May 25th

Welcome back readers.

This Monday is a civic holiday where I am not, but all the same I still got you. Here’s another 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.

“Where Is All the Good Writing. . . ?”

The opening section this week casts a wide net, but all of these pieces are aligned in their self reflection on the production of writing-about-games, be it investigative journalism, consumer reviews, or criticism. To that end, I’ll put the Further Reading right here as a top in the form of Autumn Wright’s ongoing series of dialogues with game critics over at Unwinnable.

• Failing to Escape the Triumphal Procession of Video Games | Florence Smith Nicholls
  Florence Smith Nicholls scrutinizes canon as a historical process, both in popular games media and discourse as well as in academic studies.
• THE SPECTACULAR LEVIATHAN PART II | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner litigates the ills–quality, access, sustainability–afflicting the contemporary critical landscape.
• Who Is Writing Reviews Nowadays Anyway? | Steven’s Substack
  Steven Santana deciphers the contemporary anatomy of a game review, with rigorous data science and Metal Gear Solid characters.
• The Making of ‘Excuuuuse me, Princess!’: An Oral History of The Legend of Zelda Cartoon | Skybox
  Nicole Carpenter goes into the journalistic nuts and bolts that produce an oral history–of a Zelda cartoon or otherwise.
• criticism is cruelty | GlitchOut
  Oma Keeling identifies the joys of meanness in criticism.

“i think, maybe, that critics, (in columns, in youtube videos, in social media posts deriding other critical viewpoints, in reviews on Yelp) but especially those who form part of the neoliberal establishment of ‘good writers’, who place themselves in positions of power over the interpretation of art and the creation of ‘journalism’ STILL, are the most susceptible to forgetting that they engage in criticism because they enjoy the sparks of meanness and validation to others that it permits them. Rather they would like to believe anything but, and such, by that token, end up missing not only why Right Wing criticism is so successful in its emotionally heightened, manipulative approaches, but also dull themselves to the reason they are even doing Anything in the first place… content to continue to scratch out dopamine by relitigating the ‘need’ for art criticism that is Free and Open, rather than actually like… doing it.”

Down With the Sickness

These next two unpack different axes of relation between games and health. I’ll once again link the Further Reading here at the top with Kate Fishman’s conversations with designers, artists, and educators building awareness of the ongoing COVID pandemic through games and play.

• clair obscur: expedition 33’s gommage is the perfect example of passive violence | tell them i died
  Ian Walker unpacks the constant, slow-motion gommage of the US healthcare system.
• Kaizo Mario Was My Physical Therapy | Skybox
  Imran Khan shell-jumps back onto the horse.

“I am not sure I could ever have been naturally good at Kaizo Mario at the top of my physical abilities. A decade ago, I could have been passable. I might have been able to cut the number of deaths down by a thousand or so. But now I was not at my best and it really did not matter, since failure was not only inevitable, it was assumed from the outset. Frequent, immediate, consistent deaths were priced in to the experience, whether I was suffering from a fracture of my nervous system or not. In that sense, Kaizo Mario became the perfect video game for my disabled body to play — I could not win, so there was nothing to lose.”

Solar Punk

Our next two picks both feature the work of Kara Stone, bringing together interview and impressions. For the Further Reading, here are Stone’s own thoughts on developing Ritual of the Moon.

• Kara Stone, creadora de videojuegos que trabaja únicamente con energía solar: “Siempre me he considerado ecologista, así que he luchado por conectarlo con mi práctica artística” | La Vanguardia
  David Molina talks with designer Kara Stone about reconciling her environmental and artistic practice.
• Known Mysteries Showed Me The Consequences Of Abandoning Earth | Exalclaw
  Wallace Truesdale takes notes on Kara Stone’s ecocritcal adventure game Known Mysteries.

“Known Mysteries demonstrates an understanding of the people and conditions that have lit forests and movements alike on fire, acting as a playable reminder of the “or else” when climate action is not taken and the disastrous is made normal. It encourages any players who takes a peek inside Arrow to apply the environmental lessons there into their own lives, and be part of the change that ensures Earth is never abandoned.”

The Very Best

Our next two picks are interviews about indie publishing and the Pokémon logo of all things!

• Iconic Pokémon Logo Creator Reveals His Early Design Drafts | IGN
  Rebekah Valentine sits down with Chris Maple to chat about how the Pokémon logo came to be with a tight deadline and minimal reference material.
• How Mouthwashing publisher Critical Reflex finds the hit games others shy away from | GamesIndustry.biz
  Malindy Hetfeld talks with founder Rita Lebedeva about publisher Critical Reflex’s curatorial approach to the weird and the overlooked (Further Reading – Hayes Madsen talks with indie developers about challenges with production, sustainability, and the publishing landscape).

“”The long game isn’t about locking into one genre or tone, it’s about building a reputation for curation. We want people to see our name and think, ‘If they signed this, it’s going to be something special,’ even if it’s wildly different from the last thing we launched.””

Deinterlacing

This section brings together ideas on nostalgia, “retro” media and tech, and the necessary imperfection of the human element.

• Fitting in with the Rest of Them | Inner Spiral
  Alli charts the trajectory of Nintendo’s UI design over the years.
• Fix The Tracking | Anxiety Shark
  Niko Stratis interrogates the textureless hyperreal of LLM content and its inability to leave a legacy like the earlier “imperfect” media forms we wax nostalgic about today (Further Reading – Emma Kostopolus on the tyrannical banality of LLMs).

“We can never ask AI to generate the past we want to hold onto, or the perfect world we believe was promised to us and I guess for some it is easier to hope that someday a computer will make this world perfect for you than to accept that real perfect will always be broken. Perfect will shake and falter, perfect will need to be adjusted and tapped lightly. Perfect won’t hold without tape and careful wire holding it in place. Perfect will crumble, and in years to come we will struggle to recall how clear our memory of perfect even is. Perfect will become nostalgia, and it will be sold back to you. And even then, it will feel nice, because the alternative feels like nothing.”

Critical Chaser

Speaking of the texture of old media, we’re closing out with critical reflections on two classics.

• The Gladiator: Secrets hiding secrets | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi delves in to a classic arcade beat-em-up with depth and detail for days.
• Take Your Time – Chrono Trigger | Pixpen
  Sam Howitt takes a long view of Squaresoft’s steady push towards living worlds.

“This isn’t a game to be picked at, it’s meant to just be played. That works fine for a lot of people, it’s what games are for. But there are plenty of games out there that don’t lose their spark after spending a little too much time looking at how they work. For some people, knowing it’s all a trick is part of the satisfaction. I have to admit that I would enjoy seeing someone else get caught out by the trial for the first time.”