March 9th

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

Nopilot

Let’s kick things off with a pair of articles that investigate the thematic connections in popular games to large language models.

• 2025’s Unexpected Hit Game Split Fiction Has Choice Words For AI | Inverse
  Shannon Liao pulls at the large language model threads in a game setting where creatives are literally put in an extraction pod.
• What is Love? (Baby, Don’t Hurt Me): Love and AI in Doki Doki Literature Club | Gamers with Glasses
  Spencer Johnson notes how DDLC‘s Monika evokes the toxic relationship we’re in with LLMs (Further Reading – Will Ard’s interview with Eliza developer Matthew S. Burns).

“DDLC forced me to confront difficult questions about the nature of love, artificial intelligence, and emotional connections with non-human entities. While Monika’s love may not have been “real” in the human sense, it was powerful and destructive in its own right. The game asked me to consider whether love, when mediated through the lens of artificial intelligence, can ever be genuine—or if it is forever bound by the limitations of its digital origin.”

Herald of D-Pads

Hope you’ve been keeping up on your horror studies. Oh, no reason, there won’t be a test or anything. But here’s two more cool pieces on mechanics, mood, and theme.

• In Defense of Tank Controls | Unwinnable
  Emma Kostopolus discusses the affordances that make tank controls so important to the emotional and narrative topography of the horror genre past and present (Further Reading – Madeline Blondeau on tank controls in Tomb Raider).
• Alan Wake Retrospective: The Creator’s Dilemma | Gamesline
  Walker begins a series on Remedy’s games with a thematic examination of the original Alan Wake.

“If you were to ask me, what is art and creation, I’d tell you that it’s a compulsion. I’m a person that’s never quite come to terms with the real world. Though I study and I learn to better understand it, something about reality has never quite been all “there”. Art in comparison, has in the best of time managed to make me feel real in a way that nothing else has.”

Colossal Cave Consequnces

Here are some crunchy play impressions from games big and small.

• I Failed To Prevent A Catastrophe In Avowed And I Love It | Kotaku
  Carolyn Petit recounts missing a quest thread and the genesis of her character’s revenge arc (Further Reading – Lauren Morton on choice and consequence in Avowed).
• The Bait-And-Switch of ‘Thought Experiment Simulator’ | Epilogue Gaming
  Flora Merigold checks out a diverting, albeit shallow, game on philosophy’s (and the internet’s) most infamous thought experiments.

“Don’t get me wrong: it’s undeniably exciting when Mickey Mouse floats across the screen once or twice. But I guess I want Thought Experiment Simulator to say something more than shallow quips, even though the reason I began playing this game was for a gag involving philosophical problems that I debated throughout college.”

Patch Notes

Our next two pieces unpack aspects of the topical and the trending in contemporary games.

• Fortnite se burla de las criptomonedas con sus nuevas ‘timonedas’ | GamerFocus
  Julián Ramírez spills the dill on Fortinte‘s latest (satirical) shill.
• Infinity Nikki and The Sims’ return are only the start of a retro gaming renaissance for Y2K girlies | GamesRadar
  Ashley Bardhan contemplates past, present, and future trends in games marketed primarily towards women (Further Reading – Mary Kenney on Barbie Fashion Designer and Games for Girls in the 90s).

“I know this truth as well as I breathe air. It’s a natural truth. Just as condensation leads to rain, or a seed becomes a sprout, the supposed 20-year trend cycle (which has historically applied to fashion) has brought us back to 2000’s era, ultra-feminine video games.”

Critical Chaser

Pour one out for a one-of-a-kind game needlessly taken offline by clumsy legislation.

• A Eulogy for Urban Dead | mssv
  Adrian Hon remembers the emergent practices of community and play in a game discontinued too soon (Further Reading – Taylor McCue writing on the same game).

“One can see a service as something dangerous to be regulated and controlled. One can also see it as an act performed for the community out of generosity.”