Tag Archives: Day Z

Second Nature: Language, Exclusion, and Gamer Rage

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Edcrab

by Edcrab A little after its release, my dad played Baldur’s Gate. I remember him being amused that hitting livestock with a quarterstaff had shifted his reputation to that of a heinous slayer of innocents. Wanting to know exactly how much harm he was doing to said cows, he checked out his weapon’s stats. “What’s a d6?” In a fit of rage I threw him out the window and then told everyone on Facebook, which existed back then if you knew where to look, what a newb he was and how I’d totally owned him, and then I got all the likes. After my father had dusted himself off and we cleared up all the broken glass, I explained the term’s origins. He seemed quite happy to accept that it was shorthand for a six-sided dice, and therefore designated a value of one to six. And then he cursed the Continue reading →

Posted in Critical Conversation, Humour | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Horror Done Right: Identifying The Player in System Shock 2

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

by Karl Parakenings These days, it’s probably better known as the spiritual influence behind the Bioshock series, but in its heyday it was one of the first 3d games that used the technology for immersion and tension instead of showing off hardware. The first game, the eponymous System Shock, detailed the creation of a rogue AI gone bad, SHODAN, who was so evocative that she now serves as the shadow behind many of gaming’s better-known moments and villains. In the second game, you are given the choice of defining your character, up to a point: after walking into a recruitment centre on Earth, you’re asked to run through a series of training programs related to the tours of duty you’ve chosen. You can become a marksman, a psionic expert, or hacker par excellence, and after running through your training regimens, you’re sent off to the Von Braun for a supposedly-routine Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism, Horror Done Right | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Life and Undeath in Chernarus: Why Day Z Is the Worst Best Zombie Game

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Karl Parakenings

Another recent viral phenomenon is the explosion in popularity of Day Z, a mod for the formerly-niche military simulator Arma II: Combined Ops. Only a few months old, Day Z is now so popular that Amazon recently ran out of keys for Arma II and a recent version of the mod added support for more than a million player characters in the central database. It’s officially a Thing.

Even more striking than the scope of the mod’s sudden success, though, is the way in which every game blog of note seems to be covering it. Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer are publishing post after post after journal entry, describing the poster’s experience within the mod. Even the recent interview with the mod’s creator, Dean “Rocket” Hall, is mostly in the form of the interviewer and interviewee comparing notes about their respective experiences with the game.

So the question remains to be asked: why is Day Z so popular? Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism, Features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Minecraft: Development, Discovery, and The Final Frontier

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Kyle Carpenter

Minecraft is a stunning precedent for independent game developers. It’s a game that made Notch, its sole developer, a multi-millionaire before anyone really knew what was happening or what to do about it. There have been a number of copycats in Minecraft’s wake, simulating its blocky aesthetic, its open-ended approach to “world-building,” crafting, and interaction. However, what these copycats can’t duplicate is the most unprecedented part of Minecraft’s success: that it sold millions of copies as an alpha build, an unfinished game. Continue reading →

Posted in Criticism | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments