Last night I gave a talk at the Montreal Geek Girl Dinner about the future of storytelling and emotion in videogames.

Afterwards, several members of the amazing Station C audience requested references to some of the games I mentioned, so I’ll delay my post on how Jane Austen has finally made it into the modern space opera to provide these.

Games with good story elements
Mass Effect: The one with the romance.
Bioshock: The one with the Fountainhead references.
Portal: The one with the cake. Tells a fantastic story without cutscenes. Available on PC through Steam for 20$.

Top recent Xbox/PS games mentioned
Some of these are also available on PC.
Modern Warfare 2
Mass Effect 2. You can also read my take on the first one here.
Assassin’s Creed 2
Uncharted 2

Other games mentioned
Execution (free)
Wedding Dash is available for free download (for an hour, then 7$ to purchase permanently) on Big Fish Games, along with a host of fun time-management and other games.

And for other meaningful games, you may want to try
The Marriage (free)
Gravitation (free, donations encouraged)
Braid on Xbox live

Thanks to all that showed up, I had the best night in ages! (And Canada trouncing Russia was just a bonus!). Huge love to Tanya and Station C.

Next post: How Mass Effect 2 put Mr. Darcy into a Canadian commercial from the 80s! Really! Honest this time!

Public service announcement: Are you a creative English-speaking woman in Quebec? You could get up to 25000$ in funding for an interactive project!

Filmmakers, photographers, new-media creators, graphic designers, sound artists, programmers, interactive storytellers, writers, and other techie creative creatures are invited to apply to First Person Digital, a new program set up by the NFB with Studio XX.

Representatives will be present at my Girl Geek Dinner talk next week.

You can also listen to one of the organizers talk about FPD on Wednesday’s edition of CKUT’s XX files.

Deadline for application is March 1st. Go!

Next post: How Mass Effect 2 put Mr. Darcy into a Canadian commercial from the 80s.

Here’s another great site for feeling good about yourself, as in, in that “I’m not him” sort of way. Unless of course, you are.

Need validation? Try this. Use as needed.

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