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Michael Abbott

Indiana, USA

I write and host the Brainy Gamer blog and podcast.

Recent Activity

Shooter apotheosis

Elizabeth: I can't believe you did that. They're all dead. You killed those people. Booker: Elizabeth, I... Elizabeth: You're a monster! Booker: What did you think was going to happen? --Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite is a shooter with a problem, but the problem isn't the shooting. The problem is that Bioshock Infinite has nothing to say about the shooting. A game that earnestly tries to explore morality and personal responsibility ducks those questions by placing the player on a conveyor belt of hyper-violent sequences, shuttling the player from one narrative set-piece to the next. The shooting is what you do.... Continue reading

Posted Apr 9, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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Brainy Gamer Podcast - Episode 41

This is the final episode in my series of conversations about the State of Games. I encourage you to listen to the first three shows featuring a variety of smart and thoughtful guests. In this edition I talk with Kirk Hamilton, features editor at Kotaku, and Brett Douville, Lead Programmer at Bethesda Game Studios.We discuss the impact of indie games on AAA developers, "Anita and the cesspool," and why now is the best of all possible times to be a gamer...among many other topics. I hope you enjoy. Listen to any episode of the podcast directly from this page by... Continue reading

Posted Mar 26, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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Brainy Gamer Podcast - Episode 40

This is the third in a series of conversations I'm hosting on the State of Games. I encourage you to listen to the first two episodes and stay tuned for the final installment which will appear in the coming days. In this edition I talk with Tom Bissell, essayist, critic, and most recently script-writer for the new Gears of War: Judgment game. We discuss writing for games, the perils of Metacritic, the future of storytelling in games, and many other topics. I hope you enjoy. Listen to any episode of the podcast directly from this page by clicking the yellow... Continue reading

Posted Mar 19, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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Brainy Gamer Podcast - Episode 39

This is the second in a short series of conversations I'm hosting on the State of Games. I encourage you to listen to the first episode and stay tuned for the final two which will appear in the coming days. In this edition I talk with Chris Suellentrop, video game critic for the New York Times, and Steve Gaynor of the Fullbright Company, an indie game studio developing Gone Home, a finalist for the Excellence in Narrative award at the Indpendent Games Festival later this month. We discuss the transitional state of the game industry, the relationship of the critic... Continue reading

Posted Mar 15, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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Brainy Gamer Podcast - Episode 38

This is the first of several round-table conversations I'm hosting on the State of Games, an admittedly unwieldy topic, but well-timed, I think, in this transitional period for games and the game industry. In this edition I talk with Leigh Alexander and Brendan Keogh, two of the leading critical voices examining games and the culture surrounding them. We discuss the "ecology of games," play as communication, the culture wars, and why we need to "talk about the tree," among other topics. I hope you enjoy. Listen to any episode of the podcast directly from this page by clicking the yellow... Continue reading

Posted Mar 11, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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Why baseball is better than democracy

I don't often stray from video games on this blog, but sometimes my interest in games and my work as a stage director converge. My production of Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out opens tomorrow night, and throughout the rehearsal process I've been struck by the play's analytical, yet lyrical take on baseball as a game that's more than a game. Take Me Out (winner of the 2003 Tony Award for Best Play) tells the story of a Major League Baseball player named Darren Lemming who suddenly announces he's gay. The play explores the powerful aftermath of his decision and its... Continue reading

Posted Feb 19, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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Welcome aboard, Gilad! Nice to see you again. I found this thread on GOG's site very useful. I think it will answer your question. http://www.gog.com/forum/system_shock_2/system_shock2_faq_patches_mods_recommendations/page1

Commented Feb 18, 2013 on Vintage Game Club: System Shock 2 at Brainy Gamer

1 reply

Hi Matthew. I think I like SS2 more than you, but I take your point. One of my hopes in playing through the game with a group of motivated players is that we'll engage these questions and fairly situate SS2 among other games that invite comparisons. SS1 is obviously one of those games. I personally find SS1's controls frustrating and its atmospherics less compelling...but it's been quite a long time since I played it. I'm guessing a fair number of people will give SS1 another go now that SS2 is in the limelight. If I can find time, I'll be one of them.

Commented Feb 14, 2013 on Vintage Game Club: System Shock 2 at Brainy Gamer

1 reply

Vintage Game Club: System Shock 2

When we discuss great games, we often cite particular moments burned into our brains: seeing Hyrule Field for the first time in Ocarina; the chainsaw zombie in Resident Evil 4; the death of Aeris; "Would you kindly..."; "The cake is a lie"; emerging from the sewers to gaze on Cyradil for the first time; insult sword fighting; the final ascent in Journey; "Kick, punch, it's all in the mind." Those are a few of mine. System Shock 2 has many such moments, perhaps more than any other game. When devoted players discuss storytelling in games, someone inevitably declares System Shock... Continue reading

Posted Feb 14, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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The stuff of Fairy Tales

Some think the World a Mysterie Through which to blindlie blunder, Yet Wiseards since Prehistory Have sought to know its Wonder. --”The Wizard’s Companion,” Ni no Kuni A hundred years from now, when cultural historians and literature professors look back on the games we’ve played for the last 30+ years, they will see a renaissance age of Fairy Tales. They will study a deep catalog of storytelling games filled with heroes and supernatural helpers, anthropomorphic animals, magic potions, healing fruit and epic sojourns. Tales of fate, souls redeemed, loved ones lost and found. Nature as leitmotif. Wise trees, restorative stones,... Continue reading

Posted Jan 30, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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I have deleted several mocking and hostile comments in this thread from Mercber. The ones that remain are there to account for the views I perceive he's attempting to communicate. Those I deleted have no apparent constructive content. I'm grateful for responses to my posts, but my blog is a place for thoughtful, civil discussion about games. I'm sorry you were targeted here, and I'll do my best to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Commented Jan 16, 2013 on The humble case at Brainy Gamer

1 reply

The humble case

A few days ago, I wrote that reasonable people have genuine concerns about the effects of violent video games - and depictions of violence across media - on our kids and society at large. In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, harsh critics of video games have pitched drastic measures to curb violent content, while defenders contend our fascination with violence is healthy, innate and as old as The Iliad. Neither argument is fully persuasive, and I think most of us fall somewhere between the two perspectives. Banning or censoring “objectionable” material is a dangerous and self-defeating precedent ; but the... Continue reading

Posted Jan 15, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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Notes from the wild

This holiday season I went off the grid. No email. No Twitter or Feedly. Notifications disabled. Nothing chirping for my attention except my kid, whose startup sequence deploys at 6:30 A.M. This wasn’t something I planned, but after a few days I decided to stick with it. I expected to feel disconnected, but instead it felt cleansing, liberating…necessary. If you can manage to cut the cord, even for a few days, I recommend giving it a try. You may find yourself noticing things like the UPS man’s nifty gloves, the sound of snow crunching under your feet, or your own... Continue reading

Posted Jan 7, 2013 at Brainy Gamer

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I'm a sucker for all the "best of" lists that appear at the end of the year, but they do get repetitive. This year we'll see an avalanche of game roundups that include Journey and The Walking Dead, among other deserving games. Just for fun, what do you say we try something a little different? I've been thinking about things that stuck with me playing games this year. Little moments. Surprises. Disappointments. People who made me stop and think. So I decided to make my own highly subjective list to account for them. Here are a few of my favorite... Continue reading

Posted Dec 13, 2012 at Brainy Gamer

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I've had the same thought. I would need time and the design chops to do it...neither of which I have. :-(

Commented Dec 9, 2012 on Skyrim for small fry at Brainy Gamer

1 reply

Gallery of goodness

It’s time to stop fretting about storytelling in video games. Five years ago - around the time Bioshock appeared - designers and critics began to intensify our focus on things like player agency and emergent gameplay. We coined phrases like “ludonarrative dissonance” and “on-rails” storytelling to characterize how games often fall short of their potential or dim in comparison to more mature media. Games like Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 became rallying points for us to gather and measure the progress of narrative games to that point. These were tremendously useful conversations, well worth the energy they consumed. But... Continue reading

Posted Dec 6, 2012 at Brainy Gamer

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The wreckage and the way out

I tried hard not to write this post. I finished Papo & Yo three weeks ago, and each day since, I promised myself I would sit down and write about it. But each day I found a new way to dodge the job. Too busy. Couldn’t find the words. Moved on to other games. Who cares what I think anyway? Always a reason to avoid facing the empty page and the memories. For five years I’ve written about all sorts of games here. Papo & Yo is the first to incapacitate me; to make me feel awkward and inadequate to... Continue reading

Posted Nov 15, 2012 at Brainy Gamer

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Bookmarked. Thanks, Grayson!

Commented Oct 24, 2012 on Emotional experience through a gameplay world at Brainy Gamer

1 reply

I agree that responses in the form of art would be especially useful. We could make a pretty convincing case that much of the great art produced through history has been some kind of response to art that came before it. I thought about your second point as I was constructing the word clouds. The kind of wring you describe would produce words that might never appear in these clouds. But, frankly, I see very little of such writing about games. I think the bigger point I'm trying to illustrate is the homogeneity of terminology across different games. We over-use generic words and jargon, relying on them to communicate in a shorthand sort of way ideas and observations that deserve more careful consideration. I don't mean to suggest there is no good writing about these games; only that there is so much generalized writing about them. I do think Journey produced more powerful criticism (and more writing in total), and a close look at its word cloud indicates less concentration on a few words in the middle of the cloud and a greater variety than the other two. Thanks for your comments!

Commented Oct 24, 2012 on Emotional experience through a gameplay world at Brainy Gamer

1 reply

Emotional experience through a gameplay world

The nature of our terms affects the nature of our observations. --Kenneth Burke We need a better way to write about games. I don’t mean a new form of journalism. I’m not seeking the Lester Bangs or Pauline Kael of video games. My point is much simpler. We need more words. For a long time we’ve tried to make games align with our critical sensibilities. We’ve focused a dramaturgical lens on narrative games; we’ve applied film theory to cinematic games; we’ve examined games as rhetorical systems; and we’ve tried to understand the systemic principles that define games. These are worthy... Continue reading

Posted Oct 24, 2012 at Brainy Gamer

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Crafting wonder

Players and critics are hardwired to classify. We obsessively index and categorize the games we play, relying on their mechanical properties (platformer, RTS, FPS, etc.) to communicate their essential characteristics. Not content to classify the games, we even classify the gamers, building taxonomies to describe who plays games and why. We’re human. We file things. We can’t help it. Publishers follow suit, describing their games in familiar terms. When I saw Dishonored a few months ago at E3, the booth rep made sure I knew the game would appeal to FPS and stealth and RPG fans alike. The Arkane/Bethesda folks... Continue reading

Posted Oct 15, 2012 at Brainy Gamer

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Heh. Yes, I probably shortchanged those moments a bit.

Commented Oct 5, 2012 on What a life at Brainy Gamer

1 reply

I'm a big fan of Duncan's work. I think we share an anthropological interest in game designers and their work. :-)

Commented Oct 5, 2012 on What a life at Brainy Gamer

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My post is a composite sketch of many designers I've met.

Commented Oct 5, 2012 on What a life at Brainy Gamer

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I know a game designer. He is quiet. Absorbed. A bemused observer. The one who notices patterns. The smart kid who sat in the back at school, bored out of his mind. He is a builder, but for as long as he can remember he's been caught between two conflicting impulses: save the world, or blow it up and make a new one. He lives in the space between, drawn to anarchy, but irritated by disorder. He believes a robust system can harness chaos, but he knows entropy will play the last card. Still, he stubbornly believes he can win.... Continue reading

Posted Oct 4, 2012 at Brainy Gamer

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