"Where is all the good writing about games?"
Videogames: where frustration and inconvenience can be enjoyable. This week’s roundup features writing on the design and portrayal of economic systems, emotional loops, and physical structures for human bodies. Fathers First, this week brought us three pieces about dad games, children, and…
This week’s roundup features writing on the Far Cry games’ ambivalence, and reflections the uncomfortable ways games make us relate to our own minds. But first, This Week in Videogame Blogging brings you some examinations of how we relate to the economic…
Discussion about guns and unionization looms large in games criticism this week. This roundup features the most important writing on these topics and more – but first, I want to bring your attention to something special that we published this week. Dark…
Responses to the Trump administration’s meeting to discuss links between videogames and violence feature prominently This Week in Videogame Blogging – but this roundup starts with some art history. Bad art Two Unwinnable articles this week argue for aesthetic reclamations of bad…
Games critics are always exploring new ways to talk about digital media, be it genre, narrative structure, architecture or the material thinginess of computers themselves. The latest This Week in Videogame Blogging features artists, journalists, and historians trying out new perspectives on…
This week, critical writers in games were moved by the final moments of Demon’s Souls, disturbed by the empty lives of non-player characters, and concerned by xenophobic portrayals of history. We round up the most original writing of the week in the…
Who has been forging new paths in criticism, highlighting untold stories, and sharing the most interesting lenses on games? It’s time to announce this year’s Critical Distance Awards. This is the second year that we have run our Awards separately to our…
What kind of people do we want to be? What kinds of people do we become when we play games? And how are our gameplay experiences shaped by who we already are? This week, critics, journalists, and video essayists discussed morality, identity,…
Does it matter what console you play a game on? This week a number of writers look at the significance of platforms and ports, and how games deal with their cultural context. This roundup starts with reports on the conditions in which…
How can interactive systems subvert the way we normally think things are supposed to be done? This week’s roundup features a number of articles on designing games for different ways of being, as well as examinations of how visual design can make…