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June ‘08 Round Table–Updated 07/01
By Corvus | July 1, 2008
The Round Table has been groaning under the weight of all the tasty posts laid upon it the last several months. Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed, commented or even just read along. As always, everyone is free to submit posts to the Round Table. For more details on joining in, please read the Round Table FAQ and contact me with any questions. In addition to announcing entries in this post, I’ll also be sharing each entry with a note via my Google Reader shared items (RSS feed) as well as in my Twitter timeline.
Now on to this month’s topic! We’ve discussed the concept of friendship within games before, but this month I’d like us to take a little different tack…
June ‘08
I Wanna Hold Your Hand: I’ve said, quite a few times actually, that it’s not the characters themselves that make for compelling stories, but character relationships. This month’s Round Table asks you to explore a relationship within a game that you found compelling or memorable. Remember that this relationship can exist between your avatar and an NPC, two NPCs, your avatar and the game environment, or even your avatar and yourself. If you’re feeling like taking on an extra level of challenge, choose a relationship that is expressed via the gameplay. Ico is perhaps the most clear and direct example of this–as the titular Ico, you must guide Yorda through the world and keep her safe from the forces that would overwhelm her. But what other games allow the character relationships to effect gameplay? Does it make the game more interesting, fun, or challenging… or less so?
June 3rd — Josh’s of Mind’s Eye launches our Round Table with a lament on escort missions in Will You Stop Following Me!?!?
June 5th — Mike Rubin quaffs his Monk’s Brew and holds forth on some IF titles, including his current project, Vespers, and wonders why other genres of games haven’t caught up yet in I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
June 6th — Ian of 100footcroc provides us with an appropriately reptilian perspective as he looks at the relationships in Dino’s Run.
June 6th — Suzie at Girl’s Don’t Game take a look at the sidekick, focusing on Linebeck from Phantom Hourglass in I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
June 9th — William of H.T. Parnell’s writes about Xenogears and moms in The Holy Mother of Nisan.
June 9th — Monique at Write the Game has focuses on romantic partnerships and how they draw the player into the game in I Wanna Kill Zombies and Aliens Together
June 9th — Michael The Brainy Gamer shares his take on this month’s topic comparing the films Godfather 2 and I Am Legend to the game Beyond Good & Evil in The Relationship Factor.
June 10th — Michael Clarkson has added some of his patented (well,CC licensed actually) Discount Thoughts to the table, with a look at Farah and the Prince.
June 10th — Josh has turned his Mind’s Eye on Odin Sphere and the relationships it contains in The five faces of war.
June 11th — Rayna of Plucky Pixels says that she can play nicely in the sandbox and develop relationships while doing so in Relationhips in Sandbox Games.
June 11th — Joe at Cult of the Turtle points out that saving the world is so much more enjoyable when their is someone special to save if for in I Don’t Want to Save the Universe (again).
June 11th — Alex at While !Finished posts about relationships forged in combat in How the World Ends.
June 12th — Corvus of Man Bytes Blog (hey, that’s me!) wrote about the unhealthy relationship he forged with an adversary in We Hope You Have A Pleasant Stay
June 17th — Dan at Cruise Elroy has written about Chrono Trigger and the direct result of its portrayal of relationships in Putting the RP in RPG
June 26th — The eponymous Dierdra Kiai has joined in this month with an examination of the player and the player character, and the role freedom plays in that relationship in Being Someone Else.
June 26th — Matthew Gallant of The Quixotic Engineer takes at look at the subtleties of the relationship between a player character and their parents in Earthbound - Long Distance Love.
June 30th — Greg of The Dust Forms Words joins us with a post about NPC relationships from the perspective of The Selfish Gamer.
UPDATE
June 30th — Max at Worldmaker takes a look at the central relationship of Full Throttle in Whenever I Smell Asphalt, I Think of Maureen.
June 30th — Kimari of Indigo Static touches briefly on the importance of context in Relationships: Environment
June 30th — Tormod slides in under the wire with a post on accomplishment in I Don’t Want You to Hold My Hand.
Wow, we’ve amassed an incredible sampler of excellent posts this month. Stay tuned later today for July’s Round Table topic!
Just a quick note: If you’re going to link back to the June Round Table directly, please don’t link to this post. As the title changes with every update, it doesn’t actually have a permanent permalink (does that make it a tempolink?). Use the following URI instead: http://blog.pjsattic.com/corvus/round-table/#0608. Thanks!
Tagged:relationships, Round Table. |
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:46 am
I really enjoyed that last round of posts and found a bunch of new blogs to stalk as a result:)
This topic sounds interesting to me, I think I’ll try to join in on this one. About when do you expect people to start posting their entires on this topic?
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
Awesome, Rayna! I look forward to your entry.
I don’t know, how long will it take you to write your post?
In all seriousness, people tend to submit them all throughout the month. Last month Suzie got us stared out on the first day of the Round Table and Andrew submitted the final entry on the 29th. It all depends on people’s schedules.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Is it me or was the font change recently? My problems with the new font is that it’s pretty small and it’s the same style as what is used for links and it makes the text blend into each other.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
There’s been no change to the font, and the links are bold, green and underlined.
Perhaps there’s something up with your browser?
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
That’s weird, the only difference has been me downloading the new flash update from Adobe and this has been happening for at least a week or so.
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Between Firefox 2.0.0.14, Konqueror 3.5.9 and Opera 9.27 on Linux, only Opera is rendering the default paragraph text as green, but links are still quite discernible.
What browser (include version please) & OS are you using?
And is anyone else having this problem?
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Never mind, I found the problem. The Vizu poll didn’t close a div or span correctly. I’m cleaning it up now.
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Yep that fixed it, everything is looking good now.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:16 pm
I’m gonna do a topic on the GMC (Game Maker Community) about this. There’s a wild range of different people and opinions there so I think it should be at least interesting.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Thanks for the mention, Corvus! I should point out that Vespers is an IF piece written by Jason Devlin (not me); I’m working with Jason on a 3D adaptation of the game.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Thanks, Mike. I’ve changed the language to be more accurate.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Interesting posts there. I may give this a shot maybe when the next one rolls around.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Daniel, it lasts the entire month. You still have plenty of time to write a post for this month.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Max is right, Daniel. You’ve got three more weeks to come up with and submit a post!
June 11th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Please make mine an *official* submission, Corvus (if you see fit). Apologies for not sending it along as such in the first place.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Checking here before my last exam, so I’ll write something after - and man, is it great that I have so much to read!
Corvus, I’m well impressed by the turn out, even with my short attendance knowing this site (I’m still reading the archives
). Great stuff 
I think I have a good idea. Memorable relationship you say…hmm…
June 12th, 2008 at 6:56 am
@Michael Check your email!
@Andrew Good luck on the exam and I look forward to your post. Thanks for the kudos on my backlog.