October 11th

Welcome back readers.

It’s a long weekend here in my country, and to that end I’m getting the issue out to you a few hours early so I can take it easy and enjoy some of it with my partner. We’ve got fifteen excellent pieces to share this week, and as has been my habit of late, each one gets a pairing from our archives.

Financially, we are continuing to trend ever-so-slightly in a positive direction. This is infinitely better than the opposite. If you want to help us keep moving in that direction, Patreon is the place to do it. Incidentally, doing so gives you access to our monthly recaps, of which Kaile has just published their most recent. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for continuing to help us keep doing this work, and for bearing with my weekly hustle in the preamble.

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

Means of Production

We’re leading with an industry-focused section this week, examining labour at both the individual and organizational level.

• Inside The Failed Fight To Unionize Double Fine | Kotaku
  Rebekah Valentine talks to the folks inside Tim Schafer’s studio who tried to organize for better (Further Reading: Robin LoBuglio on how indie bosses are still bosses).
• On Leaving the Best Job I Ever Had | Azhdarchid
  Bruno Dias debriefs on burnout from his time at Failbetter (Further Reading: Niko Stratis on the labour of writing).

“It is very possible that this was always coming, that my role at Failbetter was just not something that I should ever have seen as long-term or stable. But it was hard thinking that way because Fallen London is such a one-of-a-kind island of stability; a game that, if you’re not careful, you could imagine working on for the rest of your life. Very few things like it exist in indie game development. When I joined Failbetter, the game had recently turned ten; I fully believe it will make it to twenty. My mistake was not asking, more pointedly, whether I really thought I’d be happy in that situation.”

Santa Destroy

Let’s stick with labour as a theme as we move to this hat trick from Unwinnable, with authors observing the peculiar and sometimes perverse manifestations of work in play.

• Would You Still Employ Me If I Was A Worm? | Unwinnable
  Alex W. DeJong finds a genuine article in this Earthworm Sim (Further Reading: Kenzie Du on job anxiety).
• No More Heroes and Notions of a Working-Class Underworld | Unwinnable
  J.M. Henson charts the dead-end horizons of one Travis Touchdown (Further Reading: De’Angelo Epps on No More Heroes‘ slow climb out of meaninglessness).
• Why Do You, as a Supposedly Fun Daily Game, Have a Streak Counter | Unwinnable
  Jay Castello contends with the doldrums of the dailies (Further Reading: Anne Helen Petersen on exploitation, burnout and restoration in daily games).

“Yesterday evening I was reflecting on having had a very productive day filled with good work on projects that are important to me and personal maintenance tasks that have a habit of slipping when I’m deep in the aforementioned projects. It was a lovely feeling: fulfilled, proud, tired without being worn out. And then I thought, oh no, my Puzzmo streak.”

Active Timeless Battle

Next up, we have some new inquiries into genre, starting with this pairing on RPGs and their historical contexts.

• Hydlide: Remaking history | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi won’t let Hydlide–whether the original or this 90s Windows port–be reduced to a footnote in the histories of the games it helped to inspire (Further Reading: Cassidy on Virtual Hydlide).
• Qliphah in Providence’s Shadow and the Weird New JRPG | Ogre Run
  Orge Run examines a provocative, even contentious recent tactical RPG, putting its seemingly off-putting ingredients in dialogue with its genre forebears (Further Reading: Sam Howitt on Dungeon Encounters).

“The argument here is not that a player can only appreciate Qliphah after having done the homework of playing these earlier games, but rather that these systems are not as strange as they are made out to be. Qliphah is an action game borrowing the strategic aspects of RPGs that perhaps pretends to instead be a strategic RPG borrowing the spectacular elements of action games. What makes Qliphah bold is not strictly its combination of genres but how those genres are combined in ways that go beyond merely adding numbers and gauges to an action game. Playing on dread difficulty, the game thus demands that players become intimate with its systems, along the way discovering what works and what does not. Not only does it challenge our preconceived notions of the genre but above all, it remains a rewarding experience.”

Novel Visions

Let’s look at visual novels now, evaluating theme, structure, and substance.

• Musings on a Moonfall – Schrödinger’s Call (PC) Review | Gamesline
  Rose comes away disappointed by a story at considerably greater pains than its genre forebears and inspirations to say considerably less (Further Reading: Rose’s previous writing on of the Devil).
• Mugen Houyou and the Phantasmagoric Delusion of Youkan | Germinate
  kalechipskid dwells on the institutional and insulating horror of the Japanese mansion (Further Reading: Ashley Bardhan on Silent Hill f).

“The youkan here is the purest expression of the owner’s own evil. It’s criticized as a symbol of excessive wealth but also lambasted for disconnecting the inhabitants from society, trapping them in loops that develop sociopathic behaviors. Mugen Houyou states that the most pitiful way to live is with cruelty, where you see others as tools instead of fellow human beings.”

Push and Pull

This is a looser pairing on my part, but I’m linking these next two selections together for their focus on character writing.

• Forever Ago – Manic Pixie Nightmare Game | startmenu
  Hiero de Lima struggles to connect to a story of grief with unrelatable characters and the usual intergenerational axes to grind (Further Reading: Garrett Martin on Mixtape).
• The Scout and the Enforcer | Lia’s blog
  Lia juxtaposes the ways in which Saros and Returnal push and pull along opposite trajectories (Further Reading: Emma Kostopolus on the moral and mortal philosophy of roguelikes).

“Returnal is a game about trauma and motherhood, about being stuck in a loop of guilt and regret, about going back again and again and again. It is a game about being punished eternally and finding pleasure in madness. Saros is a game about greed and abuse, about pursuing your own desires with no regard for others, about barging forward again and again and again. It is a game about never being punished and the way that warps you.”

Material Connections

This trio, disparate in topic and format, explore material and interpersonal connections between our media and our lives.

• Chicago cinephiles still want something to hold | Chicago Reader
  Farouk Kannout investigates a pivot among the public, perpindicular to the prerogatives of platform holders, to physical media (Further Reading: Paige Eldridge on physical media and collective nostalgia).
• How Being a Parent Influenced Escape The Baby Alarm | Gamers with Glasses
  Luis Aguasvivas pursues ponderences of parenthood, puzzle design, and the Playdate, via Escape the Baby Alarm and in interview with its creator (Further Reading: Joseph Earl Thomas on playing Final Fantasy XIV with his kids).
• Big Heterotopia | Unwinnable
  Phoenix Simms articulates a love of life, and of the natural world, on a Big Walk with friends (Further Reading: Joey Wawzonek on Big Walk).

“The charm of Big Walk is how it instills a collective sense of awe, curiosity and admiration similar to what you might experience going on hike with friends IRL. During my first session, as I set out with Emily, Autumn and Kaile from the starting area which resembles a giant daycare crossed with a social experiment lab, it didn’t take long for a couple of us to muse about what plants and trees we were encountering. “What is this flower?” Emily asked of a spray of lacy, white-petaled plants that grew in bunches along our path. “I think it’s…maybe alyssum? Or yarrow…?” I remembered answering her realizing how it also bore a similar resemblance to Queen Anne’s lace a.k.a. wild carrot.”

Critical Chaser

Thinking about all those copies of Lunar: The Silver Star Story Complete I’ve seen in display cases at local shops over the years.

• Why Does That Game in CeX Cost So Much? | denparity
  Izzie P. is on the case. The exorbitant glass case (Further Reading: Wallace Truesdale on doing your videogame homework).

“To me, bootlegs of these games are like lab diamonds. I’d rather have a working Pokemon game than one that costs £150 because some chuds who collect toys like they’re businessmen decided it should be. That’s blood diamond shit and I do not want to monitarily support that “industry”. I hope all their discs rot and their internal batteries die.”