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bodies

November Roundup: Collapse

…that bodies leave behind on Haywire Magazine. That sometimes stories told are done so only in inference, and that these stories can be as minute or as moving as any of their peers, spoken at length in just a few words.

Read it now

Brendan Keogh

Wolfenstein 2 and Mending Broken Things

Article contains spoilers for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Brendan Keogh points out how much of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus deals with things broken, and how enduring despite being broken subverts the normal experience of a protagonist, and how those things being broken…

January 15th

…Effect and Quest Logs | The Psychology of Video Games Jamie Madigan talks memory, motivation, and the completionist impulse in work and play.

  • Virtual Bodies in Virtual Worlds – First Person Scholar Benjamin Gattet provides an essential introduction to the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as it relates to games. Short, to the point, but could change the way you think about digital media forever.
  • “Games are not simulations of a physical world. They might contain elements that refer to a physicality, but they are not a transposition of elements from a natural world to a virtual…

    This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2017

    …asserts that We Are Chicago fails to present the reality of black life in poverty, pointing to education as a cure-all, but never examining the systemic roadblocks to it.

  • What Remains of the Body in A Mortician’s Tale | Ploughshares At Emerson College – Patrick Larose Patrick Larose sees grief in A Mortician’s Tale through the routine of preparing bodies for those who need to say goodbye, and describes how the game portrays different ways people do so.
  • Older Games

    • Deus Ex (Spoilers) | YouTube – Errant Signal – Christopher Franklin Chris Franklin views the…

    February 4th

    …| ZAM – The Largest Collection of Online Gaming Information Dante Douglas addresses the political implications of portraying crowd dynamics as one of the challenges to protest movements.

    “At its best, it feels like a fantastical reimagining of protest dynamics, where players can act as an omniscient conductor of a torrential cascade of crowds, laying down waypoints and rally zones and directing the flow of movement.”

    Gulfs

    In more writing on the politics of games, two critics look at diversity and the kinds of bodies that are portrayed and played with.

    • How…

    February 25th

    …uses monster parts to forge stronger weapons or armour so they can challenge and dismember even more powerful monsters, but bestiaries and Monster Hunter share an obsession with the valuable substances created by exotic animal bodies.”

    Community

    Two critics reflected on how systems shape our social lives and responsibility to others, in videogames and on digital platforms.

    • Playing Favorites | Real Life Sasha Geffen critiques the representations of social life in Fallout 4 and Stardew Valley, and finds similar problems in the past few years’ changes in social media platform design.
    • Dragon Age: Inquisition’s…

    March 4th

    …Plugs

    Before I you check out the links to subscribe and contribute below, I wanted to pass on news of two book releases that were announced this week:

    • On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space | Soraya Murray
    • A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames | Brendan Keogh

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    Have you read, seen, heard or otherwise experienced something new that made you

    Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

    April 1st

    …with that, we now continue with our regularly-scheduled programming.

    Art therapy

    Two pieces represent two very different approaches to writing about violent emotions in games.

    • Overwatch and DBT: Why it’s Time to Teach Boys Coping Skills Wally Brennan shares some strategies for using the trials of a tense game to learn how to manage emotions.
    • Sure, It’s Made Of The Corpses Of Your Victims. But Is It Art? | Kotaku Stacie Ponder appraises the “artists” who leave dead bodies strewn around in gory videogames.

    Fear of art

    Continuing the theme of violence,…

    October 28th

    …regular readers that my principal preoccupation with the big shiny cowboy simulator of the moment is the developing conversation on the labour that went into its production. These three articles, I think, highlight separate but equally important beats in that conversation, and I encourage you to take a look at them each.

    • No Respawns: Telltale, Rockstar & Crunch | Videodame Nat Dish weaves artfully between narratives of destruction and expendable bodies in game worlds and development studios. This one is really special, folx.
    • Should games get lower review scores for poor labour practices? – I Need Diverse

    Calling for Critical Compilations!

    …of a few days. But other games stick in our memory and invite discussion for weeks, months, and even years. That’s why Critical Distance has a feature known as Critical Compilations, which bring together all the best writing on the most prominent, hotly-discussed games like Braid, Bioshock, and Dark Souls.

    To help promote the critical bodies of work which surround these important games, Critical Distance has decided to commission five new Critical Compilations. Here are some of the games we’re looking for:

    • Amnesia
    • Assassin’s Creed series
    • Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2
    • The Beginner’s Guide

    November 25th

    …video game conceit and as an embodied concept, and studies how What Remains of Edith Finch moves thoughtfully past that divide (content notification: references to suicide).

    “In What Remains, the escapism is representative of the allure of romanticising death, but the commentary of the game acknowledges that escapism for what it is, reminding us that fetishising death is us stepping away from reality instead of engaging it.”

    Body Paragraphs

    There was lots of great writing this week about bodies of all kinds: how they are included, excluded, policed, queered, and more in games. These