“About a year ago, I praised Ian Bogost’s critique of Bully and lamented the unfortunate lack of game criticism, as distinct from game reviews. Roughly speaking, we could say game criticism is for game developers and professionals who want to think about the nature of games and what they mean. Game reviews are for the public – for people who play games – and they are intended to help those people make decisions about which games they should buy. Both are valuable and important contributions, but sadly, we seem to only have one. So this is not going to be a review of Bioshock. If you want a review of Bioshock go here. This is going to be a critique of Bioshock – a limited one perhaps, because I don’t have the time to really give this game the 50,000 plus word critical examination I think it deserves, but it will be a critique nonetheless.” – Clint Hocking, “Ludonarrative Dissonance: The problem of what the game is about.”
Steve Wilcox is an assistant professor in the Game Design & Development program at Wilfrid Laurier University where he researches & creates knowledge translation games. He is also the co-founder & former editor-in-chief of First Person Scholar.
