January 19th

Welcome back readers.

I mentioned last week that I would be plugging the Patreon a little harder going forward. We’ve experienced some really great community growth in the last couple of years–there are lots of fun conversations happening on our Discord for instance–but we’ve also been a bit hamstrung on implementing and maintaining features without some additional slack in our operating budget. People are regularly sending video submissions our way, for instance, and we want to keep our eye on those, but that means we need to have the funds in the tank for the labour hours that go into that work. So… check out the Patreon!

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

Indiestructable

We’re starting this week off with industry-focused conversations, looking specifically at the structural pitfalls of AAA development and the problems with some of the alternatives proposed.

• Why can’t you be more like your older brother? | Azhdarchid
  Bruno Dias breaks down why labour practices, structures, and organizations cannot be readily compared between the film and game industries.
• A Pivot To Indie won’t save us | AURAMBLES
  Aura Triolo discusses the structural and cultural problems that prevent indie development from being a magic bullet alternative to the AAA industry model (Further Reading – Hayes Madsen’s conversations with multiple indie developers about sustainability challenges in the industry).
• Commenting On An Article That Brings Up Hobbyist Development As A Lifelong Career | Mimidoshima
  Kastel takes care to ensure that the hobbyists–in both games dev and crit–aren’t written out of the conversation.

“Is it all just wasted effort because we are vulnerable to exploitation and burnout? I don’t think so. I am deeply aware that some of my tendencies are not sustainable in the long run because I have a day job on top of other commitments. But in the end, I keep coming back to them because I enjoy letting people know what I think about niche games and the effort people have put into them.”

Rosetta Stone

Polygon just posted an interesting series of interviews on localization, so we’ve earmarked some here!

• The Scottish Gaelic translation of Still Wakes the Deep is deeply political | Polygon
  Lewis Gordon talks to creative director John McCormack about the linguistic and cultural stakes of including Scottish Gaelic support in Still Wakes the Deep.
• How to translate a game with no words | Polygon
  Nicole Carpenter chats with different translators who worked on Chants of Sennaar about the game’s unique localization challenges (Further Reading – Franny on communication and community in Chants of Sennaar).
• Looking for Angry Kirby | Polygon
  Francisco Dominguez chats with Leslie Swan about the inner workings of Nintendo localization in the 2000s.
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night’s notorious English translation didn’t need fixing | Polygon
  Gabe Durham gives the good version of SOTN its due with the translator who made it happen.

“With no support, little time, and a mountain of made-up words to translate, Blaustein improvised, packing the game with references. Many were right in front of him: The game’s first relic, the Cube of Zoe, is named after his daughter (not a 19th-century Russian empress, as many speculated). For others, he turned to his favorite works. J.R.R. Tolkien’s influence was particularly pronounced. The translation includes the swords Glamdring and Crissaegrim, enemies called Wargs, the Rings of Varda and Feanor, and many more references to Middle-earth. “I saw Castlevania as a big world,” he told Dongled last year, “and I wanted it to feel epic. So I reached into mythology and Tolkien to give things weight.””

Forward Thinking

This next series explores new frameworks for thinking about games, interactive media, and the world that produces them.

• Leshy’s Not Coming to Save Us | Gamers with Glasses
  Samantha Trzinski chronicles the shifting role of the Slavic nature deity/trickster figure as a vengeful cipher for climate catastrophes.
• Grand Theft Hamlet Made Me Contemplate Life, the Universe, and Everything | Inverse
  Shannon Liao offers some impressions on Grand Theft Hamlet and games as a narrative possibility space (Further Reading – Siddhant Adlakha’s thoughts on the same film).
• Status Ailment Era | Unwinnable
  Phoenix Simms meditates on chronic illness, disability, RPG status ailments, and COVID (Further Reading – The Pandemics and Games Essay Jam organized right here on CD by our own Zoyander Street!).

“I’ll be frank about my status ailments post-COVID – so far I can identify silence, often induced by fatigue and confusion. I’m definitely built differently now, but not necessarily with regard to resilience in the traditional sense.”

Strange Spaces

I don’t actually have a strong critical throughline for these next two pieces, beyond the strangeness of the games they talk about. They’re both worth your time all the same!

• Rodem the Wild | Indie Tsushin
  Misty De Méo checks out a pretty wild-looking 90s Mac survival puzzler.
• Wandering Through Dreams and Stories | Inner Spiral
  Alli thinks through wandering in liminal ludic landscapes (Further Reading – Claire Jackson on wandering in Elden Ring).

“Yume Nikki felt, like, so opposite to how most games or, honestly, life is set up. It didn’t care if I “got it” or if I felt like I was making progress. In fact, it almost seemed to thrive on me feeling unsure. And I’m not gonna lie, that’s kind of rare, right? We’re so used to needing answers or rewards, like, “What’s the point?” But this game didn’t even pretend to have one.”

Well Played

These next two are about locating joy in recent games.

• Astro Bot’s Joy Is Found in the Pointless Flourish  | Jeremy Signor’s Games Initiative
  Jeremy Signor contemplates the joy of frivolity, in Astro Bot and beyond (Further Reading – Kaile Hultner on playful diversion in A Short Hike).
• Slopecrashers Puts AAA Racing Games to Shame | Gamers with Glasses
  Nate Schmidt juxtaposes the predatory monetization practices in modern AAA with the retro-styled–but still new–charms of a game that’s giving Snowboard Kids with chickens.

“AAA games will probably get more and more insufferable in their use of microtransactions, for as long as players are willing to suffer indignities like being asked to pay $30 to play Call of Duty as faceless avatars of the Squid Game show. Whether anybody buys these self-parodying monstrosities or not, Call of Duty’s player counts are going to keep going up, which will do nothing but encourage ActiBlizz to crank the firehose of this crap higher and higher. Meanwhile, the Lugsteins of the world will be quietly spending years perfecting a lower-poly, higher-fun box of joy, with a simple message for everyone: let’s race.”

Critical Chaser

This writer’s got the juice.

• On Gardening | Into The Spine
  Autumn McGarr muses on adolescence and (chao) gardening.

“Chao have a lifespan. When they evolve, they’re surrounded by a bubble. When they die, there’s a different bubble. Mystic’s bubble is pink and returns a baby, already Good.

Tango gets a gray bubble. When the bubble goes, there’s nothing inside but grass.”