April 12th

Welcome back readers.

I’m starting things off this week with a shout-out to long-time Critical Distance board member and my immediate curatorial predecessor, Zoyander, who is taking a step back from active board member stuff for their health. Zoyander offered incredible mentorship in my own transition into the role and built large sections of our behind-the scenes infrastructure from the ground up. As they note in their announcement post above, Patreon is the best way to keep us healthy, active, and growing in a role that has increasingly seen us positioned as a bulwark against the continued devaluation of culture writing and the communities it creates.

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

Write Stuff

Let’s start things off with some meditations on labour and craft as verbs and values.

• Let Games Die | Possibility Space
  Mike Cook argues that to make and to play is the real preservation (Further Reading: Wallace Truesdale on doing your videogame homework).
• Solve for work | Anxiety Shark
  Niko Stratis muses on the labour of writing.

“All our books and stories are that way because of all the burdensome tasks that build the path to the end. All the setbacks and failures, the skill building and small triumphs. The monotonous shit no one really wants to do, a keystone in the design of laborious process. There is no written word without a weary hand wielding the pen.”

Tightrope Act

This section brings together a spectrum of perspectives on design and play, looking at tension, worldbuilding, protagonism, and more.

• House Of Hikmah Interview: Creating A World Of Scholars | GameObserver
  Kate M Jewett chats with developer Faris Attieh about crafting a fantastical spin on the world of the Islamic Golden Age.
• I am a tool | WotDoon
  Nate Shearer is won over by Marathon‘s streamlined and stylish take on the extraction shooter (Further Reading: Madeline Blondeau on Marathon and impermanence).
• Dialectics & Conflicting Priorities: The Tension that Binds Games Together | Celia Wagar’s CritPoints
  Celia Wagar picks up the slack on a dialectical theory of interesting decisions in play.
• What Knights of the Old Republic Taught Me About Wanting Too Much | Unwinnable
  Mer Mora, meet Bastila Shan (Further Reading: Grace Benfell on KOTOR).
• Captain of the Ship | Unwinnable
  Jay Castello min-maxxes an easygoing flooded world colony sim into a meditation on player protagonism (Further Reading: Jay’s previous writing on Cairn).

“Without realizing, I had slipped into running my boat with an eco-fascist god-hand. Take what we need and use it only for the chosen few. And in a game about recycling resources so efficiently there’s not a single scrap of waste, people, too, became resources. They were either repurposed into a part of my beautiful machine, or left behind.”

Weird and Wonderful

I was delighted to discover for this pairing that we already have a tag in our records for “weird”. Let’s go with that.

• Whopper Chase | Ephemeral Enigmas
  Ephemeral Enigmas hearkens back to a time when advergames were built different. As in weird. Really weird.
• The Weird and the Warui | Medium
  Davy R. Howard examines the excess and heightening of weird/bad/gay Mario (Further Reading: Patrick Klepek on Supper Mario Broth).

“To play a Wario game is to be reminded of the human body in its excesses and elasticity. All in all, Wario presents a thorough heightening of the safe, sanitized, uncontroversial and un-weird videogame mascot. “Is Wario a queer icon? Locked by a moderator after 1360 words of heated debate.””

Creed or Craven

These next two picks look at a chronic reluctance within the industry and press, respectively, to speak the truth with substance.

• Everything is Permitted | Stop Caring
  Andrei Filote sizes up Assassin’s Creed as the Da Vinci Code of ludic (a)historical (a)political fiction (Further Reading: Saniya Ahmed on AC Revelations and white protagonism).
• My Year as the Killjoy | Autumn Wright
  Autumn Wright assesses outlet inaction on the Microsoft BDS campaign (Further Reading: Autumn’s initial call).

“Games media was dying before 2023. It would still be spiraling, perhaps even faster, if its majority operated in solidarity with Palestinians. I know that, despite this, the ones who remain have much to lose (healthcare, rent, groceries). It’s never been all fun and games, but I reject the notion that things must get better before we start making them so. What is the point of independent publications if they employ the same white men to sell cool cover art and write the same industry boosterism? If the outlets with the most subscribers advocate for slop or the sites with the most progressive headlines excuse themselves from culpability? For all their play, these writers have such small imaginations. All I see is a games media recreating an image of an idealized past.”

Low Poly

Holly notes in her piece below that the PS1 revival style is strongly associated with the horror genre, which makes both of these next two games counterpoints to that pattern.

• How Creature Kitchen Blends Creepy and Cozy | Unwinnable
  Bea Cadigan provides notes on a cabin-in-the-woods game that draws on PS1-horror aesthetics to play upon the player’s expectations (Further Reading: Franny’s chat with Parker Hamilton of DreadXP).
• Impressions | Vital Shell – Digital Daydreams, From Software | startmenu
  Holly Redfield hits it off with a PS1-horror game, hold the horror.

“There’s something edible about the presentation — all that tightly packed polygonal snack is something to eat like candy in short bursts before putting it down. It’s not a bad idea to be won over by how a game looks or sounds, just like you wouldn’t feel bad for asking someone out on a date because they’re beautiful, hoping the rest of it clicks afterwards.”

Rough Cut

This next section is all about bad games, but as we’ll see at the end, that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s still bad though. Gotta be clear on that.

• Análise: People of Note desafina demais para valer a pena | GameBlast
  Hiero de Lima finds the recent musical RPG to be shallow and poorly localized.
• Life Is Strange: Reunion gives fans everything they want, and is worse off for it | AV Club
  Willa Rowe laments the culmination of a capitulation (Further Reading: Ceridwen Millington on LiS Reunion).
• Your joys will always be someone else’s junk | PC Gamer
  Lincoln Carpenter has written a backdoor hear-me-out on Gundam Battle Operation 2.

“It’s not the first time I’ve watched review reactions metastasize in confusing ways, but the two weeks of psychosis about anyone thinking Crimson Desert is merely fine has felt particularly surreal, because I’ve spent that time contentedly enjoying a game that many think—with good reason—is terrible. I’ve been playing Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation 2, a game the world hates, and I am nonetheless at peace.”

Dragon Rage

These three all locate different feelings in and around play.

• A PERSONAL HISTORY WITH POKÉMON | killjoy
  Will Butler takes both sentimental and data-driven approaches to answering what he finally concludes to be the wrong question.
• The Village of Dali and Loss of Innocence | Superjump
  Brandon R Chinn unpacks the tragedy of FFIX‘s first little town (Further Reading: Dia Lacina on Final Fantasy Towns).
• Rage Set Me Free | Inner Spiral
  Alli learns to lean into the tilt, in Smash Bros. and beyond (Further Reading: John Paul Brammer on smashing bros).

“My anger is always boiling, sitting right under the surface, but because I actually process the emotion instead of pushing it down, I can aim that fire directly at these corrupt, putrid institutions and the systemic failures where it belongs. I direct all of my anger entirely at the politicians and the billionaires causing the harm, and I save all of my peace, my patience, and my humanity for my friends and my community.”

Critical Chaser

Been a while since we closed out with some poetry, hasn’t it?

• Ode To Pokemon That Shine | Videodame
  Latonya Pennington picks up a shiny Geodude for good luck.

“Life is a heavy
bag of stones
I didn’t want.

I didn’t ask for it,
but I still carry it.“