July 28th
byWelcome back, readers. I’m in the middle of my first summer doing this Senior Curator thing, and truth be told, I was a little worried that critical games writing would slow down a bit in these months. I’m used to an academic…
criticality
July 21st
byWelcome back, readers. So a delightful trove of documents and materials have surfaced this week detailing the early development history of the The Sims and how queerness was an integral–and subversive–inclusion from the beginning. And of course, it largely comes down to…
July 14th
byWelcome back, readers. Friends, I am in my element this week. People are writing about old JRPGs, queerness, accessibility, inclusivity, and bad toys from the 90s. Oh, and writers are taking the Mordhau devs to task for some wildly bad messaging that’s…
June 23rd
byWelcome back, readers. First of all, if you haven’t already checked out Gilles Roy’s stellar Critical Compilation on Assassin’s Creed III, I can’t recommend it enough! After so many sequels, III remains a sort of critical flashpoint for the series, so there’s…
May 5th
byHello readers! This week’s labour abuse spotlight is on NetherRealm, and the story runs pretty much the whole way through the studio’s history. I hate that my touching on this is practically a weekly feature in its own right at this point,…
April 28th
byWelcome back, readers. So, when I expressed the hope last week that there would be provocative critical takes on the new Mortal Kombat game released this week, I didn’t mean this. But why should I expect the Internet to have anything other…
March 31st
byThanks for stopping by, readers. This week EA is the latest of the major publishers to take a turn on the layoff misery-go-round. You can bet this news is on my mind as I gather together the latest critical writing on labour…
March 24th
byHappy Sunday, readers! First of all, if you haven’t already seen it, we’ve got a new Critical Compilation this week–this time on the Mass Effect Trilogy, courtesy of Emma Kostopolus. She’s gathered a bunch of great writing on how the series intersects…
March 17th
byHey there. This was a pretty devastating week. The terrorist attack in Christchurch has sparked some long-overdue conversations about the extent to which white supremacist ideology is coddled at almost every level of western media and culture. This time around, games–and gaming…
March 10th
byHappy Sunday, readers! So last week I used this space to essentially subtweet a major publisher that did something really stupid and toxic in a cynical attempt to grab headlines. Is it possible to do the same thing to the largest distributor…