Examining the history of the Metal Gear series, Owen Vince argues that the games misrepresent military intelligence operations and their very real civilian casualties.
Posts By: Owen Vince
In many regards, the skyscraper is the ultimate monument to Capital, but in our media, it may become a tomb to its inhabitants, a gravestone to modernity.
After Nakatomi
1 It's easy to follow the allusions in a game — like Kentucky Route Zero — filled to the brim with them, but how do we write about such a game?
An evasion of critique, or, writing about “difficult” games is difficult
Video games and capitalism have a complex and often paradoxical relationship. What are the problems facing workers in the industry when they have to demand what is due?
‘We just want what we’re owed’: workplace organising and the games industry
In March 1914 the bespectacled scholar Bronislaw Malinowski was put down by a greasy tug boat on the sands of Mailu Island in Papua New Guinea. Standing awkwardly for a while on the too-hot earth, he described himself as feeling – for a moment – a sense of deep discomfort and revulsion. Straightening his tie, the cotton of his shirt sticking in patches to his skin, Malinowski made his way from the rolling breakers to a group of women standing at the edge of a forest clearing. He was there to live among them, a “participant observer” whose role – as an anthropologist – was to […]
Malinowski’s Beach: Notes on Play as Anthropology
Vaulting a burned-out car, chugging heavily in his articulated armour, Ruiz was in his element. And then he died, a jet of livid green plasma blowing him into now disarticulated bits.
Ruiz is Dead
Minimalism is close to my heart because minimalism has a way of getting at complexity by other ways and means.
On Minimalism and the promised land
4 There has long been a concern surrounding the representation of the First World War: that it is beyond the imagination of those who have not experienced it.
“Scarce Heard Amid the Guns Below”
2 My character has, until now, been an earnest and helpful fellow, but now he has blood on his hands. How did I get in this mess, and why does it trouble me?