Intro To Gameography

So April’s podcast is going to be something different than the
usual. Instead of doing the typical game club and random segment
2, we’re going to do a special, potentially twice-yearly Very
Special Episode that we’re calling Gameography. What is
Gameography, you ask? Well, we recorded a very special bonus
mini-podcast to try to explain our thinking. I’ll let that speak
for itself.


If you’d rather read than listen, I don’t blame you, so here’s
the scoop: very early in Abnormal Mapping’s planning stages, I
came to Jackson with the idea that every once in a while we’d do
an episode that was devoted to the entire career of a specific
game-maker. We’d collect all the games they put out, link to them
on the blog, play through them all, and then have a very deep
dive into someone’s career making games. That is, in essence,
what we’re doing in Gameography. Self-explanatory, right?


The reason why is a little more complicated. You see, I started
writing heavily for the internet talking about movies (and still
maintain a dusty but beloved movie blog), where the concept of
authorial voice is really strong. People are very quick to assign
all sorts of meaning and weight to a director or a screenwriter,
creating a broad sense that all their works are of a piece, and
that studying that authorial voice is worthwhile in better
understanding both the works and the creator. This is called
Auteur Theory, and has been around a long time.


The strange thing is that you rarely see this sort of thing
applied to games, especially in the hobbiest/amateur game making
space. We often play games in a contextual vacuum, something
that’s linked to us in a browser or on a curated web page, with
only the dimmest awareness of who created the game and what other
games they might have made, especially in a space where the games
can be radically different, released in many different ways, and
presented to different platforms. Bringing it all together under
one roof for consideration is something we’re keen on doing, and
thus Gameography is born!


Which brings us to who this first one is going to be about! We
have a short list of game makers we really want to dig into, but
the obvious choice was someone we both knew about and who had
made games we had both enjoyed. The obvious answer was Christine
Love. We talk briefly about why Christine Love in the
accompanying short podcast, but in realize you only need to play
her games to understand why. So I leave you here with the full
list of games, including links on where to find them, in the
order in which they were released. Go nuts, and we’ll be playing
along too, and we’ll be back at the end of April to talk about
them!


Gameography: Christine Love


Cell Phone Love Letter


Heart of Fire


Sketchbook: Schoolgirls in Love and Other Assorted Heartbreak


Digital: A Love Story


don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story


Analogue: A Hate Story


Diving Deeper


Even Cowgirls Bleed


Magical Maiden Madison


Hate Plus