May 4th

Welcome back readers.

This week I’m very happy to plug a new game from narrative designer, writer, and one of my own mentors here at CD, Kris–You Are Generative AI. You might also check out their Patreon.

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

Sphere of Influence

This week’s opening section brings together pieces and topics on a spectrum from the shifting topography of the industry over the last decade to the transformations of games discourse over roughly the same timeframe.

• Consoles Are a Bum Deal Now | Far Away Times
  John Thyer peers over the garden wall towards a greater abundance.
• Kill the CEO in your head | ReaderGrev
  Mikhail Klimentov tires of games discourse being dominated by market speculation.
• It was never about video games
  Liz Ryerson dissects ubiquitous, reactionary punditry as one of the most overlooked and wretched offspring of gamergate (Further Reading – Liz is a leading writer on this stuff so I’ll link some of her previous work here).

“gamergate came in as a constant intrusion to a space that was going through an explosion of new ideas and debates that a bunch of people were trying to have in the world of games, however imperfect, and took them all over. we had to increasingly completely give up on trying to hash out the inherent problems of games as an artistic medium in a more mainstream sense to go fight in some absurd and apocalyptic cultural battleground. now, a decade later, perhaps it’s time to return from that battleground and go back to actually caring about games as an artistic form again. what’s the worst that could happen?”

Violent Delights

Each of these next three selections offers a critical meditation of some kind on the violence inherent to a game–not just the spectacular and visceral, but also the structural, the procedural, the cultural.

• Dishonored Step by Step Part 2: Coldridge Prison | Steven’s Substack
  Steven Santana picks back up with Dishonored and both the compromises and crutches it employs to lure the player into a cycle of violence.
• Expedition 33 Understands Violence Is About More Than Blood | Exalclaw
  Wallace Truesdale notes Clair Obscur‘s eye towards the structural as well as visceral violence.
• One in 1,000 deaths: Halfway to heaven in Shadows of the Damned | Plant or Beast
  Ashley Bardhan muses on myth, misogyny, and mental illness in Shadows of the Damned (Further Reading – Madeline Blondeau’s recent writing on Dante’s Inferno).

“Several times while playing Shadows of the Damned, I’m overwhelmed by how unfair Paula’s situation is. And yet she never decides to take matters into her own hands, stabbing herself in the neck or sticking her head into a lake of fire and ending it all for good. She just keeps dying, because she has to. Paula dies to survive the moments in between each death, the few minutes she’s allotted to breathe. She always whips her head around her with a wild fox’s look, either terrified or angry. When demons come for her again at the end of Shadows, after all she’s experienced, her iceberg eye turns the color of strawberry jam. I see my life and the many deaths that have come to blight it through similar, reddened eyes.”

Communion and Community

Next up we’ve got two quite different but mutually terrific pieces on games and communities across eras.

• Despelote review: an ode to a dream | No Escape
  Nicanor Gordon reflects on football as a canvas for memory, nations, and communities.
• 1000xRESIST: The You That Remains | Medium
  Reno Evangelista unwinds an intergenerational story of revolution, ugliness, and communion (Further Reading – Kastel’s writing on the same game).

“We witness these lives, fictional though touching the real, and what they mean, what they could mean, what we want them to mean. Conveyed by those who saw truth clearly and decided to show it to us. Even though those truths might be ugly, might be difficult.”

Stay Thy Flight

Mostly short-form (but not all), mostly on recent games (but not all), these next four pieces survey a range of novel works, with both hits and misses accounted for.

• Review: Wanderstop Is Pretty, but Fails to Capture the Challenges of Healing | Sidequest
  Melissa Brinks finds Wanderstop to be not-quite-holistic (wholistic?) in its meditations on healing and moving forward.
• Suffering From Success | Bullet Points Monthly
  Astrid Anne Rose contemplates the FromSoft house style in an older, undiluted form by way of Shadow Tower Abyss (Further Reading – Jade King on Eternal Ring).
• Please Place Your Order at the Kiosk | Gamers with Glasses
  Samantha Trzinski contemplates the productive juxtaposition of cozy-creepy in a horror-themed cooking simulator.
• Many Nights A Whisper Lets You Decide What Wishes Are Worth Granting | Inverse
  Robin Bea strikes true.

“When the night finally comes, I hesitate. I walk quickly to the edge of my balcony, take aim, then pull back. I walk away and return. I line up a shot, adjusting over and over until it feels right, then hold it, deciding if I’m sure. Eventually, I am sure, and I let the fire fly toward the chalice, the slowest a shot has ever seemed to move toward its target. The shot lands, the chalice erupts in flames, and the village celebrates. But the Dreamer doesn’t join them, left to wonder what her life becomes now, and I have to admit that, as satisfying as it felt, I might have a more interesting story to write if I’d missed.”

Critical Chaser

Pour one out for Polygon and Giant Bomb.

• I’m obsessed with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s Gestrals | Polygon
  Nicole Clark highlights the weird little guys serving as a delightful tonal anchor point in Clair Obscur.

“Little dudes are essential to a good open-world game.”