Simplikation

Imagine this scenario for a moment. You’re playing Red Dead Redemption 2, riding your horse down one of the game’s many trails. As you pass by a carriage going the other way, you hold down th...

http://simplikation.com/the-intentionality-trap/

This was my half of a GDC 2019 talk discussing how to create narratives in eSports through analytics and pro wrestling. It was given alongside Adam Savidan , of LoadingReadyRun, who covered the p...

http://simplikation.com/storytelling-in-esports-its-pro-wrestling-with-data/

In his documentary film The Wild Goose Chronicles - a collection of his travels across the world in the wake of his failure to succeed in Hollywood, portions of which are serialized online as Fli...

http://simplikation.com/the-stark-reality-of-the-desert/

1. Infinite games are on everybody's mind. We hope, in eternal optimism, that the obsolesence inherent to all capitalist endeavors won't touch games. We hope that there is a game which, once d...

http://simplikation.com/the-finitude-of-infinity/

On first glance, it's perfectly understandable to mix up Overwatch and Battleborn. They both have visuals that lean heavily on the "80s G.I. Joe cartoon" aesthetic, they both channel MOBAs to des...

http://simplikation.com/overwatch-battleborn-simplicity/

Warning: This piece contains massive spoilers for the Bioshock series and System Shock 2. "Would you kindly? " These three words, more than any other, define the world of Rapture. When their ...

http://simplikation.com/bioshock-2-triumph-nuance/

There is a search in game design right now, a feverish scavenger hunt to pin down a holy grail of game design: flow. Flow is generally defined as being "in the zone ," in a state where your ful...

http://simplikation.com/futile-search-for-flow/

The streets are narrow, cramped, decayed and full of offal. The inhabitants drift through the semi-ruined town, dragging their implements along. The only thing that stirs them from their wheezing...

http://simplikation.com/lose-yourself/

Modern games have issues with scale. This isn't to say that modern games are small. We are in a renaissance of massive open-world games, from Grand Theft Auto to Assassin's Creed to The Witcher...

http://simplikation.com/far-cry-and-the-dissolution-of-enormity/

"Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?” -JOE HALDEMAN, THE FOREVER WAR The Forever War is one of military sci-fi's seminal works...

http://simplikation.com/the-future-rewound-destinys-transhumanism/

Internet discourse is toxic. We all know it. YouTube comments, 4chan threads, online matchmaking; they all expose us to the worst that society has to offer. Bigots, harassers, and worse flood o...

http://simplikation.com/building-communities-beating-bigotry/

This piece was originally published as portions of a proceedings paper for ISAGA 2014 , an academic conference on simulations and games. I (JAMES MURFF) provided the perspective of entertainment ...

http://simplikation.com/glitches-players-and-metagames/

Something that I champion here on Simplikation is the notion that we can examine games beyond the bare-basics of "oh, this is fun." That we can take a game and dissect it, deconstruct it, experie...

http://simplikation.com/what-we-get-from-games/

This piece was originally posted in tweet form on my personal Twitter , which can be seen on Storify . We live in a broken system. Capitalism is built around money as measure of success, but ...

http://simplikation.com/paying-it-forward/

I've been depressed lately. Maybe it's the state of the world, maybe it's the state of my life, but the only thing I can think to do is curl up and sleep. My favorite games don't interest me, m...

http://simplikation.com/putting-a-soul-at-peace-euro-truck-sim-2/