May 18th

Welcome back readers.

This Monday is a civic holiday where I am but don’t worry, I still got you. Here’s fifteen fresh picks on games old and new, topics recent and evergreen. If you like what we do here, consider our Patreon!

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

Change Logs

Our first section this week brings together stories from and about the industry, looking at development histories, labour practices, and sex in games.

• What Roe R. Adams III Did
  Hiromasa Iwasaki the largely-overlooked history of the person who actually wrote Ultima IV.
• The ‘deprofessionalization of video games’ was on full display at PAX East | Game Developer
  Bryant Francis asks what becomes of writers and artists when development studios contract to three-person teams chasing gig work.
• How Video Game Sex Scenes Are Made | 404
  Nicole Carpenter chronicles the evolution of sex in games–as portrayal, production, and performance (Further Reading – Grace Benfell on sex and sexuality in games).

“When players and critics ask the question, Did this game even need romance or sex?, the answer is largely personal to the person playing it. Some people will never want that sort of content in their games, and some people will seek out games specifically to get off. But if we’re talking about whether a sex scene is additive to any one experience, it starts with the challenge of good writing — “There’s only so many words that you can use to describe a cock,” Rhodes quipped—and good writing translates into good acting and animation. So many big and small details have to be so precisely placed, and even then, it might not land.”

Feedback Loops

These next three picks all relate in some way to Microsoft Games and the ongoing BDS campaign putting pressure on their partnerships with the Israeli Occupation Forces.

• I can no longer excuse my silence on the BDS call to boycott | Steven’s Substack
  Steven Santana joins the call (Further Reading – Autumn Wright on the responsibilities of the games journalist on the boycott).
• You cannot beat the final boss of No Rest for the Wicked’s latest saga | PC Gamer
  Autumn Wright closes out a promising game now fully eclipsed by its studio’s CEO’s posting own-goals.
• Mending the Tapestry: South of Midnight and the Southern Gothic | Gamers with Glasses
  Spencer Johnson praises South of Midnight‘s strength of storytelling while considering the role of the Southern Gothic in stories to come.

“Through Hazel’s journey, the game explores the weight of generational trauma, the complexities of identity, and the struggle for spiritual healing. It doesn’t shy away from the scars left by history, but it also celebrates the resilience, the laughter, the community, and the love that persists despite it all. The game is not just an exploration of the supernatural; it’s an exploration of a culture’s survival and flourishment, passed down through the generations.”

Embedded Systems

These next pieces make sharp connections between games and their entanglements with our lives and the world around us.

• Consigning Meaning to the Void | TIER
  Phoenix Simms weighs transfeminine metastability against tonal discord and storytelling entropy in Lovely Lady RPG.
• What’s The Line? | Stop Caring
  Wallace Truesdale unpacks 1000xRESIST‘s play as a meditation on revolutionary violence and its consequences (Further Reading – Reno Evangelista’s thoughts on 1000x and revolution).
• 5 Years Ago, One Of The Most Brilliant Photography Games Perfectly Captured The Present Moment | Inverse
  Robin Bea contemplates Umurangi Generation as a mode of seeing.
• Desperate Times, Despelote Dreams | Gamers with Glasses
  Luis Aguasvivas finds in Despelote a reminder that ball really is life (Further Reading – Moises Taveras’ thoughts on the game).

“What I love most about Despelote is just like in life you can find the ball, even when drunk either from booze or despair. Even through the muck and mire, the pulverized cities, haphazardly held together by ethereal pixels and polygons, the saga continues.”

Power Cycles

Let’s unwind a little with some crunchy reads on games in the cozy-ish space.

• REVIEW: Welcome to the Urban Jungle | Sidequest
  Cress checks out a narrative game in the vein of Unpacking with a green twist.
• The Shape of a Quiet Life | Inner Spiral
  Alli traces the arc of Animal Crossing over the years between slow relaxation and neoliberal self-curation and hustle (Further Reading – Rae Maybee on memory and haunting in Tomodachi Life).

“When I play it like an Instagram curator, it just becomes another consumer showcase, which is fun, but ultimately a bit empty. But when I play it like that kid who wandered into a Blockbuster village years ago, with open-ended curiosity and a willingness to let the moments unfold, it becomes almost spiritual in its simplicity. And it’s in those latter times, when I’m catching fireflies at dusk while a gentle in-game breeze rustles the trees, or when a villager surprises me with an out-of-the-blue gift and a goofy letter, that I feel Animal Crossing reconnects me to something real.”

Rocket Lawncher

Our next two picks have in common a celebration of the absurd in games.

• Skin Deep – More Than Meets The Eye | startmenu
  Kate Robinson has a pretty good time with this offbeat new space imsim.
• Metal Slug: A very precious metal | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi revels in the absurd details of a Neo Geo all-timer.

“This is an experience where even the smallest moments are brimming with almost unimaginable levels of detail, and much of it is intended to be humorous. I destroy a private lavatory set in the middle of the road, revealing the man inside—who then retreats inside the toilet bowl, folding himself up in a panic. Near the top of a chilly stage soldiers roll huge snowballs down a slope. A single chicken is casually hidden underneath the enormous wooden structure I’m supposed to blast to bits, just for the fun of it. I’ll sink a small boat and as it sinks the soldiers will abandon ship, some holding their noses as they dive off the side as others do exaggerated cartoon dives into the water, and while all of this is going on another guy is frantically (and uselessly) trying to pump water out of the doomed vessel’s waterlogged hull.”

Critical Chaser

This one’s a bit of a saga!

• SUPERHOT VR’s Story was Removed. What? | GioCities
  Gio takes a deep dive into the troubled spectacle of a developer sanding the rough edges off their work.

“Do we object so strongly to even the possibility of mental friction? Is this a toy that people should be able to interact with at their leisure; should we pick it up when we want, put it down when we want, and think our own thoughts about the matter? Or is Piotr simply the same as the villainous SUPERHOT? Is the only goal to keep people playing, keep people in that flow state, keep brains hooked up to that dopamine response?”