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narratives

Aaron Trammell | Keywords in Play, Episode 12

…games they produce, and in the narratives of the games that they produce. And this is come on the heels of a good deal of fan pushback, which makes actually this conversation a little more difficult because I don’t want to appear like I’m taking sides on this conversation, cus I think that the fans who have pushed to have better representation in the games they play, have a really great point and still a really great point that they’re making. But I also, do think that Wizards of the Coast has been responding to some extent, to the sort…

June 13th

…our recollection of old games, like all things, tends to drift (often unreliably) into tidy narratives and structures of what we think they should be. We remember, or we think we remember, what games were supposed to look like on a CRT television, rather than what they actually happened to look like on the particular sets we had access to at the time. We remember, or we think we remember, what it feels like to play one of the old Falcom classics fresh out of the 80s. But we don’t, not quite, and that can be a valuable starting point…

September 5th

…going in.

  • A Year Later, I Still Can’t Stop Thinking About Disco Elysium | Kotaku Renata Price muses on Disco Elysium‘s slow overarching meditation on trauma–personal and collective–and the ways we move through it.
  • “Shivers, the investigation, Harry’s own internal discourse and final testimony. All of it in service of producing narratives strong enough to cope with trauma after trauma, and realizing that, despite all the broken things inside of you, you can still touch and be touched by other people. Yes, Harry is a fuckup. But he’s still going. He wants to be better, and…

    January 24th

    …Uppercut De’Angelo Epps traces the thematic trajectory across the No More Heroes games from sensational cynicism to hopeful redemption.

  • Single Player | Into The Spine Daisy Treloar considers the history of single player in games, as well as the continued influence of gaming’s multiplayer origins on single-player narratives.
  • I Love Women Who Don’t Like Me Back in Video Games | Fanbyte Bonnie Qu appreciates reminders that characters aren’t always here to please you–especially when those reminders come from women.
  • “What might be interpreted as moral complexity in a man can easily become aloofness in a…

    January 30th

    …and their gaming habits, from Columbine onward).

    “By externalizing the cause of white violence from perpetrators, these narratives both assume and reinforce white innocence, abdicating mass shooters for responsibility, and scapegoating a single entertainment form without meaningfully interrogating the broader culture that has produced it.”

    Save States

    Next up are two pieces about two very different games, a full 60 years apart in time, united by the conversations of preservation and historicity.

    • HUTSPIEL and Dr. Dorothy K. Clark | 50 Years of Text Games Aaron A. Reed uncovers the history and authorship…

    February 27th

    …only as interesting as its scars.”

    Counter-Narratives

    Popular games often accrue a critical narrative alongside any internal textual narrative they tell, whether that takes the form of Dreaded Discourse or a more evenhanded Consensus. To varying degrees, our next three featured writers go against these grains, offering new critical perspectives on well-covered titles.

    • Spiritfarer’s Recipe for Solarpunk | Unwinnable Phoenix Simms finds a solarpunk soul at the heart of Spiritfarer’s sustainable outlook and its focus on cooking as an expression of memory and nostalgia.
    • Broccoli Dungeon | Unwinnable Ruth Cassidy looks past the discourse…

    Esther Wright | Keywords in Play, Episode 18

    …materials to offer more nuanced interpretations of the influence of dominant understandings of U.S. History on game development and marketing decisions. These hegemonies, established by and through the conventions of pre-existing cultural “genres” like the Western and film noir, and popular narratives long-centred on the white and male experience, lead to games that exclude and marginalise other people and identities, and promotional practices that reaffirm exclusionary stories about America’s “real” past. Esther is also a convener of the Historical Games Network https://www.historicalgames.net/

    As a joint venture, “Keywords in Play” expands Critical Distance’s commitment to innovative writing and research about…

    March 28th

    Antecedents

    For our next section this week, here are a pair of pieces excavating the histories and narratives of games, developers, and media.

    • Kate Higby’s Magic Carpet Ride | Fanbyte Damiano Gerli uncovers the forgotten legacy of an innovative programmer from the bedroom coder days.
    • Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device [1947] – Arcade Idea Art Maybury, in exploring the earliest possible examples and edge cases for videogames, finds success less in committing rigidly to formal criteria and more in observing their shared genesis with television as paradigmatic media of the US military-industrial complex.

    Jaroslav Ć velch | Keywords in Play, Episode 20

    …a lot of people can identify with these, with these narratives. So, I think that it doesn’t really speak only about a regionally specific experience, but also more broadly about going to marginal or peripheral experience, because a lot of people in the US and you know, in the UK, also kind of had pirated copies of games. And they might have also kind of made, you know, like, DIY, freeware, and shareware games. And I think that the, the practices and the, the attitudes, and the aesthetics were in, in many ways similar.

    Emilie: That’s really cool and…

    June 5th

    …Renata Price mediates on how Hardspace: Shipbreaker pushes through and against the dueling, contradictory narratives of labour in the American popular consciousness.

    “Hardspace: Shipbreaker is unique in the completeness of its portrayal, and the grace with which it depicts that work. Objects float through space in gorgeous arcs, accelerating and decelerating in pace with the wide arcs of your grapple beam. Its reverence towards labor isn’t just aesthetically beautiful, but actively humanizing towards its characters. The joy of shipbreaking isn’t just satisfying gameplay, but an essential part of the game’s core belief in the possibility of a…