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In the dawn of 2012, I tore a leaf from my Starcraft 2 Jim Raynor Wanted Poster keepsake notebook (best thing about that game, really), determined to write down great titles as I played them. I always draw a blank when people ask for stuff I should remember, and Games of the Year articles are too important to leave to memory… especially mine. For twelve months that increasingly defiled sheet survived the chaotic sluice of cords, bills, beer cans, notes to self, and discarded gaming mice that is my desk. I exhumed it the other day.

Now, I admit this hasn’t been the best year for games, but there were more titles scrawled on there than I have medals for. After all, we don’t hand out awards like candy around here. So a whole lot of thinkin’, and even a fair amount of replayin’, was to come before the tally was in. This year I humbly offer five titles worthy of Tap-Repeatedly Special Achievement Awards, plus a handful of mentions of the honorable variety.

Can games mean?  How?  And when they do, who’s responsible?  AJ and Dix take on authorship.  Read on!

Ben Hoyt is an old friend and longtime industry veteran – he did a Celebrity Guest Editorial for us a while back, and has appeared as a guest star in some of my posts over the years. We’ve been meaning to do a sort of sweeping discussion of the Mass Effect series for some time now, and it’s ready at last!

Officially speaking, my job with Culture Clash, the column I’ve written for the International Game Developers Association for nine years now, is to talk about how gaming culture relates to, is perceived by, and can influence the “rest” of culture. Beyond that I have a pretty free hand it terms of selecting topics. Of course, back in 2003 when I started, there were a lot more differences between “gamer culture” and just “culture.”

Still, the culture of gaming does exist, and as terms and phrases come to define aspects of it, I occasionally like to pause and consider what some of the constructs of gaming mean to me. Here we’re doing “social gaming” – or, rather, what “social gaming” would mean if they’d asked me to define it.

Which they did not.

Gamers are good at making design choices seem like the end of the world.  Very rarely is it, really.  Though in one instance over these last six months, one game has brought to the market (though not the video game market) a design choice that is the end of a world as we know it.  Over and over again.

I speak, of course, about Risk Legacy, the latest in a long string of Risk variants that Hasbro’s put out over the years.  Most of these variants have been licensing affairs with a different map and some special rules to fit the property: Lord of the Rings Risk, Halo Risk, and so on.  Legacy is not.  Legacy is a game in which every game played will have lasting effects on every future game played with that Legacy set.  It’s a board game with some unmistakable borrowings from video games, where persistent progress is pretty normal, but also some really ambitious – some would even say audacious – features that mean that the game is going to change.  Whether you like it or not.

Risk Legacy is controversial because it has consequences.

Scheduling for my monthly column at the International Game Developers Association has been more than a little spotty of late. I was once pretty Johnny-on-the-Spot with deadlines, but various things influenced that negatively; meanwhile the organization itself is going through various transitions as well. In the interest of getting myself back on a schedule I present my not-yet-published April 2012 edition. Not being a big multiplayer myself some of the conclusions I draw may be shortsighted, but in the end I hope to spark some thought on what that form means in the larger cultural context of gaming. Enjoy!

I want to talk to you about a very dangerous individual whose word is, even now, spreading to your very living rooms. This individual has formed a small cadre of loyal followers and true believers on little more than force of personality. This cult is threatens to draw all of you into it if you aren’t careful.

Tappers, I want to talk to you about Commander Shepard.

Beautiful, gripping and powerful. These are all words you wouldn’t associate with Stephen ‘increpare’ Lavelle’s Starfeld, a strange, miniaturised space oddity. I played this a few weeks ago and had a good giggle but after all the talk of RPGs, freedom and linearity here recently it seems only fitting that I throw this one out there now. You Mass Effect players may appreciate the satire here more than I did. I just appreciated the line …

I love Dragon Age Origins. I really do. And Mass Effect too. They are slick, engaging games that hold my attention, more or less through to the ending sequence. BioWare has delivered the goods recently, ladling out Mass Effect 2 and threatening to release a followup expansion to Dragon Age. What is there not to like? Well, a lot of things. The silly dialogue with its stilted choice system. And the story. Snort. Right. But …

Bitmob delves a bit deeper into the various potential sexual escapades of characters in Bioware’s upcoming epic Dragon Age: Origins. It would seem that after the tame-but-maligned-by-Fox-news hot alien lesbian sex scene from Mass Effect, the team’s kicked it up a notch. Unfortunately, based on writer Demian Linn’s experience, they’ve not done it that well.

So who here other than me played and enjoyed Bioware’s Mass Effect? Anyone? Well I liked it, though it seems like it’s been so long now that I barely remember the experience. What I chiefly remember is that I’m unhappy with the Big Decision I made at the end, I should have chosen differently, which means that the upcoming sequel, so coyly teased in the above clip, is going to be my shot at redemption. …