linehollis | Line Hollis

Weekly Update: Blocks World

September 27, 2011 / 0 comments

After two weeks of nose-to-the-grindstone paper writing, I am delighted to return to writing that no one will pay me for with Players Are Planners, a new feature up at Robot Geek. This was inspired by a volley of blog posts that went down while I was away, starting with Michael Abbot’s Games Aren’t Clocks and followed…

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Weekly Update: Non-Linear Trend

September 19, 2011 / 0 comments

Haha, I was totally kidding last week when I said I’d get a real post together for today. Fortunately there are people out there who are writing things. Go read things they write! I’ma go die. In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column. This is a week late, but someone just pointed me…

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Weekly Update: Non-Linear

September 12, 2011 / 0 comments

So hey, on account of some deadlines at my day job, I’ll be lying pretty low for the next couple of weeks. No post at Robot Geek this week, but I’ll see if I can’t throw something together for next week. (e.g., “How Not Playing Videogames for Two Weeks Makes People Go Crazy,” or perhaps…

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Chemical Reactions

September 6, 2011 / 0 comments

This is up a bit late. I blame Labor Day! Also, getting swamped at work. Anyway, last week I was mainly playing through last May’s Experimental Gameplay Project entries, with the theme of “ZOOM.” The Camera Made Me Fat! and Broken Zoomometer [direct download link] Both of these games use a pretty straightforward interpretation of the…

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Red Dead Redemption: a cowboy rides off into the sunset.

Ending vs. Resolution

September 5, 2011 / 0 comments

According to a recent CNN story by Blake Snow, only 10% of players finish the games they start. This being an article from a major news source, there was no information on the origin or accuracy of this statistic beyond a couple of guys saying, “Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard, something like that.” Nonetheless, it provided a…

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Weekly Update: This Ends Nothing!

September 5, 2011 / 0 comments

This week at Robot Geek, I discuss the recent fake findings about how rarely players finish games in the context of narrative theory in Ending vs. Resolution. (Sorry about the video ads. We’re working on it.) Some of this is inspired by some weird behavior I’ve noticed in my own play style. With a lot…

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Mouthwash: Viewpoints

August 31, 2011 / 6 comments

In previous discussions of Mouthwash, I’ve mentioned that there are four domains in which actions can take place: goals, emotions, viewpoints, and relationships. I’ve talked a bit about goals and emotions, which brings me to viewpoints. This was the domain that scared me the most when I started sketching out Mouthwash, because it’s the domain…

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Leaning Games

August 30, 2011 / 0 comments

The world of art games is young and vibrant, full of unique experiments. Still, if you explore the output of the experimental world enough, you’ll start to recognize a few common types. There’s the punishing platformer with dark themes; the aggressively unexplained low-fi puzzle game; the quirky Mario variation. But there’s one game type that…

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Weekly Update: Slow Lives and Nagging Wives

August 30, 2011 / 0 comments

What’s up, travelers from Gamasutra! This week at Robot Geek, I talk about an emerging cliché in art games, where it comes from, and what it’s good for. I call them Leaning Games, and they’re multiplying like rabbits. (If that phrasing just grossed out a few people who follow me on Twitter, bonus!) I don’t…

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Gormless?!

August 28, 2011 / 0 comments

I was pretty busy this week (also hurricane), but I got a few steps forward in the backlog. One odd thing about this week is that I played two games in a row that prominently used the term “gormless.” I have never encountered that word before, so that weirded me out. It also coincided with…

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