Recent content by Troy Goodfellow

Can't argue about fun, because we all find fun in different things; saying a game isn't fun isn't very helpful to discussion. As for whether anything actually matters, it matters because raising a family matters. Balancing bills matters. It's about stuff that matters in the way that Tetris...

Multiple Roleplaying Disorder The Sims might just be the most ambitious roleplaying game ever created. If that sounds crazy to you, Troy Goodfellow will prove you wrong. Read Full Article

Not quite impotent because it still has a lot of power. Most of the Asian immigrant success stories in the United States have been post-war; descendants of those who were discriminated against, forcibly relocated, lynched, driven out in race riots and the like do not have the same achievement...

It's really inexcusable to highlight this game and quickly pass over the name, the yellowface and the like, especially for a site that traffics in ideas like The Escapist. There shouldn't be an apology because people were offended - there should actually be a serious discussion about why...

Interesting essay, mostly because I think a lot of people assume that their gaming habits will continue unchanged until they are faced with something a little more important. Brain surgery is pretty high in the stress/time category, but it's probably only an exaggerated state of what most people...

I agree that transparency is a part of the teaching, but they are still more related concepts than things that should be conflated as the same. To use Costikyan's example, I can integrate a weather system and terrain modifiers into a tutorial with great ease, but as the player moves out of the...

Another great article, Rob. Some of these examples are what Bruce Shelley calls the "inverted pyramid of decision making". The player starts out with a few things to manage and control and then, bit by bit, they find they are mastering ever more complex systems over a wider sphere of...

What does "most accurate destination" even mean? Lowest? Closer to the mean? Accuracy in reviewing has almost nothing to do with the score.

Great article, Brenda. I will say that my experiences with my non-gaming acquaintances has been almost entirely positive. Curiosity is the dominant response to the fact that I am a game reviewer. How does my graduate school training connect to my tastes in games? Can you explain World of...

Great article that pretty much sums up why I don't play many sports games anymore.

Music is an interesting idea. I wonder how that would work, beyond trying to stick lyrics in scraplines... Even within the culture of games there's lots to chew on. One of my favorite game review assignments was for Paradox's Diplomacy, a disappointing translation of a great board game. It...

Strategy Informer is tied with CVG? And Gamesradar beats 1UP? I'm really shocked to see Joystiq so low and UGO so high.

If this was directed at me, I didn't mean to imply that fan run websites necessarily corrupt. But since many of them do get free review copies, their work is as susceptible to scrutiny as the big boys, but without the fallback of being "important enough" to not push around. Mind you, smaller...

The great irony is that the bigger websites who rely on advertising dollars are, in fact, more independent of this kind of pressure since the game companies can't blacklist or cut them off as easily. If your game isn't reviewed by Gamespot, people notice. The only proper response to that kind...

This is an important point. Historical and cultural context is even more elusive when the technology is all too happy to turn its back on any sense of permanence. But there are all kinds of durable stories to be found in today's games. Even comparative reviews would help - instead of just...