotiations”) showed him at the top of his game. He’s become a must-see performer.

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Best Moment in a Videogame: “The kid just rages for a while.” (Bastion: XBLA, PC) — Richard Clark

You’re controlling a character with a sword or staff in a videogame. There are boxes and other breakable objects around you. What do you do? Of course, you attempt to break those objects. It’s a gaming tradition that’s turned into an unthinking impulse, rooted more in mechanics than any thematic conceit. From the earliest RPGs, breaking boxes, vases, and chests has resulted in found life, coins, or objects. In other words, games reward our wanton destruction of an environment without any actual reflection. When we do pause to reflect on what we’re actually doing, we seem like utter psychopaths, gleefully destroying everything in sight with little concern for those around us.

That’s why, for the long-time gamer, the moment in Bastion when you first start breaking things is so startling. Shortly after Kid wakes up to find everyone and everything he knows destroyed — and just as you cause him to go to town on various boxes and fragile objects — the narrator clarifies what’s going on in that moment with one concise and profound sentence: “The kid just rages for a while.” We don’t hear that sentence again, and we don’t need to. Kid’s situation is unfathomably sad, but we can all relate to that moment when profound sadness and an inescapable sense of injustice collide, and the only logical response is to break things.

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Best New Way to Listen to Music: Bandcamp — Jason Morehead

In the past year, online streaming services such as Spotify and Rdio have become all the rage, and understandably so — they’re cheap. A measly $9.99/month will get you access to Spotify Premium, which lets you stream as much music as you want sans advertising to your various devices (iPad support coming in 2012).

However, when it comes to streaming music, my favorite remains Bandcamp. Artists upload their music (full/partial albums or single tracks) to their own details pages and charge however much they want (or they can let users decide how much to pay), cutting out the middle-man. It’s not a perfect system — its tag-based navigation is a bit of a mess — but you can easily spend hours trawling through their site and stumbling across previously unknown artists that blow your mind.

Or, to put it another way, Bandcamp is everything Myspace (remember them?) should have been.

Tom Bissel recently wrote an interesting review of sorts of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in which he spent the latter half of the article criticizing the game’s poorly conceived dialogue and overly abundant lore:

Dense expositional lore has no place in video-game stories — especially stories that go without highly wrought cinematics — and it seems increasingly clear that video games are neither dramatically effective nor emotionally interesting when the player’s role becomes that of a dialogue sponge. . . .

Why make every character a walking lore dump when lore can be more effectively embodied in the world and environments? After all, the world and environments are already there in Skyrim; they’re quite literally everywhere you look, gushing all manner of wonderfully implied lore. And they’re beautiful. Like most who play Skyrim, I’m greatly drawn to these incredible environments because the act of exploring them becomes uniquely my experience.

Bissel is one of my favorite game critics and his book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, helped inspire me to take up writing this column but I don’t think I could have had a more divergent experience with the lore of Skyrim. What Bissel feels detracts from an otherwise compelling world, I feel enlivens it.

Skyrim is my first true Elder Scrolls experience. I played about 10 hours of Oblivion which pales in comparison to the many people who spent 200+ hours playing it. I have found myself willingly reading Skyrim‘s many books and stopping to listen to the stories of it’s many characters. I am not, as Bissel suggests, a lore-fan. I skipped nearly all of the lore of Dragon Age: Origins and stopped midway through my second reading of The Lord of the Rings trilogy due to feeling overencumbered by it’s lore.

For the first time ever, I decided to make a female character–I did this for a very distinct purpose–to make clear in my mind that I am not my character. I don’t live in Skyrim, I can’t cast magic spells, and I am not a dark elf. As I explored Skyrim, I came across many books about the Dunmer or “dark elves,” my character’s people. I discovered that many were forced out of their homeland of Morrowind, many are now exiles or slaves, and that most Nords (the native people of Skyrim) hate the Dunmer. I read about their wars, their bitter history, their heroes, their villians, their religion, their culture, and their checkered past. I was also fascinated by many of the stories of my kindred or “lore dumps” as Bissel calls them. When I arrived in Windhelm and found out that all the dark elves were living in poverty in the slums. I was eager to hear their stories–rather than oppressing me, their stories enriched the story of my own character–this expositional lore became “uniquely my experience.”

I understand many of Bissel’s complaints. There have certainly been times that I found Skyrim’s dialogue annoying. I often wanted to tell the guards in Whiterun, “Give it a rest! NO ONE STOLE MY SWEET ROLL!” However, given how videogames tend toward power fantasies, I found the history and lore present in Skyrim refreshing, it reminded me that the world around me is much bigger than my character.

Were it not for the dense lore of Skyrim, I would not have known much if anything about my character’s people and I don’t think I would have cared as much about her if I hadn’t. Further, all this lore is optional–most of it you can pass on, but quite often, I find myself not wanting to. I also find myself constantly stopping to listen to the conversations of others–many are awkward but each tells me something about the city I am in. These are details that Bethseda did not have to include and details that I could pretty easily ignore but the multitude of them serves to do something rather rare in video games–it makes the game more about the world than it is about me.

Skyrim’s history, culture, and lore certainly are embodied in its world but why can’t games embody lore in dialogue as well? Despite the fact that I am able to slay dragons and shoot fireballs from my hands, as I climb Skyrim’s peaks, explore its ruins and listen to the stories of its inhabitants, I can’t shake the how small it makes me feel.

Every Monday night my neighbor comes over and eats dinner with me and my wife. Sometimes other friends join us. Recently, every Monday night, we have been playing Dominion, a deck building card game. These matches have become pretty competitive and Dominion is probably the most interesting card game that I have ever played. Consequently, I find myself looking forward to Mondays.

As these game nights have become more and more competitive, they have simultaneously become more fun and more frustrating. Games are not fun when players are not engaged and invested in their outcome. Games, however, can be devastating when winning becomes our sole focus. As I became more and more skilled at playing Dominion, I found myself caring more about victories and taking my defeats harder. This would manifest itself in complaining when it became clear early on in a game that my strategy was not working or sometimes more subtly in sighs and grunts. My wife and my neighbor are nice enough to laugh these behaviors off and continue playing. In one such moment it became clear to me that the very night I had been looking forward to was disappointing me.

Perhaps the most common and misguided response to being confronted with sin is to merely change our environment. It makes sense that if when playing Dominion, I sometimes become grumpy and unpleasant, then I need to stop playing Dominion. Such a response, however, amounts to cleaning the outside of the cup while leaving the inside full of greed and wickedness (Luke 11:39). The problem is not primarily with Dominion, the problem is with me. I am called to “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn” (Rom. 12:15).  Too often I refuse to apply the Bible to the “little things” in life–like card games. So the last few game nights, I have been thinking about how I am to rejoice when my friends outwit me in Dominion and mourn with them when their strategy falls to mine. To be honest, our Domion matches are so close that any other attitude would make playing the game an unnecessary chore.

When we started this game night with my neighbor the goal was to bless each other and build a stronger friendships. Despite how petty I can be, I think we are doing that. I am grateful for the “small” lessons I have learned playing each week and am thankful for Dominion in helping me identify and deal with personal weaknesses. Truth be told, I love my wife dearly and I love my neighbor–I want them to succeed, to be happy, and to grow. If I really want those things for them, then I have to want them to succeed in all areas of life–even card games. I think I am doing that now and I am having a lot more fun playing that way.

In the first in a series of podcasts looking back on the year that was, editor Drew Dixon, editor-in-chief Richard Clark, and writer Luke Larsen discuss the past year in videogames. It was a year of biblical and spiritual themes, a year of greatness and disappointments. More than anything, it was a year that had videogames in it.

Every week, various Christ and Pop Culture writers delve deeper into recent articles and address some of the bigger issues in popular culture.

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Mist pours out from the many cascades of a majestic mountain river, steam hovers over the water in the river’s calmer places, and the wind blows drifts of snow across my path. Before me stands “The Throat of the World,” the tallest mountain in all of Tamriel. A monastery dedicated to the study of dragons sits some 7,000 feet up the mountain — I, my horse, and my companion set off to climb the mountain and visit the monastery.

On the trek up the mountain, I find myself stopping every few minutes to take stock of my surroundings — the world of Skyrim is breathtakingly beautiful. Jagged snow-capped peaks, tall evergreen trees, and snow drifts surround me. Below I can see the small mountain village I recently past through and ruins of temples and castles of old littering the foothills. I am not particularly concerned for my safety — residents of the village make the trek up the mountain weekly to deliver supplies to the monastery.

As I stop to take in the beauty of my surroundings at a bend in the mountain path, I hear my horse scream and my companion, Lydia, draw her sword. Before I can properly react, a snow leopard is tearing into Lydia. I dismount my horse, draw my sword, and slash at the leopard but it’s too late. Lydia and the cat’s dead bodies lay strewn across the snow covered path. Skyrim is beautiful and dangerous.

I pause the game, select “load,” and go back to 5 minutes before my meeting with the leopard when Lydia was still alive.

When I am not playing Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I find myself thinking about its world. Skyrim lets me traverse mountains I will never traverse and swim in rivers pouring through intricate cave systems that I will never explore. The world of Skyrim is a reflection of our own — beautiful, majestic, and dangerous.

I have been delighting in this game — I have only explored a small fraction of it but that is enough to convince me that the rest is worth discovering. There is certainly danger in delighting in virtual creation — there is always the possibility that such creation would make us disinterested in the real world. I think, however, there is another side to my delight in the world of Skyrim. It is a reflection of my longing for Christ’s kingdom which is coming to earth.

In Skyrim, I can enjoy all the majesty, splendor, and adventure the world has to offer without being overcome by its attendant dangers. Sure, I can be attacked by wild animals and monsters that can kill me or my friends, but in these instances, Skyrim is but a foretaste of the world to come. One day we will stand atop snow capped mountains marveling at the fields, trees, waterfalls, and villages below free from the bitter sting of cold. Because of what Christ has done for me, one day I will inhabit a world where death will no longer reign and where I will rejoice in God and what He has made.

In Skyrim, my problems are imminently solvable and with a little foresight, every mistake I make is immediately reversible. None of this matters, however, if the world of the game isn’t intriguing. The crowning achievement of Skyrim is the world the creative team at Bethesda has made — one that I keep wanting to go back to. Such a compelling world brings with it the temptation to disengage from reality, however, such a world would contain far graver dangers if I refused to notice the hand of my Creator in it.

It’s quite popular these days to scoff at the idea of boss battles—some feel that they are an outdated game trope. I recently shared how Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘s boss fights shattered some of the game’s most meaingful moments. After defeating the third and final boss, I decided it wasn’t worth writing about—it was every bit as annoying as the first and second. These experiences make me wonder whether games are better off leaving boss battles behind. Are such battles examples of how games are typically mere vapid entertainment?

The problem with DX:HR‘s boss fights is that they contradict one the game’s major themes—options. Deus Ex gives the player the option to play through its levels stealthily or directly and also to take lethal or nonlethal action against enemies. These options are shattered when the player faces DX:HR‘s bosses. There is typically only one way to defeat them, and they are incredibly hard to beat unless you have been building your character into a tank-like commando. As a stealthy hacking character, the second boss in particular was one of the single most frustrating moments I have ever had with a game. Additionally, the bosses you fight are never developed as characters, and the battles against them are randomly hoisted upon the player at the end of the game’s levels.

To throw out boss fights altogether, however, would be an overreaction—I immediately recognized this when I recently played two new games that feature them.

Batman: Arkham City contains some truly fun and well designed boss fights. These fights do not contradict the design philosophy of the game or the game’s narrative. My favorite boss fight, though a bit heavy-handed, was the fight with Mr. Freeze. There are multiple ways in which to approach this fight—none of them are direct and each involves using skills and gadgets you have been developing throughout the course of the game. This fight is challenging without being punishing, and it fits comfortably in the world of Batman. The game gives you options in terms of building Batman’s skills, abilities, and gadgets—unlike DX:HR, those options are honored in its boss fights. Arkham City treats us the way we all want to be treated—it’s fair, honest, and consistent.

One of the ways boss battles can be interesting is by warning players of an impending battle. Games can thus make infuse us with a sense of dread and anticipation for what is coming. Can I overcome this enemy? Will I be ready? Id Software’s RAGE did this excellently in one of its early levels. I am traversing an abandoned city that is infested with deadly mutants. Early in the level, I hear loud stomping that sounds like an earthquake or some giant mutant monstrosity. As I progress through the level, I am confronted with larger and larger mutants, and after I defeat each of them, I am given glimpses of the giant. In other words, what I greatly fear becomes more and more of a reality until finally I am forced to fight the enormous beast. These glimpses served to make me fearful of him and consequently served to make that fight more emotionally resonant. DXHR‘s bosses, on the other hand, are frustratingly random and lacking narrative relevance. Where as DX:HR‘s boss battles break the flow of its narrative, this boss battle in RAGE drives its narrative and gives it emotional power.

Games certainly have a history of over-doing the boss battle, and I do think that many games would probably better off without them. However, it is clear to me from RAGE and Arkham City that boss battles can be entertaining, interesting, and even emotionally evocative.

With the release of Just Dance 3 and Dance Central 2 two things are true of my home. My wife is happy and we are both a lot more active. My wife absolutely loves dance games. I love videogames. We love each other—it’s a beautiful marriage.

I have always been something of an evangelist for games. I have long been fascinated by them, and I have played as a hobby for most of my life. I see meaning in them that many other people seem to miss. Consequently, I like to think I understand how videogames work. Given that I write about them, I hope I am more skilled than the average person in thinking about what makes games good, bad, and meaningful. In the case of dance games, however, it would seem that my wife is equally observant.

This brings me to the key difference between DC2 and JD3 that despite my gaming acumen, my wife noticed and articulated well: feedback. Part of the appeal of videogames is the immediate feedback we get from playing them. We like games to tell us when we are doing well and to constructively scold us when we aren’t. A good game tells us exactly what we did wrong so that we can improve the next time.

DC2 and JD3 are very similar in many ways: They both provide a long list of fun songs to dance to, they both include creative and entertaining dances, and they both allow for multiplayer. Despite these similarities, my wife and I both agreed that if we could only keep one game, it would be Dance Central 2. Honestly, I like the song selection of JD3 a little bit better, and I think JD3 has a more creative art style. Yet my wife and I agree—DC2 is the stronger game.

Simply put, Dance Central 2 nails feedback. A game is at its very core, a set of rules that we abide by in order to achieve an agreed upon goal. One of the unique aspects of videogames is the real-time feedback they give us on our performance. Dance Central 2 asks players to follow its dance steps much more precisely than JD3. I know this to be true because I am a terrible dancer whereas my wife is great. I can keep up with her on JD3 but she regularly destroys me in DC2. She has beaten me by 2 million points before—if you watched us dance you would agree that this is just. There is part of me that likes the fact that the disparity between my wife and me on JD3 is smaller but that is nothing more than my pride. When I play Just Dance 3, I know I am not correctly doing the steps that are being shown on screen, yet I am scoring relatively well—it just doesn’t seem to track my movements as accurately as DC2. I am smart enough to know that Just Dance 3 is lying to me, which is actually even more insulting to my pride.

Part of the appeal of games is that they tend to be fair—they tell the truth about our abilities or our lack thereof. Dance games are one of the few games that we both enjoy. I don’t mind Jennifer smoking me in Dance Central 2—it makes her happy and teaches me how to dance. When I play DC2 and I score poorly, I generally know exactly what I did wrong—this makes me feel like I can do better the next time. We both enjoy the dancing and the feedback. Jennifer enjoys the feedback because it accurately recognizes her skill. I enjoy the feedback because it tells me the truth and makes me believe I can do better.

Today marks the release of Battlefield 3, a videogame that’s been positioned to compete directly with the most popular franchise in the military warfare genre, Modern Warfare 3. Both games thrive off of a key component: violence. In today’s podcast, editor-in-chief Richard Clark, editor Drew Dixon, and associate editor Ben Bartlett get together to discuss the nature of videogame violence. Does violence have a place in videogames? Does it have to be such a large place? They discuss these questions, plus Battlefield 3 and the like’s refusal to include civilian casualties in their games.

Plus, Drew Dixon offers up his Top 5 instances of videogame violence, for your, uhm, enjoyment?

Thanks to Luke Larson for the new CaPC theme music!

Further Reading:
When Games Matter: Civilians in War Games
Play in Process: The Virtual Battlefield
Virtual Scapegoats: Getting to the Truth About Videogame Violence
When Games Matter: Videogame Violence and its Frequent Lack of Self Awareness
When Games Matter: Shadow of Colossus and the Truth About Violence
Play in Process: Coming to Terms with Violence

The Wasted Potential of Videogame Violence

Every week, various Christ and Pop Culture writers delve deeper into recent articles and address some of the bigger issues in popular culture.

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Should mature gamers feel guilty for committing virtual crimes? This question drove me to play PayDay: The Heist, a game where the player takes part in virtual bank robberies and other various heists.

There are two common answers to this question and neither really gets to the heart of the issue. On the one hand its a game—completing PayDay’s various heists does not actually require one to commit crime. The person who is too young or too immature to parse fiction and reality should not be playing videogames about bank robbery. That should be obvious, but common Christian objections to videogames often run along these lines. Christians tend to object to such games by asking, “Why would you do something in a virtual world that you wouldn’t in the real world?” “Aren’t games like this just fantasizing about sin?” These objections fail to realize how foreign videogame “worlds” often are to our own. On the other hand, as videogames become more lifelike they begin to bear more responsibility for how they depict lifelike events.

The environs of PayDay are largely believable—banks are clean, modern, and full of civilians while gang hideouts are dirty, dingy, and full of thugs. The tools you use to conduct your heist—drills, explosives, and guns—are realistic enough. These elements beg the question—is this more a crime-simulation than it is a “game”? If so, is PayDay teaching us to enjoy criminal activity?

When I first started playing, I was surprised by how quickly the game turned violent. When one of my accomplices held up his gun and shouted, “Everybody get on the ground now,” the bank security guards immediately started firing their guns at me in the presence of countless civilian bank customers. For me, this act completely ruined the illusion of a real-life heist.  Though I was in a very lifelike setting with seemingly lifelike people, any illusion of reality was quickly broken. I was very cognizant of the fact that what I was playing was a game—a set of rules and objectives and little more. And PayDay constantly reminds me of this fact—I can take an inordinate amount of bullets without dying and whatever urban city I am in has an enormous police force that constantly acts in obvious disregard for the safety of its citizens. The civilians of PayDay are largely unconcerned about their own safety—they will often not take cover until you command them to despite the deadly war zone that has taken shape around them. And while my accomplices are equipped and trained to use all the latest and fanciest gear for breaking into vaults, they are incredibly dim-witted as they are constantly running out in front of me while I am firing my gun. The game’s nods to reality are broken so often that I can’t imagine anyone viewing PayDay as a crime simulator.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At their very core, this is what all games are—sets of rules that we abide in order to accomplish a stated goal, typically for the purpose of enjoyment. If we were to replace PayDay’s security guards and law enforcement officers with mindless zombies or hostile aliens or terrorists, I would not be writing this article, no one would be interested in this discussion, and the game would remain essentially the same. This is not to say that games cannot be meaningful beyond mere entertainment—I merely want to point out that most games are not and PayDay certainly isn’t. Honestly, PayDay isn’t likely to move anyone to contemplate the human condition or reflect on what drives a man to a life of crime. It will, however, provide an entertaining gaming experience that the mature gamer can enjoy with friends. When reality was broken for me in the world of PayDay, I certainly enjoyed it. I was not deeply troubled by my virtual crimes in PayDay, if I were, I would reveal my “reality” to be far more broken than that of PayDay.