July 28th

Welcome back readers.

We’ve got strong representation in this week’s picks from indie, smaller-scale, and less high-profile games–maybe you’ll find something new to play. If you want to share your writing about your own sicko faves, come see us on our Discord.

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

Community Management

Our first section this week examines the way the industry carries itself through culture, showing occasional integrity and more-than-occasional shortcomings.

• This Was Never About Anything Other Than Hate | Kotaku
  Alyssa Mercante sidesteps the warmed-over reactionary talking points in play once again around Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ Black protagonist.
• Nintendo’s Response to Online Bigotry Shows An Industry Unsure How to Keep Players Safe | Inverse
  Robin Bea evaluates the outcomes of Nintendo’s decision to publicly strip a Splatoon team of their tourney title in the wake of their racist and bigoted behavior.

“Any solution to the problem of online toxicity is bound to be imperfect, limited by how a company defines what behavior is out of bounds and what ability they have to enforce their policies. While Nintendo’s response could have been stronger, it’s still good to see the developer defending its community in some way, and the work of the Splatoon Competitive Community Safety group shows how fans can step in to fill in the gaps. There’s clearly still work to do, but seeing some of gaming’s most popular developers stand up to bigotry is a solid step toward a better gaming community.”

Tastemakers

This design-focused section highlights mostly lesser-known recent titles across a variety of genres.

• Suzerain: a narrative game that brings policy & politics to life | Matchsticks for my Eyes
  Peter Sahui explores the balance between simulation and script in Suzerain.
• Devil Blade Reboot: Pixel perfect | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi highlights both the depth and versatility of perhaps the most goated shmup to come out this year.
• Should puzzle games always let you skip levels? | Polygon
  Zoë Hannah thinks about intrinsic motivation and makes the case for the humble level skip.
• The Vanilla Chocolate Swirl of Sokobond Express | Gamers with Glasses
  Don Everhart ponders the recurring flavours of puzzle design, continually remixed in new forms.

“While Sokobond Express has two primary influences, those same influences are built on classic forms. They’re compelling. We make games out of them again and again, adding more structures, relaxing others. I played a game all through a high school algebra class in which a friend and I would pass a piece of paper back and forth, each taking turns drawing a line with an arrow that started at the end of the previous one. I think that we had one more rule, which was that you could only put one bend in a single line. We covered dozens of pages like this. Who knows what was up on the blackboard?”

On Display

While our first section this week examined the interaction of games as an industry within culture, this section looks at their plural roles as art within culture.

• Horror Puzzle Game ‘The Exit 8’ Is an Inescapable Meme | PopMatters
  Luis Aguasvivas meditates on epephemeral media and our transactional relationship with popular art.
• Indika The Folk Hero (Gamify Your Religious Trauma) | Paste
  Perry Gottschalk weaves together the role of folk tradition and religious trauma in this deep read of Indika (content notification for discussions of sexual assault).
• Clickolding is an Authentic Tragedy Bound to Be Misunderstood | Press SPACE to Jump
  Taylor Hicklen understands the pulse beneath Clickolding‘s subversive beat (content notification for discussions of systemic queerphobia and suicide).

“You’ve met the masked man, talked to him, even built a tentative friendship. He is real, he is hurting, and there are so many of him in your country, your state, your neighborhood. His desires are not strange. He is doing the best he can in a society that has left him bruised.”

Gender at Play

Our next two highlights look closely at the construction–fragmentary, arbitrary, or restrictive–of gender in games and wider pop culture.

• A Complete History of Birdo’s Gender | Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games
  Drew Mackie excavates an extensive multimedia history of Birdo’s variously-gendered depictions over the years and generations (bonus: Yoshi might be trans too!).
• Femboys, Futanari, And Finding Myself In The Space Between Their Bodies | cohost
  Lynn Robinson examines the conflicting porn archetypes that ultimately inform a restrictive framework for gender in Tales of Androgyny.

“I enjoy playing Tales of Androgyny. I don’t think it is intrinsically bad that it leans so heavily on well-worn character archetypes. I think that gives it its legibility, its spirit and its appeal. But it is a strange experience to play, as a trans woman, where I do believe the creators know I exist, but the writing of the game and the authorial voice inscribe a perfect circle around me, with rigid lines, needing to pretend that I do not.”

Legacy Media

This pairing looks at games in the retrospective, examining how their design, structure, and characters land for a contemporary audience.

• 5 Years Later, Three Houses’ Best Character Is Still Edelgard | Kotaku
  Willa Rowe reminds you that you really should go back and play the Crimson Flower route.
• What is the legacy of Escape from Monkey Island? | Medium
  Vidyasaur reviews the ambivalent, open-ended legacy of the fourth Monkey Island, and the era of adventure games it serves as a bookend to.

“For the development team, the legacy of EMI could be the memories of working on it. For the fans, it was either a disappointing and unnecessary sequel or a good game that couldn’t reach the bar set by its predecessors. For the series, EMI’s legacy could be the fact that its status as an unnecessary sequel is part of the series’ cynical sense of humor. In my opinion, the legacy of EMI is that it was a bookend for the series, LucasArts, and in a way, the genre too at the time.”

XP Boost

Our final secetion this week brings together three personal pieces highlighting experiences of play.

• Elden Ring Is Proving To Be Unexpectedly Therapeutic | Kotaku
  Claire Jackson articulates the value of taking the time to wander in the Lands Between.
• New Roots – How Pikmin 4 Made My Move Abroad Bloom | Nintendo Life
  Alana Hagues thinks about space and stuff as she crosses the pond with Pikmin 4.
• Bobot Bobot and the Power of Cute | Unwinnable
  Melissa King embraces the expressivity of cuteness with her FFXIV character.

“My lesson for you is this: Do the cute thing. Be cute. If it’s hard to do through one avenue, there are many ways to be cute! Games like FFXIV are a great option if it’s hard to do in the real world. Or maybe you could update your wallpaper to your favorite Sanrio character. Cute comes in many forms, and everyone deserves to reap its benefits.”