March 31st

Welcome back readers.

Thank you to everyone who submitted work to our fansite jam! The jam submission window has officially drawn to a close, but since it’s going to take me some time (a week, perhaps?) to prepare our showcase roundup issue highlighting all this great work, who am I to object if a few late entries sneak in?

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Pawn Stars

We’re starting this week off with a bunch of Dragon’s Dogma 2-related writings, covering both the game itself and its associated discourses. It’s probably not surprising that I think this game is going to have a very long critical tail (pun not expressly intended), but I’m looking forward to it!

• Dragon’s Dogma 2 Is Polarizing Its Community, And It’s Not Just the Microtransactions | IGN
  Rebekah Valentine distinguishes the dragon’s divisive discourses, discerning dogma from disinformation.
• Panic! At The Discourse | cohost
  Bee ponders what to do on a structural level when the conversation on social media doesn’t exactly appear to be in good faith.
• Dragon’s Dogma 2’s lovable pawns make it an adventure worth fighting for | The Verge
  For Alexis Ong, it’s all about the weird little guys.
• Dragon’s Dogma 2 Makes You Take Your Time, And That’s Great | Kotaku
  Willa Rowe meditates on design friction, the experience of storyworlds, and travelogue.
• Abandon All Delusions Of Control | cohost
  Harper Jay situates Dragon’s Dogma 2 in its anachronistic time and place.

“The core of Dragon’s Dogma, the very defining characteristics that earned it cult status, are the same things that have caused these modern tensions. It is both a franchise utterly consistent in its design priorities and entirely out of touch with the modern audience. Dragon’s Dogma 2 has come into prominence during a time where imaginative interpretation of mechanics is at an all time low and calls for “consumer” gratification are taken as truisms. It is a game entirely at odds with the YouTube ecosystem and the very things that give it allure are the tools that have turned it into a debated object.”

Art and Artistry

Our next section brings together discussions of art, labour, and the impact of AI on both.

• Design Lateralism, the Demon’s Souls Remake and Why AI Art Can’t Be Creative, but Is Still Inevitable | Kayinworks
  Kayin draws linkages between the lack of genuine creativity in AI art production and the existing productions at game dev studios.
• It is as if you were doing work | The White Pube
  Gabrielle de la Puente reflects on the labour of creativity, AI, and the pacifying nature of bullshit jobs.

“This game, ‘It is as if you were doing work,’ was described by Pippin Barr as a piece of speculative play. Back when it was designed in 2017, it was proposed as something not made for us but for near future ‘humans who have been put out of work by robots and AI.’ A game they could play ‘to recapture the sense they once had of doing work and being productive.’”

No-Miss Clear

Lest one game (even a sickos’ fave) get all the attention, here’s some critical writing on other interesting games both old and new.

• Cirnozardry – Review | cohost
  Elephant Parade reviews a punishing dungeon delver that might have the juice.
• Octopia is a Sweet Farming Sim That Rewrites Eastward’s History | Unwinnable
  Emily Price checks the vibe as retro-styled RPG Eastward pivots into a new genre.
• Gloom: All gloom, no Doom | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi looks back at a Doom clone contender that lives up to its dubious name.

“Gloom is a Doom clone that doesn’t understand what made Doom so great, lacking not only its rival’s raw programming muscle but also its immaculate level design and the uncomplicated thrill of taking a giant chainsaw to a roaring monster’s face.”

R&D

This section’s somewhere between industry and design in its focus, looking at at both development and craft.

• Exploring the new world of Chinese FMV games | Eurogamer.net
  Kamiab Ghorbanpour takes inventory of successes and challenges in the burgeoning FMV games scene in China.
• BEING UNRELIABLE | John Ryan Writes
  John Ryan talks craft on making unreliable narrators work in game storytelling.
• Game Builder Garage | The Quixotic Engineer
  Matthew Gallant puts Nintendo’s approachable game creation toolkit to the ultimate test.

“It’s been fun to see gamedev concepts influence her thinking in small ways. Watching me play a PC game, she asked: is this game also made with nodons? She was very impressed when I told her that, basically, it was!”

Load State

Design friction is hardly unique to Dragon’s Dogma. Our next section explores tensions of craft and play in other games!

• (Sometimes) Literally Unwinnable | Unwinnable
  Ruth Cassidy explores a gentle, playful take on hostile game design.
• Our Alter Egos | Bump Combat
  Erin Donegan muses on the folly of gaming a life sim.

“I think if I took away anything from Alter Ego, is that I have no interest in the illusion of the perfect life that games in its genre are so eager to sell, the chance to fanatically tinker with the events that comprise a human being until they arrive at the ideal outcome. I know this world is not interested in offering such things anyway, especially to people like myself who do not fit into the accepted categories of human existence. All I want is to live, whatever that means, however I can, and wherever that takes me. I don’t want a golden ending. I want a True one.”

Critical Chaser

This week we’re closing out the issue with two reflections on relationships on both sides of the screen.

• Am I a real person or am I just a character in someone else’s RPG? | Medium
  Ashley Schofield offers critical takeaways on relationships via Like a Dragon‘s Drink Links.
• How Gay Can You Be in Dragon’s Dogma 2? An Investigation | Them
  Kazuma Hashimoto delves into Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s freeform approach to relationships and romance.

“I loved my three boyfriends, and the game didn’t ever make me choose which one I preferred. My interactions with them may have been limited to specific quests or wandering the map with them to see their favorite spots (which often got me dive-bombed by griffins, or worse, dragons), but these strange and sometimes sweet companions colored my experience with Dragon’s Dogma 2 for the better.”