This Week in Videogame Blogging

September 13th

by

Welcome back readers.

I’ll start with a Patreon update before getting into this week’s issue proper. As you might have seen, we shook the can pretty hard last week. We’re not quite underwater yet, as we indeed have been a couple of times in the last few years, but with our current level of funding we don’t have a lot of manouevring space for events like our recent Blogs of the Round Table Friendslop Essay Jam or other fun stuff like our semi-recurring Fansite Jams. Over the last week, we’ve gained a couple of new members, which is great! My hope is for us to keep that momentum going.

I should also be upfront about the ways in which the workload for TWIVGB has shifted. In short, the time I put into Senior Curator Stuff has roughly doubled since I took on the role to two full work days (so, my whole weekend). There are a lot of reasons for this: we are reading and including more articles, finding articles is a more involved and fragmentary process, Further Reading inclusions add an additional layer of work, and I’m simply a slower reader than when I started in 2018.

All that being said, when I’m out here plugging the Patreon, it is not for my own gain–I’m paid a fixed rate each month that was agreed upon in 2018 and this number has not changed. Putting more money into our Patreon allows us to do more–run more community events, pay more contributors, keep abreast of the rising costs of web hosting and the other tools we use in our curation workflow, and put savings in the bank for unanticipated expenditures (hiring an accountant to help us register as a nonprofit organization, for example!).

Critical Distance has always been and will remain a freely accessible (and ad-free) resource, and I’m very proud of that, because I know that’s a tough standard to maintain at a time when the financial support out there for games writing is at a real low point. That doesn’t mean making and maintaining Critical Distance is free.

So, like I’m always saying, if you value the work that we do, and you have the means (and we know that’s far from a given), here’s the Patreon.

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

Social Animals

This week let’s start off with a big group of articles all exploring different dimensions of sociality on both sides of the screen. The authors here range in their topics from multiplayer games, developer communities, social mechanics, randomizers, and more.

“In my mind, communities are what make game development happen, not technologies. With the best tech gear and engines in the world someone working alone without friends or colleagues or any hope for future camaraderie struggles to get anything of value done. That same person can make a masterpiece with a 15 year old laptop, SDL1, a good environment, and good people around them. I want to get things done, but the social-cultural structure has shifted in a way that makes this difficult.”

Artist in Residence

These next two picks are both artist profiles, bringing together conversations with the artist and a critical overview of their work.

“The thing, then, that I love most about Miles Buckle’s Instagram, is the intense yearning and wishful thinking it triggers in me. There will never be a world where we will get the Amarcord game, nor do I truly want one, because it would close that powerfully magical gap between reality and fantasy. I would rather continue thinking about how perfect it would be, roaming the streets of the titular town with its weird little inhabitants all trying to survive Mussolini’s Italy. There is something singularly powerful about an imaginary game that can only exist in the ether of one’s mind, and while I share that overwhelming “I would love to play these games for real” sentiment that many of Buckle’s followers express, I don’t know if the world would, or should, let them be made.”

On a Roll

We’ve got a nice spread of mechanics-and-design oriented discussions this week!

“I’ve gone over before how I think overexposure is the the death of Wonder in games. But I think guidance, handled poorly, can actually go a step further and provoke the death of conscious thought. At some point you’ve removed so many blocks from the jenga tower of Things The Player Must Be Cognitively Aware Of that there’s almost nothing left to consider. What remains is not the vaunted Flow State that so much of big-budget games spent decades chasing, but a sort of anti-thought void that leaves the player so little to consider that they instead spend their brainpower considering why they’re even playing the game.”

Violent Delights

Next let’s talk about different kinds of violence in games and their industry: physical and immediate, but also slow and structural.

“9/11 feels bizarre as a cultural object because our response to it has reflected a uniquely corporate sensitivity. When an object is removed from a simulation game because it has become traumatic, the simulation does not necessarily remain neutral; instead, the removal creates a new historical statement. The absence of the towers becomes an alteration to the historical record represented by the game, and players who know what has been removed become capable of perceiving the omission as an object in itself. Again, we find ourselves in Sartre’s cafe, looking around for Pierre.”

Eigengrau

These next two selections unpack different shapes of grief in games, both general and specific.

“I resonated with her struggles to reconcile with her father, to come to a place of understanding with her brother. I understood why she engaged in self-destructive behavior, like becoming a professional mourner who “doesn’t do it for the money.” There are no easy explanations ready-at-hand. There’s no rationale which fully justifies her actions. But there is understanding, and eventually Candelaria works past the need to be present on the worst day of other people’s lives. I hope I can get there too.”

Adoorable

Let’s decompress a little now with a pair of forays into old-and-forgotten games.

“Nowadays there’s an absolute abundance of Star Wars trivia games, both physical and digital, but back in 1999, before the fever for The Phantom Menace and the ensured legacy of Star Wars to follow, this was a nice little treat. And I’m glad that it’s now properly preserved. Who knew a silly little game one made over 27 years ago and used a fairly new website to promote it would send me down this silly journey, all for a game that while not outstanding, is at least somewhat charming.”

Critical Chaser

The FF8posting will continue until morale improves.

“In 1997, the Final Fantasy series went from niche to blockbuster. There’s no denying what a huge, huge, huge deal Final Fantasy VII was for the role-playing game genre and for Square. So when Final Fantasy VIII appeared at E3 1998, it was a big deal! The next entry in one of PlayStation’s biggest franchises was here. Except they fucked it up so bad you won’t believe it.”

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