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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

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Key ideas represented: Games adapted from licensed properties need to do more than just follow the story, they need to engross the player in the environment and give them new narrative experiences. The most common form of film-to-game adaptation is the direct adaptation, these are also the most criticized. Videogame adaptations of licensed properties suffer from poor funding, in hopes to create a better profit margin. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is a game from the classic mold of the Western Role-playing Game (WRPG) in its approaches to the many facets of RPG gameplay. Simulated dice rolls dictate many actions from combat to diplomacy (a lasting artifact of its tabletop roots), players navigate dialog trees to solve problems where a blunt instrument is unwise or unwanted and combat is managed in real time with the provision to pause and issue orders (much like the system used in bioware's earlier Baldur's Gate). What sets KOTOR apart, however, is the license ...
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Left 4 Dead

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Key Ideas Addressed: Virtual worlds serve as a "petri dish" for studying social interaction. The common pool idea: Every man for himself even if it is not beneficial in the long run. Virtual worlds can very easily aggregate tremendous amounts of valuable quantitative data. Left 4 Dead is a co-operative first-person shooter created by Valve software set in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. Up to four players move through areas, fending off the attacks of both common "infected" (the game's parlance for the virus-infected humans now rendered zombies) and special infected: several classes of "boss" characters that interact with the players on a much different level than the commons, usually through special abilities. The distribution of these special infected and the timing of the sudden swarms of common infected are controlled by an AI system called "The Director" who is tasked with providing the players with the most intense, yet manageable e...
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Borderlands

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Key ideas represented: Gameplay is comprised of discovering rules while deciding whether or not to play. The idea of “Ludic Mediation”: Transmitting the “will-to-play” to the player. The idea of “Bi-Planar Behavior”: The player is engrossed in the game although he knows that after all it is only a game. Borderlands is a compilation of many borrowed ideas. Though the assets are unique, each of the games “bullet points” pays homage to another work, from the Mad Max-esque apocalyptic setting, the system of looting and leveling pulled directly from the Diablo games, or the direct translation of the controls of Call of Duty 4. It is a first person shooter that relies on the cycle of killing, looting, leveling and questing of recent role-playing-games to fuel the long-term experience. Quests are taken, wherein the player runs across enemies that, when killed, drop money, ammo, experience and weapons. These items are obtained, used to kill stronger enemies and progress on the game...
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Civilization IV

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Civilization 4 is a turn-based strategy game on a strategic scale which attempts to provide a simplified and abstracted version of the growth of many societies throughout human history. The player takes the role of the undying emperor and guides a people from barely more than a tribe to a world-conquering empire. This victory can be achieved through military force, cultural influence, winning the space race, or diplomatic unity. Civilization presents a wide variety of choices for how your society progresses, all of which are based around real world developments. Discovering bronze working allows for your society to adapt slavery, for example. And the multiple paths to victory allow for replayabiltiy and flexibility in the games message. One of the most important aspects of CivIV is this flexibility towards your goal. You may choose a peaceful resolution, even if building up a stack of tanks and utterly crushing all those in your path is oftentimes easier (and more cathartic). Interes...
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