Tonamel on 31/5/2010 at 08:33
Dan Pinchbeck, of The Chinese Room fame (Dear Esther and Korsakovia), just uploaded his doctoral thesis for all to read. By which I mean less than an hour ago, so I haven't had a chance to (
http://www.thechineseroom.co.uk/thesis.pdf) read through its 343 pages yet (pdf link), but I thought the more scholarly among us (Hi, Aerothorn!) might enjoy at least skimming through it.
He analyzes the following games as part of the research, comparing and contrasting them with each other using many, many charts:
* Doom 3
* Quake 4
* Undying
* Painkiller
* Fall of Man
* UT3
* Perfect Dark Zero
* Condemned
* FEAR
* No One Lives Forever 1+2
* Return to Castle Wolfenstein
* Crysis
* Far Cry
* Blacksite: Area 51
* Timeshift
* Half Life series
* Halo series
* Deus Ex series
* Thief: Deadly Shadows
* Portal
* Prey
* Bioshock
* STALKER
* System Shock 2
* Hellgate: London
* Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Aerothorn on 31/5/2010 at 16:15
Holy shit. Well, I've got a new resource for my Half-Life section.
I'm way excited to read this but no way I can get through all of it anytime soon. What an overachiever.
Totally looking forward to the NOLF section. On the other hand, it's kind of weird that he does Deadly Shadows and not the earlier games, though I assume he has a reason for this.
P.S. I now remember I was totally planning on doing Dear Esther as part of my paper, and somehow forgot to add it to the list. Fixed!
catbarf on 31/5/2010 at 18:48
On page 145, the chart labels Halo an RPG. Oops.
I skimmed the section on the relation between number of factions and types of character and it's interesting reading.
Aerothorn on 1/6/2010 at 04:12
And did you see the Dramatic Arc charts in the addendum? Jesus. Talk about thorough. This is seriously intimidating to me (but then, I'm not doing a multi-year docotoral thesis). I sent Dan an e-mail and he offered to give me advice if I needed any on my project. What a nice guy!
On the downside, I can't currently print it out because it's in A4 and the United States hates ISO paper standards.
Fafhrd on 1/6/2010 at 05:00
Using 'Concerned' as 'Fig 1. The breakdown of diagesis and gameplay. (Livingston 2006)' is fucking awesome.
Dresden on 1/6/2010 at 05:06
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
And did you see the Dramatic Arc charts in the addendum? Jesus. Talk about thorough. This is seriously intimidating to me (but then, I'm not doing a multi-year docotoral thesis). I sent Dan an e-mail and he offered to give me advice if I needed any on my project. What a nice guy!
On the downside, I can't currently print it out because it's in A4 and the United States hates ISO paper standards.
We don't want the King telling us how to print!
Muzman on 1/6/2010 at 09:40
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
On the downside, I can't currently print it out because it's in A4 and the United States hates ISO paper standards.
Hgfsbtlspt! What? Seriously? Your printer can only do foolscap because it's American?
Zerker on 1/6/2010 at 10:25
It's probably more the case that he can't actually find A4 paper. Most printers will take it, as far as I know.
Thirith on 1/6/2010 at 10:30
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
On the downside, I can't currently print it out because it's in A4 and the United States hates ISO paper standards.
Shouldn't you be able to use the "Fit to page" (or whatever it's called) function? Obviously it won't fit 100% and will be shrunk down a bit, but the differences between A4 and Letter aren't all that huge, are they?
Yakoob on 1/6/2010 at 10:46
so can someone read it and post the tl;dr version?
