Critical Game Analysis: Critical Reading And Analysis

CRITICAL READING AND ANALYSIS #1

Critical Reading and Analysis #1

Jonathan Escalante

Bloomfield College

Professor Thomas Toynton

Abstract

Espen Aarseth is the author of Playing Research: Methodological approaches to game analysis, and Aarseth’s main idea is to promote a methodology for the aesthetic study of games which in turn will provide more advanced approaches for the years to come. We need to look from different perspectives, why do we do it, and who we are. Aarseth looks at the styles of play, and player strata in games which help with our approach to game analysis.

Aarseth gave some great topics that question my beliefs about certain games. Because he gave his own personal experience about

I am the type of player that loves to explore and find new things to try out. The funny thing was I always judged MMO games because of other players’ responses. So given that info I never played it because of them, but Aarseth mentioned that there are different styles of play. So understanding the styles he pointed out that majority of people will have a different take on a game. I wanted to give games a chance and try them out. In Destiny I managed to explore the earth and find a simple cave and kill enemies that spawned out of it (later known as the loot cave), I stood back and realized that they kept spawning and occasionally dropped items which were used to make your character stronger. So I continued to exploit this bug and farmed my items until I had no more space to hold anymore. I was then curious to see if anyone else found the same exploit like me, I went online and lo behold I found discussions about the exploit. This leads to another thing Aarseth spoke

Aarseth enjoyed the game and tried different ways of gameplay, he managed to get to a point and was stuck and needed info and used the google search engine to help with his confusion. Looking up the info for his little problem led into a problem that will soon lose his love for the game. What happened was the amount of information that showed up for the walkthrough showed him things that he never knew about like hidden quests, items, and more. This brings me back to my story, when I looked up to see if other people had found the same exploit I then was lead to another link to more places to exploit the game. Then I found more info about secret items and basically boosting your character. So immediately I found about more ways that the game was bugged but for player’s experience. Unlike Aarseth I immediately wanted to do these exploits before they are patched, I know things like this will be patched because of previous exploits I have taken part of in previous games. So I kept looking up info like walk troughs, hidden weapons, and my favorite glitching out of maps. Understanding why Aarseth had this experience is completely alright, everyone will have a different experience towards a game, and it’s all a learning process where we can learn from. I just never knew that anyone can get bored with a game when they just