March 15th

Welcome back readers.

Eighteen new-and-cool picks for you this week. Once again, I want to reiterate that your support over the last month has been incredible. If you (yes, you!) want to help us keep this show on the road, 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.

Saving Throw

Is this the RPG section this week? Maybe? Kind of, in a very technical sense, but it’s more to do with criticism–the craft, the context, the establishment and ownership of one’s own critical bent.

• I’m Already Getting Tired Of Woke Patriarchy | Patreon
  Ela Bambust wonders who is in on the joke with Esoteric Ebb‘s shallow engagement with masculinity (Further Reading: Roses Without Gardens on Disco Elysium and Lovely Lady RPG).
• Monster Hunter Stories 3 review — brilliant JRPG really wasn’t designed for game critics | TrueAchievements
  Lee Brady considers a game at odds with the pace and bustle of the contemporary review cycle.
• Dragon Quest VII and Reimagining the Critic in 2026 | Unwinnable
  Luis Aguasvivas challenges the critic to reassert their critical and aesthetic contexts (Further Reading: Autumn Wright’s conversation with Austin Walker).

“We must kill the content creator inside of us that has taken over our being like a body snatcher. Content is the information inside our work. To belittle one’s work by calling it content is disgusting and self-defeating. Writing is a craft, a tool, created to communicate, interpret, and change the world. Let us have the self-respect to say that we are writers.”

Roll Charisma

We’ve picked two interview-ish-shaped conversations this week, both about different aspects of the Fallout games.

• Nostalgia Power – the Origin and Evolution of Fallout’s Pip-Boy Radios | Eteo Archetypes
  Emma Kent examines the design and experience of Fallout‘s curated radio stations in dialogue with audio director Mark Lampert.
• “He doesn’t have a heart, but he has heartstrings”: The making of Nick Valentine, Fallout’s best-loved companion | Rock Paper Shotgun
  Jeremy Peel chats with designer Emil Pagliarulo about synthesizing the influences of Fallout 4‘s hardboiled detective.

“Amid the super mutant meat bags and raider encampments, it’s this unlikely spot that Nick has carved out for himself that saves the wasteland from feeling like a lost cause. “If this half-robot, half-human guy can be happy and live among us and still put a foot forward every day, then come on, everybody, don’t give up,” Pagliarulo says. “You can go for it.””

World Map

The next four selections all centre around some formation or idea of space and place–different constructions thereof, the values we map onto topography, that kind of thing.

• Surgical Intimacy | Bullet Points Monthly
  Reid McCarter adopts the Steppe’s relativistic vantage point on life and death, reality and ritual, medicine and mysticism (Further Reading: Grace Benfell on Pathologic 3).
• Managing hostesses in Yakuza 0’s cabaret club is a surprisingly feminist mini-game | Mothership
  Amanda Tien sees in Club Sunshine a refreshing respite from the Yakuza franchise’s otherwise fraught relationship with its women characters (Further Reading: Hiero de Lima on Promise Mascot Agency).
• You Proved Your Weakness By Sending Me To The Moon | Stop Caring
  Wallace Truesdale ponders the perfection of punishment in the panopticon of Island Sequence 24.
• Home is not an Enclosure – A Reflection | TIER
  Phoenix Simms traces our shifting understandings of home and community–in 24 Killers, in our uncertain boundaries between private and public, in literature, in exhibition (Further Reading: Artemis Octavio on 24 Killers).

“Home declares scathingly that scarcity only exists in human society. I can’t say I wholly disagree, but I hope more game narratives continue to unpack themes of community and how strange yet vital they are. In spite of our current reckonings, both physically and temporal, authorities cannot define or fetter home.”

Magic Circles

We’ve got different theories, articulations, styles, and experiences of play here–two of them in a paired set.

• how do we play video games? | Patreon
  Part 1 of the conversation, hosted on Madeline Blondeau’s Patreon.
• A Conversation (Continued) On Speedrunning And Replays | Bloomed Wings Blog
  Part 2 of the conversation, hosted on Cindy’s site.
• THE COIN DON’T HAVE NO SAY | Medium
  w.s. healed unspools a dialectical text/player theory of tabletop play (Further Reading: Elizabeth Sandifer on the ideological and ontological limitations of simulation in tabletop play).

“Because the coin don’t have no say, because players can step outside the rules whenever they like, our rules get to be stronger, totalizing, to invite and welcome pushback. No more simpering disclaimers about how if the player doesn’t like such-and-such rule they can ignore it, please — it is patronizing to feel like they must receive your special dispensation to decode your text as they please, and degrading to your own efforts in having encoded it in the first place. Don’t try to make your text a meddling busybody in the process of the game’s negotiation, whether to micromanage or to roll over and show its belly — not only can rules be opinionated, one of the best things those rules can do is invite opinions back.”

Dev Logs

This section brings together different discussions and inquiries on industry trends and practices, historical and contemporary.

• What Is the First Nintendo Crossover? | Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games
  Drew Mackie investigates cross-pollination in some of Nintendo’s oldest games, and highlights one such entry I’m willing to bet you haven’t heard of before (Further Reading: Drew on DK’s affinity for barrels).
• Steam, Moderation, Toxicity, and “this shouldn’t be normal” | The Candybox Blog
  Nathalie Lawhead elaborates on their efforts to get harassment reviews taken down from their games on Steam and wonders what kind of culture Valve is trying to promote on its platform (Further Reading: Geoffrey Bunting’s article on the matter, referenced here in Nathalie’s piece).
• Life Is Strange: Reunion’s Entire Premise Goes Against the Original Game’s Message | IGN
  Ceridwen Millington sees little left in the Life Is Strange IP except for, well, IP (Further Reading: Flora Merigold on Lost Records).

“It’s reasonable that fans do want to see more Max and Chloe. There are always those who want more of any story, of course, but particularly so when the characters’ story originally lacked much in the way of an overt relationship. The problem is that there seems to be no indication of authentic artistic drive behind the series’ current direction. There can be no foundation to a meaningful story in the mixture of a troubled developer, ambivalent publisher, and weak vision for what the franchise means. Any impact of this title, other than being another product in a franchise, doesn’t look to last beyond Square Enix’s financial year.”

Jumpscare

Now for a horror-themed section, with commentary and analysis.

• Can you just fucking not? | Staying classy? In THIS economy?
  Fox Harper is kinda done with the fat grotesque trope in horror broadly and Resident Evil specifically (Further Reading: Kaile Hultner on The Duke in RE8).
• Silent Hill was always feminist, Part 1: The cult, the witch, the burning girl | Mothership
  Beatrix Kondo deciphers the patterns of patriarchal religious violence against women and girls in the original Silent Hill which would shape the series’ thematic priorities going forward (Further Reading: Emma Kostopolus on Silent Hill f).

“The first Silent Hill game established the franchise’s core feminist architecture: patriarchal religious systems requiring female sacrifice to maintain power, women enforcing that violence after being broken by it, and girls branded as monstrous to justify their destruction. This pattern will repeat and deepen across the series, but it begins here with Alessa burning while her mother and community call it holy.”

Critical Chaser

I think Robert handled things much better than the last time I got griefed in a Souls joint.

• Tracking down the Dark Souls 2 hacker who injected me with 500 cursed Black Knight Ultra Greatswords | Rock Paper Shotgun
  Robert Yang goes on a journey of personal enlightenment.

“A dozen hours later in my Dark Souls 2 run, I defeated The Duke’s Dear Freja, a giant spider boss possessed by a petrified dragon. Then, with the Duke’s key, I found a genuine Black Knight Ultra Greatsword. Although it didn’t crash my inventory, I didn’t have enough Faith to equip it. Oh well.”