First, we kill all the bloggers -- Roundup for June 7-13, 2009

[Erik Hanson]

Now with fewer complete sentences! (Sorry about that.) If anyone asks, I was distracted by Sims 3; please ignore the paintball welts covering my torso.

James Hoffman (Gamasutra Expert blogs) on the design potential of wealth and abundance/scarcity in games (in terms of currency and other values)

Dan Ephron at Newsweek covers the controversy concerning 6 Days. (via Game Culture)

G Christopher Williams (PopMatters) on visual provocation, desire, reward and collection in games

Martyn Zachary (The Slow Down!) on Downfall, an adventure horror title worth checking out

Nick LaLone (Before Game Design) on freedom of choice and the constrictive nature of narrative-based design
My take: Nick seem to be looking at applying the guiding principles in Bogost and Montfort's Platform Studies theory to the basic mental models of programmers, such as the IF/ELSE paradigm and the prescriptive end-states of narrative-based games. This distinction is made wonderfully clear when he looks at Carcassonne, a game in which very little is settled after each player's turn, and much is left unjudged until the mechanics dictate that the game has ended (when there are no more tiles to play).

Trent Pollack (GameDev.net) takes a close look at what achievements can do.

Gamasutra expert blogger Kim Pallister thinks that social-network interoperation was the most important thing at E3.

Duncan Fyfe (Hit Self-Destruct) narrates how difficulty spikes jar him out of Call of Duty 4's narrative.

Simon Ferrari (Chungking Espresso) on serious mechanima Desert of the Real.

Kieron Gillen (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) continues his examination of classic board games with draughts (checkers), Chinese checkers and Ludo (a simplification of Pachisi even simpler than Parcheesi).

Krystian Majewski (Game Design Scrapbook) proposes evaluating AI with the scale for evaluating coma levels.

Stephan Chin (Gamasutra blogs) on the role-playing aspects of L4D

Jim Rossignol (Offworld) thinks Microsoft's Milo and Natal are the next step in character interaction and AI in games.

L.B. Jeffries (PopMatters) re-examines the relationship between hardcore gamers and hipsters.

Jorge Albor (Experience Points) on the politics in and of Far Cry 2

Alan Jack sees the appreciation and understanding of fine art as being fundamentally similar to games.

Manveer Heir (Design Rampage) presented on designing ethical dilemmas at last week's Games+Learning+Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. You may recognize that this is a subject that comes up often. I think Manveer does a good job of hitting a number of important (if not novel) points. The problem at this stage of aspirational conversation, however, tends to be that the game-buying and -reviewing public doesn't take kindly to ideas that mess with the ability to save your game. It's not as bas as suggesting permadeath as standard in an MMO, but it's down that same road. Clint Hocking (Click Nothing) disagrees with some of Manveer's points on permanence of decisions, as Manveer seems to be playing against the medium by moving away from standard mechanics and towards more prescriptivist narratives.

Daniel Purvis (Graffiti Gamer) responds to recent criticism of inFamous.

Troy Goodfellow (Flash of Steel) completed his series examining maps in games. Troy has done a nice bit of work concentrating on the various ways maps convey meaning and influence gameplay. I fully endorse reading the entire series.

Scott Juster (Experience Points) continues his look at "difficult" games in light of Kushner's "Art of the Difficult," comparing how much moral and intellectual work various games require of the player.

The Escapist covers the interplay of games and religion. (I've only skimmed, but I'm very interested in the topic.)

Raph Koster writes about the difficulty of making better avatars as a response to "Mr. Seb" Sebastian's post on the subject.

Mike Leader (Gamasutra) on revamping "classic" titles for downloadable re-release

Richard Terrall (Critical Gaming's KirbyKid) on choice and perspective in Pikmin

Tom Cross (Diamond in the Rough at GameSetWatch) on emergent and prescribed narrative in games

Justin Keverne (Groping the Elephant) on stealth play

Michael Abbott (Brainy Gamer) surveys pedagogical techniques in recent games, seeing the first 15 minutes of play as crucial to introducing, explaining and hooking new players.

Chris Remo (Procedural Dialogue) thinks that using Dante's Inferno as explicit source material for EA Redwood's new game hurts the public view of games in general.

Gabriel Lievano (Gamasutra expert blogger) on humanizing AI by adding imperfections

Jenn Frank (Infinite Lives) reports that Girlfriend! Magazine is teaching readers to judge their boyfriends based on their game preferences. Frankly, I think most gamers do something similar to each other already. It's similar to walking into a colleague's office or home and judging the contents of the bookshelf.

Borut Pfeifer (Plush Apocalypse) conceptualizes more nuanced ways of handling race in games. This isn't necessarily new (Borut notes that this was a fairly well-covered ground in Star Trek), but it's at least better than the blunt and potentially offensive Elder Scrolls treatment of "Redguard" and "Nord" ethnicities, or even the standard pro/con aspects of each race or nationality (be it orc, Silicoid or Russian) in many other games.

Nels Anderson (Gamasutra Expert Blogs and his own Above 49) describes Fallout 3's use of radio reporting as a procedurally-generated modernization of the epic bard (or, in Scandinavian terms, "skald"), recounting the deeds of the hero.

Eric Caoili (GameSetWatch) reports that the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California is now hosting an exhibit of WoW's official art as well as fan art and art otherwise inspired by WoW. (Closing October 4, 2009)

Experience Points podcast on Chris Remo's (Gamasutra) earlier worry that videogames are overdrawing from the "epic" well

Daniel Johnson (Lingua Franca on GameSetWatch) on the Australian tradition of "larrikinism" as conveyed in Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow

Matt Barton and Bill Loguidice (Gamasutra) recount the history of Spacewar!.

Sims 3

Games design student Robin Burkinshaw is studying homelessness in Sims 3 at his blog Alice and Kev. Everybody's talking about it, including Tom Chick (Fidgit, but also on Three Moves Ahead). Craked's "seanbaby" somewhat similarly explores the depths of human depravity available in Sims 3.

Chuck Jordan (Spectre Collie) looks at Sims 3's strategic elements as well as the reshaping of possibilities for emergent play (narrowed in some aspects, broadened in others). The Three Moves Ahead podcast asks, "Is Sims 3 a strategy game?"

Dan Bruno (Cruise Elroy) looks at Sims 3's attempts to abstract everyday life to the point where the fun parts emerge and everyday banality recedes.

[Nick LaLone]

Man, that is a much clearer version of what I wrote than I thought was possible. I've been reworking that post since I wrote it trying for more clarity.