The Best Media of 2011 (Version .80)

Another month, another revision...  This time with the beginnings of a ranking and links to my reviews!  

The Best Media of 2011 (Version .75)

Another month, another revision...  

Is Donkey Kong Fun? Because I'm Feeling More Like a Donkey and Less Like King Kong.

"You know, he's gonna have to play it perfectly, he's at the hardest part of Donkey Kong, and it's not gonna get any easier. So we may have an exciting moment here, or you know, the pressure may get to him, one of those random elements might happen. Sounds like he just cleared another board, but we could have a wild barrel, or some aggressive fireballs. I thought I was gonna be the first FunSpot kill screen, and then I had three fireballs trap me, I had the hammer in my hand, they still got me. So anything can happen in Donkey Kong. So for someone else to be mean to the kill screen would be a letdown, but lets see what happens, maybe he'll crack under the pressure and maybe I'll get my chance to do it first."-Avid Donkey Kong player Brian Kuh in The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007). 

Debating Roger Ebert on Video Games

Film critic Roger Ebert has been notorious amongst video gamers for writing off the form as being incapable of being art.  Last year, he elaborated on his position and I responded with the following article (which is reprinted here).   Now, I should note as a hopeful cinema studies scholar that Roger’s work pushed me to study film and I constantly find myself reflecting on his Great Movies books. However, I am also a hopeful media studies scholar, a field which includes video games, a form which I enjoy as both a player and a Ph.D. student (you can find a visual essay a produced on the Wii with two classmates here). That said, I disagree with Roger’s assessment of the medium and here are a few reasons why.

The Death of Gestural Play?

A few years back, David O'Grady, Jen Porst, and I completed a visual essay on the video game phenomenon of gestural play:  games that involve an interface that requires players to mimic "real life" bodily gestures (swinging a tennis racket, playing a guitar, etc.) in order to master the game.  The essay can be found at Mediascape.  

Maps, I Don’t Love You Like They Love You

Those players who have purchased Call of Duty:  Black Ops (2010) for Playstation 3 (this guy) and/or X-Box 360 have essentially signed up to be victims of a Ponzi Scheme.  Essentially, upon release, publisher Activision sells consumers an incomplete game for $60 and then continues to bleed the same victims for $15, three times (for an additional $45, a total of $105) for downloadable content (DLC) in the form of “map packs.”   Now, Activision does provide a decent bang for the buck:  each map pack includes four newly designed multiplayer maps and one additional zombie mode map.  It’s not so much the quality of the additional content that I find frustrating.  Rather, it’s the method in which they are sold and the quality of the original content.