Jenova Chen thinks that video games don't access enough of the human emotional spectrum. Sure, they do revenge and aggression well but they struggle to handle love or other kinds of deep connection.

That's why all of the games spearheaded by Chen—Flow, Flower and, most recently, Journey—have all proceeded from a clear mandate of wanting to expand the emotional vocabulary of video games. He talks about that on an interview with Gamasutra:

"My biggest complaint for computer games so far is they are not good enough for adults. For adults to enjoy something, they need to have intellectual stimulation, something that's related to real life. Playing poker teaches you how to deceive people, and that's relevant to real life. A headshot with a sniper rifle is not relevant to real life. Games have to be relevant intellectually. You also need depth. You have the adventure — the thrill of the adventure — but you want the goosebumps too."

Chen also connects the limited subject matter to how much bigger games tends to cost:

Right now, games are so expensive; they're 60 bucks. If they don't let you kill over a thousand people, the game is going to be dead within two hours. Then they have a problem justifying 60 dollar prices...

The developer also alludes to the fact that he and colleagues at ThatGameCompany are working on something new but need financing after the expiration of their three-game deal with Sony.

A Personal Journey: Jenova Chen's Goals for Games [Gamasutra]

Hello Kotaku. Happy Friday. Do you have good weekend plans? I was going to go to a concert, but now I have to cancel to play Dragon's Dogma all weekend for review. Because of you. I blame you.

Last week, Stephen asked you all to weigh in on what we're doing over here at Kotaku. A few of you had some good points (especially the part about where you liked Watch This, Play This—ahem, ahem), and so today I'm ruling in a new policy for Comment of the Week.

To make it easier on you all to remember your favorite comments, reply to a comment you liked with a "#cotw" hashtag. I'll sift through those for the week in question and pick a comment (or two, or more depending on how fervent you are) based on popular choice (and a bit of my judgment). The winners will be revealed on my weekly Best of Kotaku post, that goes up every Saturday.

With that, let's get on with our last nomination post. Please post your favorite comment down below with a link for viewing, and get on with the voting! May the best commenter win.

We're at a weird place in terms of expectations for the near-future of video games. Yesterday saw Epic Games unveiling the next iteration of their Unreal Engine and that— combined with a stream of leaks about the successors to the PS3 and Xbox 360—have people thinking about the possibilities of what's next. But David Cage doesn't care about any of that.

In an interview with Develop, the creative force behind hit PS3 game Heavy Rain says that he still thinks his ideas can play out on the current generation of gaming hardware:

But to be honest, I'm not that interested in technology or the next generation of consoles. If we could continue with PlayStation 3 for another five years it would be fine with me. I think the main challenges are on the creative side than on the technical side.

Are there technical things I can't do on PS3? Honestly, no. The limitation is much more about the ideas we have. When you look at the past, you realised that the technology evolved must faster than the concepts we rely on.

Granted, Cage unveiled the bleeding-edge "Kara" tech demo from his Quantic Dream studio earlier this year but that was made with and geared to run on existing technologies. It sounds like he's advocating more for the clever usage of current tech to implement forward-looking ideas, which is an idea that needs to co-exist with the chase for the new hotness.

David Cage: 'My team say my ideas can't fit into consoles' [Develop Online]

I'll confess: I really wanted to start this review with a choice quote from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. "Winter is coming" is played, I just did a riff on "You Know Nothing, Jon Snow" the other week... maybe a less common one, like, "Jon Snow flexed his sword hand" or something.

But no. I'm not going to do that.

Martin's books, and the terrific HBO series they've inspired, deserve better than that. Unfortunately, they also deserve better than the Game of Thrones video game I'll be reviewing today.

I'm a big fan of Martin's novels, though perhaps more of his big-picture execution than of his actual writing. I'm almost a bigger fan of David Benioff and Dan Weiss' Game of Thrones HBO series—that show tackles the source material with ferocity and passion, turning it into something that, so far at least, is arguably more focused and enjoyable than the books upon which they're based.

The feat that Benioff and Weiss accomplished, particularly with the tight-as-a-drum first season of their show, is so audacious that it's almost impossible to get one's head around. It would be so, so difficult to adapt a novel as wandering as even Martin's comparatively tight A Game of Thrones and turn it into something focused, clean, and approachable. The HBO series could have been an unpolished, unsatisfying adaptation destined to leave fans and newcomers cold. In other words, it could have been like the Game of Thrones video game.

I'd been skeptical of Cyanide's Game of Thrones game for a while now. The studio made A Game of Thrones: Genesis, a lackluster real-time strategy game that carried none of the drama or gritty political intrigue of the source material. Even back when I first broke the news of the planned full RPG, it was hard not to be skeptical. Cyanide studio director Yves Bordeleau told me that they had been working on the game for a long while before the HBO series had become popular. Late in production, they forged a deal with HBO and got some of the actors on board. It all set off a lot of warning bells—would this game really feel true to either the books or the show?

The answer, sadly, is no. And the bigger bummer is that it isn't just some slipshod TV-show tie-in, either. The game clearly was made by people who have read and respect the source material. Beneath the shoddy gameplay, unpolished presentation, and ugly graphics are some big-picture ideas that feel true to A Song of Ice and Fire. But they're buried so deep in the muck that only truly hardcore fans of the series will ever care to go looking for them.

A couple notes: First of all, I haven't finished the game. I played for a dozen or so hours, and I'm about 2/3rds of the way through. At that point, the combat had grown so wearisome and the sidequests so tedious that the overarching story was the only thing I was interested in seeing to its conclusion. I was interested enough to read ahead in a strategy guide to see how it all turns out—there are multiple endings depending on the choices you make towards the end of the game. Is this a practice I'd recommend for the majority of games? Probably not. But after that many hours, I believe I've got the game pretty well zeroed in. Second note is purely a style note: From here on out, Game of Thrones means the video game. If I'm referring to the books or the TV series, I'll be sure to make that clear.

Game of Thrones leads with its best idea: it has not one but two protagonists. The story jumps between two men, Mors Westford, a brother of the Night's Watch in the north, and Alester Sarwyck, an erstwhile lord-turned-red-priest in the south. They share a common history tied to Robert Baratheon, Jon Arryn and Ned Stark, and though they start in separate parts of Westeros, they're eventually reunited by the story.

It's a cool idea not just because it's in line with the way that the books are written; it's just a neat idea for a game, period. I'd love to see more game stories told from multiple viewpoints—I'm holding out the remote hope that Rockstar's Houser brothers continue in that direction after writing those great Grand Theft Auto IV chapters (and inserting a second character into L.A. Noire) and will write GTA V's story around multiple characters from the ground up.

The unfortunate truth about Game of Thrones, however, is that neither of the two characters is particularly appealing or interesting, and the story they unite to tell isn't really, either. It's more or less as though the books excised Arya, Tyrion, Jon and Daenerys and only hopped back and forth between Theon Greyjoy and Jorah Mormont.

It's easy to close your eyes and imagine the game's story being one of the side-plots in, say, A Dance With Dragons (even though chronologically, it takes place during A Game of Thrones), but even then, it'd be one of the side plots that you grumble through hoping that the subsequent chapter starts with the word TYRION.

George R.R. Martin consulted on and approved of the story in Game of Thrones, and it does show. There are also characters from the TV show in the game, voiced (mostly unenthusiastically) by the actors who play them on the show. In fact, I've already written a lengthy primer for fans of the show who are curious about the game, so if you want to know how exactly the game fits in with the broader series, check that out.

While the source material is certainly an integral part of Game of Thrones, any well-crafted game should be able to stand on its own. But with each new scene, sequence, and plot development I asked myself, "If the names were different, and this wasn't Game of Thrones, would I care?" And time and again, the answer was, "Nope."

Game of Thrones relies on the player's familiarity with the source material to a fault, not just using the lore to enrich the world and flesh out the backstory, but leaning on it to make the story interesting in the first place. It's a huge miscalculation, and a damning one.

If the best thing Game of Thrones does is its split narrative, its combat has got to be the worst. Throughout the game, you'll come up against guards, wildlings, and bandits, and each engagement is just… flatly uninteresting. The combat system is something of a melding of real-time and turn-based combat in which you cue up attacks to, for example, knock your enemy off balance and then hit him with a crippling blow.

Or I should say, "hit" him. The combat looks like an old-school MMO—the combatants don't really seem to ever touch one another while fighting, they simply wave swords through each other as numbers fly off and hit points deplete. It's all rather dispiriting, particularly when you're losing—rather than feeling tense and exciting, a nail-biter finish involves watching your health bar deplete and hoping that your enemy's bottoms out faster.

The game's generally crusty tech is its undoing in other ways, as well. None of the character models appear all that comfortable making physical contact, which is a bummer for battle, but it also makes the rest of the game virtually sex-proof. Game of Thrones is a profoundly unsexy game, even by fantasy role-playing game standards. In every brothel and bar, characters stand three feet apart from one another and talk; everyone seems so rigid… Given the sensual, often darkly sexual nature of the source material, it feels like a large missed opportunity.

Game of Thrones is also an ugly game. In more ways than one, really. Yes, the textures are bland; they're stretched and ancient-looking, and the with the exception of Castle Black at night, the environments are unremarkable; they might as well be from any mid-level fantasy game from the early 2000's.

But the ugliness goes beyond the graphics—no one is happy, nothing is ever worth enjoying, nothing ever goes right or even acceptably well. Everyone's just sort of getting killed and raped and betrayed all the time, without a moment's rest or peace. Martin's books have a wry sense of humor to them, and they're very good at painting odd moments of comfort amid profoundly distressing scenarios—a nice breakfast while on a long journey, rough comfort finally found after weeks of horseback riding, wine and a bath at the end of an impossibly difficult day. Game of Thrones has none of that, instead reveling in scenarios so misanthropic and base that they make the books seem like Harry Potter by comparison.

By embracing so many RPG gameplay clichés, Game of Thrones also undercuts one of the series' most interesting and compelling themes. A Song of Ice and Fire is in many ways an exploration of the idea of power—some characters appear powerful and are revealed to be powerless, others who may have seemed at a disadvantage quickly turn the tables. How does one get power? How does one keep it? If blood is all that lets us live on from generation to generation, how can we secure power for our bloodline?

The TV show focuses on that theme even more directly than the books—several scenes in the show (Littlefinger's memorable verbal duels with Varys and then with Cersei, Tywin and Arya's tense but oddly thawed relationship) were not in the book, and both put the question of power under a powerful lens.

Video games are usually about power, of course, but too often it's one-sided power. The player is powerful, and must dominate his or her enemies to proceed. Game of Thrones does nothing to deviate from this formula; in almost all scenarios, you must be the strongest fighter in order to survive the game's many (many) swordfights. You're basically never put in a position where you must survive despite being mostly powerless—you just trundle along that oh-so-familiar RPG progression curve.

It's all just very disappointing. Game of Thrones could have been a much better game—it wouldn't even have had to involve additional characters, or a bigger budget, or any of the things that may come to mind when imagining video game treatments of this material.

My suspicion is that it just needed more time, and a clearer vision of what it wanted to be. The game feels rushed and unfinished—loading screens occur with unacceptable frequency, the same music plays in every non-combat scene, the facial animations look ancient and frozen. Even little things, like the fact that the main menu defaults to "new game" instead of "continue" every time you boot up, contribute to a feeling of unfinishedness.

Hardcore fans of Martin's books may find something to salvage in this lump of a game. (Though if you're going to buy it, I truly recommend waiting a couple of weeks, because this sucker is going to get a price-cut in a matter of days.) For anyone else, Game of Thrones is difficult to recommend.

It would be easy to dismiss Game of Thrones as nothing but a cash-in, a tie-in game rushed out the door to coincide with the second season of the TV show.

But that's not really the case. There is a kernel—just a kernel—of a great Song of Ice and Fire game here. It was created by people who know and care about Martin's world. But it just wasn't enough, not nearly. Game of Thrones is a disappointment, a joyless slog through a dull and ugly world. Take this one out into the woods and leave it for the White Walkers.

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Like Game of Thrones? Here's What You Need To Know About The Official Video Game

As of today, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire saga has a new chapter. It's not a chapter in a book, however, nor is it bonus footage from HBO's wildly popular adaptation, Game of Thrones. More »

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The first episode of Freddie W's new Internet series, Video Game High School, is out.

Episode 1 introduces us to the concept of the prestigious academy that is Video Game High School. I wish I lived in a world where video game skills were as highly regarded as they are in this show.

Then again, we'd also have to deal with douches with inflated egos like that one guy in the video above.

I've become so jaded by mobile gaming's endless pleading for my attention that I recently removed every game from my iPhone except for three that I deeply admire. Today, I'm glad to add a fourth to that group: This Could Hurt by Orange Agenda.

A shrewdly designed single-control platform challenge, This Could Hurt layers on bright illustration, a whimsical story, and a challenge structure that honestly encourages replay and it's only a buck, about the only thing it has in common with all those other games I cleared off.

This Could Hurt has one control: touch and hold your finger on the screen to stop your runner, a boy making his rite of passage along the "Path of Pain." Spikes, sawblades, jets of flame and moving blocks are among the varied hazards as you try to get him safely from one end of the path to the other.

He has a health meter, so it's not one-hit death—unless you're going for a flawless run achievement, in which case, tread cautiously. Speed runners will probably take a lot of damage but will get marks for beating the goal time. And if nothing else, you'll be rewarded in "acorns" simply for making it to the end intact.

It may sound too easy at first, but the structure allows you to just get to the end of a difficult level if you wish, while the achievements give you a different way to go back and play the same level if you like. A virtual currency and a menu of powerups also drive replay value, without insulting your intelligence or sticking their hands in your wallet. You can make an in-app purchase of extra "acorns" if you like, but in no way is it an offensive offer given how optional powerup usage is here (at least in the early stages).

The other replay incentive is This Could Hurt's charming visuals. The game is brightly and cheerfully rendered, but not too cute; pit spikes and mallets look like they carry some serious ouch. My only quibble is that, because of the isometric camera angle, some of the hazards can get obscured by the environment.

It doesn't get in the way of a game I strongly recommend, and look forward to playing long after this publishes.

This Could Hurt [for all iOS devices. $0.99]

As I play through Diablo III, I can't help but think back to all of the amazing features I witnessed over the course of three years of BlizzCon that didn't make the cut. YouTube user AlluvianGarald compiles several of these into one disappointment-inducing video.

The biggies are obvious. There's the arena combat, which was shelved prior to release and refocused as future free downloadable content. The collectible Rune system transformed into a simple set of unlockable power modifiers.

But then there are the smaller features, the ones not as memorable but no less nifty. Cinematic in-game cutscenes would have been brilliant. Travel powers used to traverse obstacles would have changed the game considerably. The environment destruction is still there, but more cosmetic than anything affecting gameplay.

Diablo III could have been a much different game. At one point or another, it was. Would it have been a better game?

Diablo III: Missing Content #1 [YouTube]

Do you love NBC's comedy show, Community? I love Community. Though the show often pokes fun at film and television tropes—typically through the dorky, yet lovable character Abed—the characters sometimes toy around with video game jokes, too.

Last night's show was more than just a few funny video game quips and references. It was 20 minutes of retro game nostalgia, where the team of friends play a video game together to win Pierce his inheritance. While they figure out how to fight, create potions and weapons, and how fun it is to aimlessly jump around (I have similar gaming habits as Troy), they also have to deal with various enemies and boss characters.

Never one to behave normally, Abed falls in love with an NPC, distracted by the overwhelming options for dialogue. Our own Chris Person has spliced up that part of the storyline for you to watch above, in all its hilarity.

Do you love NBC's comedy show, Community? I love Community. Though the show often pokes fun at film and television tropes—typically through the dorky, yet lovable character Abed—the characters sometimes toy around with video game jokes, too.

Last night's show was more than just a few funny video game quips and references. It was 20 minutes of retro game nostalgia, where the team of friends play a video game together to win Pierce his inheritance. While they figure out how to fight, create potions and weapons, and how fun it is to aimlessly jump around (I have similar gaming habits as Troy), they also have to deal with various enemies and boss characters.

Never one to behave normally, Abed falls in love with an NPC, distracted by the overwhelming options for dialogue. Our own Chris Person has spliced up that part of the storyline for you to watch above, in all its hilarity.

Do you love NBC's comedy show, Community? I love Community. Though the show often pokes fun at film and television tropes—typically through the dorky, yet lovable character Abed—the characters sometimes toy around with video game jokes, too.

Last night's show was more than just a few funny video game quips and references. It was 20 minutes of retro game nostalgia, where the team of friends play a video game together to win Pierce his inheritance. While they figure out how to fight, create potions and weapons, and how fun it is to aimlessly jump around (I have similar gaming habits as Troy), they also have to deal with various enemies and boss characters.

Never one to behave normally, Abed falls in love with an NPC, distracted by the overwhelming options for dialogue. Our own Chris Person has spliced up that part of the storyline for you to watch above, in all its hilarity.