"Where is all the good writing about games?"
…Circles
We’re opening this week with four authors who are each concerned with how game narratives and worlds can be a little bit “extra” in their presentation or structure in the interest of more clearly articulating a connection back to the material world. This often involves the adoption of magical realist conventions, even in seemingly unlikely genres (military espionage, anyone?). …
…experience, challenge, and sometimes usurp those stories. Presented here this week, then, are impressions from a brand new big-budget experience and reflections on a long-running actual play tabletop podcast.
“Tabletop roleplaying games are at their best when there is a dialectical tension between the GM
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…gathered here all delve into yesteryear’s titles to examine the structural and thematic successes and failures going on under the hood. One day I’ll be able to afford a copy of Crusader of Centy, surely.
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…Gibson explores a spooky indie endeavour with a bit of jank and a lot of heart.
“Symphony of the Night is famous for being a game all about those nice little touches and as such I thought it’d be fun to crudely mash together two of my favourite hobbies – videogames and weird old books – and cast a Spengler-like eye over some of Castlevania’s most horrifically beautiful pixelled beasts,…
Welcome, readers, to the first edition of This Month In Videogame Vlogging. Yes, we’ve decided to give video-based criticism its own column (again), rather than include it in the weekly blogging roundup. This pivot-to-video will be happening monthly, subject to change. You probably worked both those things out from the title. But hi, hello. I’m looking forward to sharing this journey with you.
Videos about video games are a formally diverse lot. Video essays, let’s plays, video reviews, roundtable discussions, documentaries, industry exposés, unclassifiable and misc – all of these are of interest to us, so long as
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There’s been a whole bunch of critical discussion around a particular point of lore in Death Stranding that misguidedly ties queer and especially ace identity to some kind of negative societal trend towards emotional distance. We begin this issue with two of the week’s finest examinations of this topic, and why getting representation right matters.
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…| Unwinnable Jeremy Signor takes the temperature of the state of MTG with the current pivot away from paper and towards Arena.
“Kingdom Hearts 3 is a Disney sequel. Of course, I mean this literally. It’s a sequel to the other KH games, which heavily feature Disney content, and often dive into side stories of those universes….
…(especially as we march ever forward into bigger pores and better hair), the SHMUP genre seems uniquely focused on apocalyptic visions not easily created elsewhere.”
Included here are three pieces that dig into different aspects of genre and design, identifying successes, failures, trends, and legacies.
…the analyses on display here in the following pair of articles really tug at both what’s stiflingly conventional and what’s refreshingly new in the application of this trope in a recent big titles.
“It helps that Jesse is confident and attractive, but I fixate on the way that
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Welcome back, readers. Hope everyone’s keeping safe.
I’m spending a lot of time indoors out of necessity right now. I mean, as a Ph.D candidate studying games that may be a fairly unremarkable statement even in perfectly ordinary tines, but I’m at least used to varying the roofs I spend my time beneath. Lately, like many, my commute is now largely between the computer in one room and the console in the other. Makes me think I should have got Ring Fit Adventure or something before scarcity started driving up prices.
A lot of authors lately are
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