I never particularly liked the modern methods of "deconstruction" in the humanities. It gets geeky very fast, yet there's nothing solid underneath. Unlike code,

I never particularly liked the modern methods of "deconstruction" in the humanities. It gets geeky very fast, yet there's nothing solid underneath. Unlike code, you're only talking about symbols -- whose power lie solely in their ability to push emotional buttons in people. Most of the less obvious and academic-y stuff is contained in the later parts of the article. Shooting portals that opens up to another part of the map is pretty obvious for anyone familiar with Freud. Less obvious is the broken AI that has a pseudo-maternal personality, the robots that speak in voices of little boys that can easily kill you, and the gigantic cube that you carry around. You only use that to flip switches, and you are encouraged by the AI to form an emotional attachment to it. Seen in that way and having read the article all the way through, I agree with the author that most FPS force a male gender perspective on the player ... though I find that idea rather unsettling.