August 2023 media
-
Baldur’s Gate 3: I was planning to skip this since I’m not a Dungeons & Dragons or classic CRPG guy. If you’re doing the same, you should reconsider! It’s really something special. I’d especially recommend it to fans of modern-day BioWare—it feels like an alternate-history branch on their evolutionary tree, from closer to when Dragon Age: Origins split off from the older Baldur’s Gate games. I’m excited to try Starfield, but I suspect it’ll have trouble making any serious inroads for a while.
-
Treacherous Play: I’ve been on a game studies kick recently and picked this up from MIT’s Open Access collection. It considers the ethics of games that include betrayal and deception within their rules, using EVE Online, DayZ, and the TV show Survivor as case studies. It’s very readable as academic works go, and some of the specific stories are incredible.
-
The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge: This delightful article by Tyler Vigen investigates a mundane question with overwhelming, disproportionate determination, and is my favorite thing I read this month. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the kind of post that reminds me the internet can still be good. Make sure to open the inline notes as you go.