All posts by Jonathan McCalmont

Blasphemous Geometries

Mirror’s Edge – The Emptiness of the Short-distance Runner

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Blasphemous Geometries sees Jonathan McCalmont taking a run with Mirror’s Edge, a game whose hipster near-future dystopian stylings fail to disguise its underlying theme – freedom is illusory.

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

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After reading my previous column, you could be mistaken for thinking that only great games have themes and subtexts, and that those themes and subtexts only emerge when designers manage to work together and combine the various elements that make up a game into one shining image such as GTA IV’s initial depiction of the isolation and alienation that pervade 21st Century life. This is not in the least bit true.

Many crap games have themes, too. They have themes because every line of stilted absurd dialogue, every frustrating control mechanism, every poorly-designed level and every generic character all support one idea – an idea that the game designers almost certainly never had in mind when they started work on the title. Mirror’s Edge – from EA Design Illusions CE – is not only a terrible game, it is also a game with a clear thematic message: Freedom is an illusion, and all those who would claim to champion it are hypocritical and deluded fools. Continue reading Mirror’s Edge – The Emptiness of the Short-distance Runner →

Blasphemous Geometries

Grand Theft Auto IV – Exploring the Mundane

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Blasphemous Geometries has turned its attention to computer games, and for its first foray into that sphere Jonathan McCalmont takes a look at the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto IV. How does its reproduction of life’s bitter mundanities strengthen its appeal, and what does that say about the reality it reflects?

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

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As the first Blasphemous Geometries column to look at an individual video game, it makes sense for me to start at the top with one of the fastest-selling games of all time. Grand Theft Auto IV is, paradoxically, the sixth game to appear in the series and the eleventh game to appear as a part of the wider GTA franchise. Since its release in April 2008 it has been festooned with awards and prizes and it remains one of the highest ranking games to feature on the net’s various review aggregation sites. It is not my intention today to toss another garland onto the already swollen heads of the GTA IV developers; instead, I want to use the game to demonstrate an idea. Continue reading Grand Theft Auto IV – Exploring the Mundane →

Blasphemous Geometries

The criticism of video games

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This month Blasphemous Geometries turns a conceptual corner, as Jonathan McCalmont decides to refocus the critical crosshairs on video games.

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

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Back in the 1930s, a number of physicists (including Einstein) argued that our universe is oscillatory. What this meant was that after the Big Bang, the universe expands until it reaches a certain level of density and gravitational pull, at which point it begins to contract until it ends with a Big Crunch. This idea still has some devotees. However, what made the Oscillatory Theorists interesting was the belief that after the universe had contracted back to its original singularity, it would then bounce back again; expanding until its physical limits were met and another Big Crunch was initiated. This meant that, according to the Oscillatory Theorists, the universe was stuck in a cycle of eternal destruction and rebirth. This has always struck me as a rather useful analogy for certain internet debates. “Is Science Fiction Dying?” is one such debate but another is “Where is the Lester Bangs of Video Games?”. Continue reading The criticism of video games →

Blasphemous Geometries

The Alternative Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

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This month in Blasphemous Geometries, Jonathan McCalmont presents his second attempt to produce an alternative shortlist for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form that looks a little further afield for the best examples of genre cinema of the last year.

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

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Every year, with merciless and unceasing regularity, hundreds of fans gather at Worldcon. After a few days of discussion, networking and having their pictures taken in beards and Hawaiian shirts for inclusion in Locus magazine, the fans attend the Hugo award ceremony. This award ceremony is the climax of a cycle of discussion during which science fiction fans across the globe begin handicapping, second-guessing and complaining about the Hugo awards with varying degrees of bitterness, enthusiasm, alienation and excitement. It is a cycle that starts with the announcement of the Hugo Awards shortlists. This year’s cycle began on the 19th of March.

Being the kind of person whose bitterness and alienation always outweigh his enthusiasm and excitement, I see one particular Hugo – that awarded for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form – as a wasted opportunity. Every year, instead of celebrating the rich tapestry of cinematic genre, the Hugo shortlist is dominated by heavily-marketed American blockbusters, more frequently than not based upon already well known pre-existing works such as books or comics. In fact, last year, the nominees were so spectacularly weak that I felt obliged to come up with an Alternative Hugo shortlist made up of good films that somehow failed to capture the attention of Hugo voters. This column is my second attempt at an Alternative Hugo shortlist for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Continue reading The Alternative Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form →

Blasphemous Geometries

Genre and storytelling in video games

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This month in Blasphemous Geometries, Jonathan McCalmont takes a look at the roles of genre narratives and storytelling in the still-young media of computer and video games, questioning the received wisdom that that the form has matured noticeably from is simple puzzle-solving and goal-reaching roots.

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

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We exist in a world of brands. These days you can watch a film, read a book or comic, play a game, drink a cup of coffee and even have sex without ever leaving the vice-like economic grip of your favourite brand. As the darling of the monstrous cultural artefacts that are summer blockbusters, science fiction is at the cutting edge of what Media Studies theorists call Remediation.

Remediation is the idea that, rather than existing along a fixed technological time-line with new forms emerging fully-formed from new technology, new forms of media are produced via a process of back-and-forth between new technology and older mediums. As video game designers draw more and more hungrily upon literary and cinematic works of science fiction, it is important to think about what the process of remediation does to these works and how the process might be improved. Continue reading Genre and storytelling in video games →