March 16th

Welcome back readers.

I’m not plugging the Patreon this week. I can only do so much when I have chosen to put together the issue when I haven’t had any dinner yet. This week, you’ll have to plug the Patreon yourself by visiting it, helping us continue the work that we do here, telling people about it, or perhaps even visiting us on our Discord. Sorry!

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

Studio Sessions

The interviews we’re opening with this week explore character writing, the authentic self, and partnerships between studios and Indigenous nations!

• Building the light and dark in Wanderstop’s characters | Polygon
  Nicole Carpenter chats with Davey Wreden about being oneself, living without judgment, and bringing Wanderstop‘s principal players to life.
• Preservation partners | Oklahoma Gazette
  Kaile Hultner reports on the partnership between the Shawnee tribe and Firaxis games to bring the tribe to Civ and invest in the preservation and promotion of the Shawnee language (Further Reading – Cat Benstead on Indigenous storytelling in the Australian games industry).

““Our language, in the face of everything that happened to our indigenous tribes in America, the Shawnee went through it very, very tough with relocation, and our language being wiped out through boarding schools and things like that,” Dean said. “But at a certain point, we were down to, I believe, around 50 speakers left living. And with the help of the language program, we’ve been able to turn it around pretty quickly. We’ve gone up to around 500 speakers now, which is just incredible. And with the help of this recording studio, this is our tool to ensure that we will never, ever again be in a position where our language is at risk of being wiped out.””

Palicoworld

Monster Hunter Wilds has been out for a minute, and while I’m still staring guiltily at Generations Ultimate as it winks at me from the depths of my backlog, there has been some cool writing about the new game. Here are two picks.

• The Dark Souls games might be my all-time favorites, but Monster Hunter Wilds beats them in one crucial way: fashion | GamesRadar
  Ashley Bardhan sizes up the fit and finish on Capcom’s latest (Further Reading – Lex Luddy on Splatoon 3‘s approach to fashion).
• Keep It Like a Seikret | Misty’s Corner
  Misty has to climb down from the bird to actually experience the game.

“In essence, the issue I have with Wilds is that there is far too much convenience given away for free. It is far too easy to ignore the rich and unbelievably detailed world that the team has constructed just by using the tools that the game gives you.”

Linking Book

We’re playing fast and loose with this next grouping, featuring different games and their tethers to our own lives and the worlds around us.

• Arco: que cuenten los días | Gameno
  Kenny Barranco writes on Arco and its ghosts.
• The World’s Cutest Power Politics Simulator | Unwinnable
  Alexander B. Joy takes notes on asymmetrical power and political structures from tabletop woodland creatures (Further Reading – Sam Dee on Suzerain‘s political practice and pedagogy).
• Two Point Museum: A curator’s perspective | GamesHub
  Jini Maxwell examines how exhibit curation intersects with design, interactivity, and snacks in Two Point Museum.
• Worldbuilding | Unwinnable
  Jay Castello muses on the familiar spaces we bring with us into unfamiliar ones.

“Are you supposed to spend travel time inside, writing thousands of words of fanfiction? Aren’t you supposed to tap into the firehose of culture and maximize every second of a trip? But you can’t optimize joy. You can’t get more from a place by taking a part of yourself out of it. We make spaces, and we make them with all of ourselves.”

Missing Numbers

Now let’s move into historical perspectives–names, games, and communal practices to remember.

• Duane Blehm | Engineers Need Art
  John Calhoun remembers an early Macintosh shareware pioneer who helped cement the early look and feel of the platform and scene.
• The PlayStation 2’s secret Dragon Quest game | Medium
  Vidyasaur excavates a quaint and technologically novel game that’s a hiddem gem by default.
• When Rumours Come True: The Mew Trick | The Cave of Dragonflies
  Butterfree unpacks the anatomy–technical, ontological, communal–of a glitch (Further Reading – Matthew Parsons creates a 90s-style Majora’s Mask shrine entirely from memory).

“I never would have taken this trick seriously for a moment if I’d first seen it from some random kid on a website defensively insisting it works in allcaps, instead of after a bunch of serious, knowledgeable grown-ups with solid reputations had confirmed it and posted screenshots. I used to wonder if seeing it back then meant it could have been me who catapulted the Mew trick into prominence – but it never truly could have been me, because the Mew trick was just such an incredibly fake-looking glitch, and I’d been burned by far too many fake rumours that had made me a cynic.”

Legacy Platform

Our next section also explores older games, but with a focus on elements that might see them described as rough in the language of today’s design paradigms, but which give these games their essential character and staying power.

• No Assassin’s Creed sequel has ever matched the weird poetry of the first game’s towers | Rock Paper Shotgun
  Edwin Evans-Thirlwell synchronizes with Assassin’s Creed‘s provocative, immersion-hostile beginnings.
• Dracula Densetsu II: Atmospheric improvisation | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi critiques a compact Castlevania that scores top marks on presentation and vibes.
• isaac clarke shouldn’t talk | a weapon to surpass blaming yourself or god while knee-deep in the dead
  Chuck Sebian-Lander breaks down why Isaac’s silence is built different (Further Reading – Chuck’s earlier writing on silent protagonism in Lies of P).

“this may be the only example of an unreliable silent narrator I’ve seen in media? ironically this might also represent the best way to achieve the effect of an unreliable protagonist in games: take the baseline assumption that player and character are unified beings — the latter a vessel for the former — and twist it around itself until it snaps.”

Critical Chaser

: )

• I’m Just Having Fun, Please Relax | Inner Spiral
  Alli commits to the bit of joy as its own end.

“This kind of play isn’t just indulgent. It’s structural. It creates emotional continuity in a life that otherwise asks you to discard, update, and rebrand yourself constantly. In a culture that loves closure and clean arcs, there’s something kinda radical about refusing to let a bit die. When you let the joke keep running, even when no one’s laughing anymore, actually especially when no one’s watching anymore, you’re not only being silly. You’re saying, this still brings me joy, and that’s more than a reason enough to keep going.”