This is an examination of how the survival genre has developed in recent years. In order to discuss the way the survival genre works, stipulate the term sysdramatic tension: dramatic tension emerging from the player's interaction with a game's systems. This tension is why the currently dominant survival genre design is both deviously clever and self-defeating.

Don't Starve: The Survival Genre and Sysdrama

In Sleeping Dogs, I found something I wasn't expecting—a representation of ideologies about how to order human society. This is both a discussion of that, as well as a general critique of the game.

Sleeping Dogs—Corrupted Ideologies

This essay details the progression in narrative and gameplay from the first Assassin's Creed game to the third. The focus is largely on the narrative, with discussion on gameplay largely being in its relation to the gameplay. The Assassin's Creed series started in a much more interesting way than we give it credit for. It skips Brotherhood and Revelation, because they're part of a spin-off sequel in combination with Assassin's Creed II. 

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To learn more about Player Conditioning, which the first game utilizes, check out Harris Bomberguy's seminal video on Bloodborne:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC3OuLU5XCw&t=3519s

For more information about the historical theme, The American Dilemma, which  is in essence the central narrative of Assassin's Creed III:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Dilemma

To start to learn more about the mythic mode in literature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_Criticism

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Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/ludocriticism
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ludocriticism

A Thorough Critique Of The Assassins Creed Trilogy

This is all of the 2017 In Review videos in one long dump. Enjoy!

2017 In Review

Creator of video essays about video games, with the ambition of using theoretical criticism to tackle interesting areas. No, no—it's gonna be fun I promise. These are audio-only archives, enabling you to listen on the go.

Ludocriticism