September 1st

Welcome back readers.

Just a quick note this week that TMIVGV is taking a monthlong break while we retool the workflow for the feature to keep it manageable and sustainable. Feel free to keep video submissions coming through our Discord in the meantime!

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

New Currents

This week we open with a spread of stories about what’s current in the industry–viral games, supply chain shifts, and remakes.

• Microsoft improves conflict minerals sourcing as Sony’s backslide continues | Unlosing Writer
  Brendan Sinclair reports on where gaming and other major tech companies are at in identifying and removing conflict minerals from their manufacturing supply chains.
• Viral sensation Dress to Impress has a secret ingredient: fabulous video game jank | Eurogamer
  Emma Kent makes the case that jank is the point in a viral Roblox dress-up game’s kitchen sink approach to serving looks.
• Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a strange ode to an ousted auteur | Polygon
  Jay Castello ponders the tension in the remake trend between who makes a game and who profits from it.

“Konami capitalizing on games made by a studio it shuttered isn’t a benevolent offering handed down without strings to the platonic concept of the fan. “What fans want” is a more pleasant framing than “what people will spend money on,” but it’s also a self-evident synonym. In the opening to Delta, Snake says that he is devoted to “the President and the top brass.” If they get replaced, no problem. “I follow the will of the leader, no matter who’s in charge.” In the same way, it probably doesn’t matter to most people who is benefitting from Delta’s existence.”

Creator and Craft

Here’s a pair of good interviews, each spanning a range of topics but both centering kinds of artistic identity within both the industry and larger world.

• The Creator of Final Fantasy Isn’t Finished Yet | Inverse
  Hayes Madsen talks with Hironobu Sakaguchi about style, theme, and sticking to his strengths as a developer of single-player experiences in an increasingly multiplayer market.
• Interview with Hajime Kasai | Indie Tsushin
  Indie Tsushin sits down with writer/designer/artist Hajime Kasai to chat about VNs, Internet art, the complicated relationship between art and society, and more.

“what I want to do is create an experience that is critical of “the good of creation.” Before the creation of things, there exists society and reality, and I think art more or less reflects those realities. Many works that feature “the good of creation” do not have a very wide perspective, so I would like to ruminate on this.”

Thinking Space

Next we’ve picked out a range of different pieces collecting different approaches to virtual spaces–historical, political, relational, and more.

• Mayors, Presidents, and Animal Crossing’s Utopian Promise | Gamers with Glasses
  Samantha Trzinski considers the possibilities–both utopian and exploitative–of Animal Crossing as a political space.
• Frog Friends and Environmental Enjoyment – Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge Review | Gamesline
  Franny plays a game with cute frogs and good environmental sensibilities.
• Living and Leaving the MMO Life | Paste Magazine
  Dia Lacina sets her personal history as an MMO Lifer against a backdrop of the history of the genre.

“Every time I check Discord and see someone new talking about how they have a new favorite jazzy Noriko Matsueda background track in the PlayOnline Launcher, I feel those teeth sink in a little more. When the story behind Castle Zvahl Baileys is exasperatingly told by another friend having just discovered it two decades after I did, I can only nod enthusiastically and grin like a woman possessed, my eyes growing wider as I can but simply say, “RIGHT?” The tug grows stronger. As my DMs explode with screenshots of my friend’s luxuriously appointed Free Company home in XIV or stories of how another friend is learning Spanish via immersion in a Latinx raiding guild they accidentally fell in with upon their return to Wrath of the Lich King, I can’t help but wonder why I’m not letting myself be pulled back in. Aren’t I Lifestyle People, too?”

Hearty Reads

This section brings together a collection of articles that each focus on key emotional beats, both as game flavours and player experiences.

• Performing Through Failure to Hit that Hi-Fi Rush | Unwinnable
  Fred Banks finds the productivity in failure in Hi-Fi Rush.
• ‘Five Years Old Memories’ and Naïve Art in Video Games | PopMatters
  Luis Aguasvivas reflects on whimsical art as a possibility space in Komitsu’s latest digital art experience.
• The Power of Prayer: 30 Years of Earthbound | Paste
  Dave Tomaine illustrates a different understanding of prayer–one of connection and community–in the Mother series.
• Grieving is Mythmaking | TIER
  Phoenix Simms investigates the tragicomic mode in games as a means of mythmaking and an expression of grief at different scales.

“Triple Topping’s game is concerned particularly with the boundaries between the triggering events of grief and the narrativizing of that emotion in the aftermath of them. I do agree with Iantorno as well that the game’s intertextuality also underscores the limitations of games to capture the nuances of political stratification and grief. But above all, what stuck with me from my time spent on Elk island was the notion that, while we all have our individual journeys of grieving, we are interconnected by the way we use our mundane settings and experiences to find a path to accepting our grief.”

Critical Chaser

This week we close out with a reflection on working-class dragons.

• The Worth of a ¥400 Gyudon | Into The Spine
  Ashley Schofield reflects on Ichiban Kasuga’s working class heart.

“When stuck in the vicious cycle of being working class forever due to societal barriers beyond your individual efforts, it’s commonly advised to simply “grin and bear it,” and Kasuga will always grin — it’s kind of his whole thing. Even so early in his first game, this scene is a microcosm of the character: finding joy in an unlikely place, even with hell behind and ahead of him.”