Peer-Reviewed Articles by Byron Fong
Animation
This article uses the walk cycle to simultaneously place movement in video games within the histo... more This article uses the walk cycle to simultaneously place movement in video games within the history of animation, and to show how the walk cycle has been adapted for the video game medium. Dating back to the pre-cinematic toys of the 19th century, the walk cycle is an animation technique that depicts a character’s walking animation as a self-contained, reusable loop. Video games import this technique into a new context with different affordances. A comparative analysis of the video games Prince of Persia (1989) and Ninja Gaiden (1988) explores different methods of implementing the walk cycle and reveals a trade-off between verisimilitude of movement and responsiveness to user input. Prince of Persia’s walk cycle, inspired by full cel animation, foregrounds fluid movement, while Ninja Gaiden utilizes limited animation techniques to prioritize responsiveness. Thus, this article argues that interactivity becomes a site of tension between movement and responsiveness, with video games dr...
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Reviews by Byron Fong
Afterimage
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InVisible Culture, Oct 5, 2018
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The Velvet Light Trap, 2016
B R I A N S C H R A N K ’ S F I R S T B O O K C O M B I N E S H I S knowledge of media studies, a... more B R I A N S C H R A N K ’ S F I R S T B O O K C O M B I N E S H I S knowledge of media studies, art history, and game design to develop a much-needed intervention in game studies. More prevalent contributions to the field of game studies tend to discuss video games either from a cultural studies perspective (i.e., fan cultures and issues of representation) or within the discipline of media industry studies. While a certain attention to aesthetics factored into the ludology versus narratology debate, Avant-garde Videogames is one of the few book-length projects to place video games in art history/theory. The book’s most notable contribution is to see video games not just as a mass-media format or as products of an industry but as works of art. By focusing on more experimental video games and placing them within the tradition of the avant-garde, Schrank successfully conceptualizes an expansion of the medium beyond the relatively narrow categories that mainstream video games provide, s...
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Essays, Interviews, Etc. by Byron Fong
InVisible Culture, May 27, 2022
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InVisible Culture
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InVisible Culture
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InVisible Culture, 2020
This interview was conducted with Hazel Carby in February 2019 with Joel Burges, Jerome Dent, Ali... more This interview was conducted with Hazel Carby in February 2019 with Joel Burges, Jerome Dent, Alisa Prince, Patrick Sullivan, and Jeffrey Allen Tucker. It was edited by Clara Auclair and Byron Fong, and annotated by Kendall DeBoer and Peter Murphy.
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The videogame series, collectively known as the Souls series, produced by From Software, are iter... more The videogame series, collectively known as the Souls series, produced by From Software, are iterative expressions of a recursive allegory for the madness of modernity. The series, which includes Demon's Souls (2009), Dark Souls (2011), Dark Souls II (2014), and Bloodborne (2015), uses a set of unique gameplay mechanics to encourage a style of play that acts as an excavation or an archaeological project to uncover the history of the once rich kingdom the game is set in. This essay draws on Benjamin's theorization of allegory in the Trauerspiel, and it compares the Souls series to Bernheimer's reading of Kafka's The Castle, to show how the series creates an allegorical structure not only in its content, but also in the formations of the games algorithms and ludological structures.
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Peer-Reviewed Articles by Byron Fong
Reviews by Byron Fong
Essays, Interviews, Etc. by Byron Fong