August 4th

Welcome back readers.

It was very painful this week to hear of Game Informer’s sudden shuttering, layoff-ing, and off-lining, as such a long-running publication that has continued to publish good work for nearly as long as I have been alive. These folks deserve far greater dignity than an unceremonious blindside by their parent company.

It feels timely yet also evergreen to remind folks that independent games crit–not subject to the inscrutable whims of CFOs entirely divorced from the affairs of working people–is, well, critical! Support the outlets that matter to you with the means you have available to you. Naturally, I’d like to think that includes us (and we could definitely use the help!), but to an equal extent I mean the sites that we read. Here are a few to get you started, with direct links to their crowdfunding pages:

• Sidequest
• Bullet Points Monthly
• Pixpen
• Deep-Hell
• Kritiqal
• No Escape
• Epilogue Gaming
• Kimimi

(Disclaimer as usual that No Escape is run by Kaile who also works with us at Critical Distance, but that feels less consequential when we are in effect all of us passing the same $20 back and forth).

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

Numbers Game

Our first section this week puts industry headlines into context, both situating and debunking the place of reactionary outrage in that conversation.

• ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ Creative Director Isn’t Following Ubisoft’s Lead In Appeasing Trolls | Inverse
  Robin Bea contrasts PR approaches between Ubisoft studios when gamer outrage comes knocking.
• Greed is ruining video games, not “DEI” | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner diagnoses the cognitive dissonance causing Internet reactionaries to turn to their red string boards when studios lay off developers rather than confront shortsighted business policy (curator’s note, Kaile works for CD).

““I can fix Bungie and Destiny,” one 57-year-old game designer commented on social media following the layoffs. “Stick a hot chick in it, make it less gay and lame.” Said designer’s current project, announced in 2016, has no expected release date.”

Semi-Sequel

Both of these next two articles trace lines of continuity between games through avenues of design, homage, and loving parody.

• Mystic Quest Origin – Final Fantasy Legend III | Pixpen
  Sam Howitt sees a continuity of design across the third Game Boy SaGa game and the somewhat infamous Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.
• My Dream Ride Is a Nightmare Kart | Gamers with Glasses
  Nate Schmidt has a great time with a retro-styled kart racer that does both of its major inspirations ample justice.

“I don’t exactly know what word I would use for the opposite of retrofuturism, because future retroism is far too ugly a turn of phrase. But there is something really delightful in Nightmare Kart’s invocation of the golden age of kart racers combined with the most Gothic aesthetic imaginable, as if you could make jet black coffee improbably delicious by topping it with confetti sprinkles and whipped cream.”

Rolls and Roles

Here’s a selection of pieces dedicated to storytelling, role-playing, and character writing across genres.

• Skald Against the Black Priory: Decisions, decisions… | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi admires the small-scale role-playing in recent retro-styled RPG Skald.
• Tekken is Officially Out of Ideas | VGBees
  Lotus D ruminates on Tekken‘s narrative oscillation between occasional long-game payoffs and status-quo holding patterns.
• The Dynamics Of Sex In The Rance Series | cohost
  Eithi examines character development and feminine agency in the long-running Rance series of games (content notification for discussions of sexual assault).

“While there’s always one or two sex scenes involving them per game, the writing never stops to treat them as objects for the sake of Rance’s sex. The dynamics of non-consent that every character explores, as well as their own relationship with Rance and how they feel about him personally, are always at the forefront of the way the games treat sex.”

Productive Griefing

Next up, we have three authors unpacking grief, both private and communal, in different approaches and different games.

• Grief Should Be Communal in Games | Paste
  Phoenix Simms unpacks the structures of grief in games at different scales and stakes.
• Most Media Memory-Holed the Pandemic. Not 1000XRESIST | Unwinnable
  Emily Price talks with some of the team from 1000X Resist about cyclical time, memory, and pop media’s presence/absence in the unpacking of collective trauma.
• Grief and Grace Along Kentucky Route Zero | Paste
  Perry Gottschalk thinks through what it means to reclaim, to rebuild, to find an offramp from the Zero to something more.

“Nobody ever tells you about all the things you’ll need to reclaim. The work it takes to stop thinking in “we” and instead think of “I.” How to pick up derelict passions. The ability to see that blank page as an adventure.

It would be all too easy to go down The Zero.

I kept looking for 5 Dogwood Drive.“

Critical Chaser

Games and sports, forever entwined!

• Max Verstappen should be allowed to sim race all night long | Polygon
  Simone de Rochefort has you covered if you find yourself in need of a primer on (checks notes) F1 gamer discourse.

“The bias against athletes gaming is manifested at its worst in the NFL, where Cardinals player Kyler Murray’s contract was appended with a “study clause,” binding him to four hours a week studying the game (football) without the distractions of video games, TV, or internet browsing. It’s condescending to treat professional athletes this way, and I would hate to see Red Bull apply similar thinking to Verstappen who, perhaps more than anyone else on the grid, lives and breathes Racing.”