Game Studies, "the international journal of computer game research," has posted a review of WarioWare (Gameboy Advance) focusing on the academic merit of the title. The author of the review believes that WarioWare has lots to teach us about game design. It's a review from a different perspective, making a number of good points.
For the attention-deficit gamer, here are a few highlights:
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"WarioWare is crammed full of parody, subversion, and quotation of game clichés and conventions."
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"WarioWare is … a text that uses the representational strategies of a medium to reflect upon that same medium."
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Just as short stories are the short form of novels and short films are abbreviated feature-length films, "WarioWare demonstrates the ultra-short form of video games: the five second micro game."
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"By pushing the formal boundaries of game complexity to a bare minimum [through very simple controls], WarioWare foregrounds the essential elements of what makes a video game a video game."
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"Thinking of games as unified strands of discrete forms would let us understand how game designs are recombined, inherited, and mutated over time."
The review merits more attention than we have space to give it, so put on your tweed jacket and see if you can unpack these ludic semiologies.
