September 6th

Welcome back readers.

It’s a Critical Distance hat trick this Sunday! If you haven’t already seen, Kaile is working way harder than me this weekend. In addition to our regular weekly issue, which I’ll get to in just a moment, they’ve got not only the monthly Patreon-exclusive recap for you, but also the results from the Friendslop Essay Jam, which inaugurates our revival of Blogs of the Round Table. The final tally is 24 submissions all told, many from writers who are new to us! This is the best possible result, and we look forward to running more topic-oriented writing jams like this in the future.

Before I get to the weekly issue, I need to take a little longer this time to beat the Patreon drum, because after a really humbling rally of support at the beginning of this year the funds are starting to dip again for perfectly fair and understandable reasons (everyone is broke). We’re putting out three big issues today that collectively constitute a full-time job’s worth of reading, compiling, organizing, and editing. Our ability to do this work–creating a living time capsule of critical games writing, week-by-week, month-by-month, and year-by-year–hinges upon the people doing it having the financial support to set aside a couple of full days each week to do that work. I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to be a part of this work–I like to joke that I’m a professional reader–and I see no reason why we can’t keep this show running for decades to come. To actually see that through, however, we’ve got to pay the bills, and Patreon is our financial bedrock for maintaining that kind of material longevity.

So once more, here’s our Patreon. If you like what we do, give it a look, and help keep Critical Distance going.

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

Critical Memory

We’re starting off light and airy this week. The state of criticism, the material erosion of the games press as an institution and a career path, that kind of thing.

• THEY’RE ALL SAFE ROOMS | systemDrift
  Psychbomb uses horror’s reputation for disposability as a starting point for expanding our critical relationship to genre works (Further Reading: J.M. Henson on Resident Evil 7).
• 000 | The Thesaurus Rex
  Taylor Hidalgo finds no universe in which you can put a game review in a bottle and label its truths (Further Reading: Harper Jay MacIntyre on criticism as a kindness).

“In this entire chain of deep pockets, the poorest people are the ones who care most about the medium. Any writer in games is skilled enough to get a job in literally any other field, making so much more money for so much less work. Most don’t because they care about what games could be, why else would they do this? Why would anyone do this? But sure, assign them a trustworthy score. Whatever.”

Digital Deluxe Edition

Let’s keep the vibe chill as we head into this next section on [checks notes] the state of the industry, games as opiates, the phasing out of physical ownership. Cool.

• The Death Of Physical Media | Seer talks about games
  The solution is Panzer Dragoon Saga. Hear Seer out on this one (Further Reading: Dawn Davis on physical media).
• On opiates | Patrick Miller
  Patrick Miller muses on games that shape a life, or shelter you from one (Further Reading: Melos Tan-Hani on treatmills).

“To make games is to build tools and toys and experiences for people to spend their leisure time and money on. None of this stuff is required to exist. Games could disappear tomorrow and we’d all be living a worse life for it, but we’d still be living a life. The responsibility of the game developer, as it is for anyone who works in entertainment, is to make sure that the things they’re making are indeed making things better, that the players who play the games you make are a little bit better people for the experiences they went through. How you do that, and why you do that, is up to you; there are many who solely want to deliver players a narcotic good time, and many who abdicate this responsibility entirely because they feel no obligation to their players, nor agency to chase any direction besides revenue, but there are also countless people out there who use the medium of games to tell stories that have opened players’ eyes to personal truths that they never would have found without. (Not everything needs to be a fighting game.) If you cannot accept the responsibility to work on things that make the world better, then you have to accept the conclusion that your work is at best not having any effect and most likely making things worse, and at that point, man, change your heart or hang it up.”

Mystery Machine

We’ve got a series of more genre-specific sets coming up now. The first is on detective and mystery games.

• This cyberpunk mystery hooked me with its cast of baddies and poker-inspired gameplay | Mothership
  Amanda Tien revels in the varied and sometimes refreshingly awful cast of of the Devil (Further Reading: Jenna Mahale on Discopup).
• Solving the Mystery of Japanese Detective Games | Eteo Archetypes
  Malindy Hetfeld ruminates on the rules of narrative structure, in Ace Attorney and beyond (Further Reading: Baxter Burchill on Detective Saburo Jinguji: The Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case).
• Zero Parades’ Nyssa Shaw-Smith Gendelman on Writing about Losers and F****-Ups | Narrative News
  Rose Behar chats with Nyssa Shaw-Smith Gendelman about writing Zero Parades in a precarious era to be a gamedev (Further Reading: Artemis Octavio on Zero Parades).

“It’s a really scary time to be making games, and trying to build a somewhat stable career doing that can feel kind of impossible. That’s one reason why I feel so strongly about labour organising, and why we worked so hard at ZA/UM to form our union. At a time when things can feel hopeless, that support and solidarity and persistence I’ve been seeing from other game workers keeps me going.”

Drop Slide

Puzzle games now, past and present.

• TALL | Lakespirit
  Lakespirit partakes of some peak PS1 puzzle pushing (Further Reading: Penny on puzzle games).
• Titanium Court (Thomson, 2026) | exp.
  Mathew Kumar did not like Titanium Court (Further Reading: Willa Rowe on Titanium Court and revolutionary theatre).

“Do you know this feeling? You probably know this feeling. You’ve gone to see a movie, or maybe a play, that’s famously critically acclaimed. A piece of real art. Maybe it’s a satire, let’s say. You watch it, and, you know, it’s good! You’re following it, and you see what it’s doing. You appreciate it. But the audience is acting… weird. Everyone around you is laughing uproariously at jokes that you get, but aren’t, you know… funny.”

Saving Throw

I’m fudging this one ever so slightly by calling it the tabletop section. You’ll see.

• Temple of Apshai é um videogame analógico | Pra que Serve um Joguinho?
  Cara do Fusca traces tabletop structures and abstractions in one of the very earliest computer role-playing games (Further Reading: Ogre Run on Roads to Lord).
• Rush & Punch! Builds Giant Entities | Unwinnable
  Alyssa Wejebe unpacks how a Kaiju-themed TTRPG came together in conversation with co-designer Tomas Gimenez Rioja (Further Reading: Dan Thurot on Kaiju Table Battles).

“Speaking of kaiju-sized characters sparking narrative, while R&P! emphasizes thrilling action, it’s not the only element of play. Similar to other TTRPGs like Lancer, R&P! divides itself into two phases of play, crunchier Combat and free-form Downtime. However, Rioja says that R&P!’s Downtime incorporates a few more board game elements than a normal TTRPG. The whole game mixes TTRPGs and board games, built on a system encouraging creative problem-solving and collaborative roleplay while being mechanized for speed and structure.”

Terms of Service

It’s hard for me to neatly summarize why these next two belong together. I could point to juxtaposition as a powerful organizing structure in each, the back and forth between the traumas of games and life, of existing as a woman in society generally, but really they’re both just very good personal essays. I hate the term personal essay, help me find a better one.

• Object Lesson | Stop Caring
  Leah Isobel sets aside the rules of a rigged game (Further Reading: Flora Merigold on Omori).
• You Get to Stop Playing When You Stop Hating Yourself | Sidequest
  Vehe Mently ruminates on the lose-lose game of Dating of the Ancients (2) (Further Reading: Mikhail Klimentov on Valorant).

“When I use these dating apps, I find myself wanting to open up a video game where I can win. Goddammit, if I can’t win on the apps, maybe I can win mid lane. This is a cliché, but it’s true. Sometimes you open up a game because you want to feel like you have control. I’m deeply uncompetitive by nature; it makes me feel sick. I struggle to feel motivated to win. I only want to be good enough to have fun. I have nothing to strive for when I’m salty. I’m not chasing the W. The only reason to keep playing is to get to a point where I stop hating myself.”

Critical Chaser

Saved a doozy for last this week.

• when you wish (upon a doll) | Plant or Beast
  Ashley Bardhan pens an elegy to Silent Hill 2‘s Maria (Further Reading: Grace Benfell on Forget-Me-Not).

“the gun was my unicorn horn. it shouldn’t have been in my hands. it felt hot and strange there, like tongues, and i wanted to put it somewhere less intimate. but since i was born from a wish, i was never allowed anything like privacy, or no privacy. i could only ever know myself in an unbuttoned sweater. i could graze my thumb over the unicorn horn. i could press it to my forehead, where it belonged. i imagined it turning my brain – if i had one – into rainbow sprinkles.”