August 10th

Welcome back readers.

This week I’m plugging the Queer Games Bundle again. Worth your time, worth your support.

We also are always happy to have you check out our Patreon!

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

Scratching the Itch

To start things off, we’ve read a bunch of new, quality writing about the ongoing fallout from the NSFW game bans/deindexings/censorship, particularly on Itch, detailing mechanisms, impacts, and sites of resistance.

• ‘I feel violated’ – Queer Creators Lose Livelihoods in Itch.io Bans | Trans News Network
  Mira Lazine talks to the queer artists and developers affected by–and organizing against–the Itch NSFW bans (Further Reading: Ana Valens talks to lewdtubers organizing resistance against the bans).
• How payment networks control the definition of acceptable sex in videogames | Rock Paper Shotgun
  Edwin Evans-Thirlwell digs into the undercroft of the business and policy of selling adult games with the help of some expert researchers.
• Itch And Steam’s New Policies Reflect A Larger Battle On Free Speech | GameSpot
  Grace Benfell examines the wider tapestry of porn censorship and sexual puritanism, for which the Itch ban is only the most recent high-profile front (Further Reading: Kastel on Collectie Shout’s origins, tactics, and motives).
• Then They Came for the Porn | Unwinnable
  An Anonymous Contributor offers an erotica writer’s perspective on how smut can help us sharpen the craft, develop a healthy understanding of consent, and navagiate traumas in our own lives (Further Reading: Vehe Mently on The Undending BE Addventure).

“I would not be the competent writer I am today without the warm embrace of the Kink Meme nor the hundreds of people who complimented my work and offered constructive feedback at the same time creative writing teachers were telling me that my work was beyond what my skill level should have been, to the point of being immune from criticism from their perspective. I was challenged to grow by reworking canon situations, re-contextualizing relationships and hostilities, to inhabit the voices of existing characters plausibly.”

Mixed Media

Next up we have a variety of stories concerning industry-level topics, ranging from media preservation, to voice acting, to genre trends, to ongoing boycott action against Israeli apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.

• VGHF acquires early game magazine Computer Entertainer | Video Game History Foundation
  Phil Salvador provides an update on the VGHF’s newest cool addition to their publicly accessible archive.
• Selective Attention | Unwinnable
  Phoenix Simms unpacks a couple of recent voice actor dust-ups on social media as an outgrowth of the generative pressures looking to squeeze voice artists out of their craft and livelihood (Further Reading: Shannon Liao on Split Fiction‘s sci-fi take on robbing creatives to power LLMs).
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Is Great, But Its Popularity Raises Big Questions About How We View Japanese RPGs | GameSpot
  Jess Reyes contemplates the cultural biases that create an atmosphere where a game like Clair Obscur is received as a breakout hit (Further Reading: Autumn Wright on Trails and the shifting meaning and cultural position of the JRPG).
• Boycott Microsoft. I am no longer asking | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner is no longer asking (Further Reading: Wallace Truesdale on the status and progress of the BDS campaign against Xbox after three months).

“This isn’t about a single boycott anymore, it’s not just some small principled stand you can take that may or may not have any impact on Microsoft’s bottom line. It’s about the ethics of it all, the morality of continuing to lend your tacit approval to these ghoulish motherfuckers who so gleefully assist with the summary deletion of human life seeing nothing but dollar signs in their eyes.”

Level Skip

These next three pieces bring together conversations on play experience, sociality, nostalgia, and fun.

• The Long Way Is the Shortcut | Inner Spiral
  Alli meditates on the dissonance between the slower-paced retro games to which our nostalgia drives us and the infiltration of our leisure time by any%-minded optimization anxiety (Further Reading: Kerry Brunskill on re-releases, access, and the cultural cachet attached to retro games as prized collectibles).
• Deltarune Remembers How to Have Fun | Sidequest
  Kathryn Hemmann reflects on life lessons from Deltarune‘s third chapter.
• The Global Haunted House: Horror and Communal Experience | Unwinnable
  Emma Kostopolus extends the prosocial, communal affordances of horror films and haunted houses to the sharing of game experiences, both on-the-couch and over-the-stream (Further Reading: Meixu Zhan on indie horror games and social critique).

“In opposition to the stereotypical notion of horror as being for misanthropes and weirdos, being collectively scared silly is one of the most effective ways of teaching ourselves how to tune into the people around us and act in ways that make life better for everyone. While fear can certainly bond us in negative ways (see: xenophobia and bigotry based in ignorance), I posit that horror media can serve as a great equalizer, showing us that we’re all ultimately afraid of the same things, whether that be death, clowns, or death specifically by clowns. We’re all in this together, and nothing shows us that more clearly than a shared horror experience.”

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Now for some game-specific analyses and reflections!

• Earthion: Shoots for the stars | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi offers some critical impressions of probably the most high-profile Mega Drive release in years.
• This Summer Reminded Me Why I Loved Playing Soccer | Unwinnable
  Wallace Truesdale recounts how Despelote and Rematch got him to dig the old ball out of the closet again (Further Reading: Moises Taveras on Despelote).

“It’s a testament to the various ways games can capture the essence of a sport, that there are different angles to appreciate it from. So I might find time to buy a new ball – one meant for indoor soccer, at that – to continue remembering why I love it.”

Critical Chaser

Our mostly-regular closing section returns with some provocative new picks.

• “While steeped in faith, her other attributes develop at only a modest pace” | Plant or Beast
  Experimental verse from Ashley Bardhan on Elden Ring: Nightreign (content notification for sexual assault).
• are video games fart? | tell them i died
  Ian Walker answers the big question.

“it feels like a conversation is happening between the player and the character they’re controlling. i laughed at abe‘s fart, and he laughed along with me. in that moment, we were the same.”