AmbiGaming Corner

Hi guys,

So I’m trying out a few things with this blog as I attempt to settle into a usual schedule – at least until my thesis consumes my entire life again and I have to settle into a different schedule. Regardless, I present to you AmbiGaming Corner, a weekly Friday post on video game-related media and such that I’ve come across during the week.

This week, I’ve been reading the book How Games Move Us: Emotion By Design (Playful Thinking) by Katherine Isbister, which is a fantastic book that describes how video games grab us and move us emotionally, including the use of NPCs, how and why we project onto our PC avatars, playing together, and beyond.

I’m about a third of the way through and I am very impressed with Ms. Isbister’s ability to explain psychological concepts in an approachable and understandable way. She gives examples from a wide variety of games, so there will be titles you recognize, and some that you definitely make a note to play later. Some of these topics have been slated to come up on my blog, so I’m enjoying reading about them from a “real person’s” perspective, especially when her conclusions and mine are the same!

Otherwise, I’m still working my way through Mordor, which has been a fun adventure so far. I’m impressed by the controls as I’ve said, and the story is fairly interesting. It’s make more interesting by the fact that I’m playing on an old tube TV again and so I can’t read anything or make out some of the symbols, which has resulted in a lot more trial-and-error and looking up things online than I usually like to do. Because of this, it’s been a little slow-going, but the story is nice and so far fits nicely into the lore without disrupting it too much. But I’ll talk about this more once I’ve completed the game.

Next week, look forward to posts on choices in video games (like I promised veryverygaming!) and on theology from Thedas!

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you soon!

— Athena Tseta

What’s next? You can like and subscribe if you like what you’ve seen!

You can also:
– Support us on Patreon, become a revered Aegis of AmbiGaming, and access extra content!
– Say hello on Facebook, Twitter, and even Google+!
– Check out our Let’s Plays if you’re really adventurous!