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Katamari Damacy - A Critique
Beth A. Dillon writes "In this Game Career Guide feature, Katamari Damacy — A Critique: Part One, Ryan Stancl argues for game criticism in part one of a three part series on Katamari Damacy, this week featuring Biographical and New Critical forms of analysis." From the article: "Video games now, more than ever, need to be not just reviewed, but critiqued, because of their negative image in the press, in politics, in the general public, and quite simply because they are so ripe for critiquing. Games aren't just for kids anymore, and it's not because of the sex and violence. Over the next few weeks I will be introducing you to eight schools of criticism - Biographical, New Critical, Marxist, Structural, Jungian, Psychoanalytical, Feminist, and Post-Colonial - giving a little history behind each, and showing how they can be used to critique the video game Katamari Damacy for the PlayStation 2."
I can see the intellectual exercise of critiquing a game according to any number of schools of thought. What I don't get is for whom is such critique necessary?
The gaming audience isn't really interested in anything but a straight review. Your politicians aren't interested in anything beyond general conversation about the negative effects of games.
Maybe your soc or psych professor wants to hear about it, but I doubt there's anything to say that hasn't been said before about games.
I don't mean to be down on this, but it just seems like an utter waste of time and effort. There just doesn't seem to be a payoff here.
I disagree with the above posters. I remember when the slashdot community got in a big huff each time Ebert questioned the status of videogames as art. Guess what art does? It gets critiqued. Literature, painting, theater, sculpture all do. Recently(the past few decades) have seen movies and, to a much lesser degree, television have become viable subjects of critique. So why not video games? Not all games are purely entertainment to occupy your time. If they were, the majority of games would be the simply puzzle games like solitaire and their ilk, games that most people it seems on slashdot scoff at as "not real games." Games usually tell a narrative whether obvious or not. Myst wasn't just a set of puzzles disconnected from each other. It was a series of puzzles that both helped unlock parts of a story and were part of the story themselves. Another, perhaps less obvious example, is Contra. You're not just a "thing" with a gun shooting other "things." You're a commando fighting soldiers and aliens. Level progression tells you you're fighting in some overall picture. Even without narrative, you like certain games and not others, and I don't mean quality alone. I've liked some 9/10 games and not others. Why? Because of some aesthetic response that merits examining. When we examine games critically we can better understand, perhaps, the mechanics of enjoying a game. Then hopefully, we put that to use and make more enjoyable games. The article in the end I take as a first step towards this aim, though I don't necessarily like its analysis, though maybe because I've always been more of a historical/marxist/political reader when it came to my undergrad thesis.
> Game theory is still new
Glad to hear it's new, they won't mind changing their name to something that isn't taken already then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
> That's pretty much genius right there.
That's pretty trite right there, actually. I think pretty much every stoned high school student has thought the same thing at one time or another.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.