Critical Distance https://www.critical-distance.com "Where is all the good writing about games?" Tue, 25 Feb 2025 05:51:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.critical-distance.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/cropped-favicon-32x32.png Critical Distance https://www.critical-distance.com 32 32 7221060 February 23rd https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/02/25/february-23rd-2/ Tue, 25 Feb 2025 05:51:08 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10517 Welcome back readers.

Note to self: plug the Patreon!

Ah, well met, fair traveller! Have you checked our fine Patreon? Every little bit helps!

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Red Check

Let’s start things off this issue with a series of pieces on choicemaking in games, with object texts ranging from historically (in)famous to just-out-now.

“The most important thing I think Citizen Sleeper 2 does is show that there are different kinds of “failure,” and not all of them are bad. Like, in the very first contract, you can choose to deliver a ship mind core to a parts dealer or let the hacker you brought with you download the data and destroy the core. If you do the delivery, the dealer tries trapping you in their warehouse to get money for the bounty on your head; if you let the hacker destroy the data (failing the contract), she’ll help you steal the part you needed from the dealer. Strict failure in these terms meant opening a path to other opportunities. A lot of the game is like this. You will have to weigh the consequences of your decisions carefully, but even “bad ends” can lead to positive outcomes.”

Local Backup

Our next two pieces pursue topics of memory and archive.

“Preservation, like game development, is process, is labour. It’s a song and a dance, and if you can only understand it is a marketable output, well. There’s no orchestra, only emptiness.”

Underappreciated

Now let’s look at some historically important games that don’t typically get a lot of mindshare among English-language audiences, but which have defined entire genres and gaming cultures.

“Level Up was a key company in the early days of the MMORPG market in Brazil, contributing significantly to mainstreaming Asian pop culture beyond Japan. Today, the experience of playing an MMORPG has changed a lot but still consists of living in a world that is incorporated into our real world. No matter how different the gaming market is in Brazil, the influence of our history cannot be underestimated.”

Are You Not Entertained?

Art, spectacle, and abjection bring together our next two picks.

“Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a wild creation whose parts don’t always seem to add up, until suddenly they add up too neatly. But as the culmination of everything Simogo has done before, it could not be more perfect. It strikes me as a reflection of fifteen long years spent constantly thinking about how the audience will respond to something–a howl of frustration at the struggle of making art that welcomes everybody without losing its soul. It is the most melancholy victory lap I’ve ever seen.”

Heart and SOUL

Queerness, desire, and love comprise the core of this next section.

“Heart “enjoys” the attention and adoration of men, but unlike the fairytale princess, he is also at the mercy of men’s violence and capacity for betrayal. If Heart doesn’t go so far as to identify as a woman (and the use of quotation marks in the above is worth noting), Heart sees himself in relation to feminine archetypes—the princess, the sex worker, the woman scorned. These figures provide models for how Heart sees himself, “woman-like” in his suffering as well as his longing.”

In Short Order

We’re bringing back the list. Here are some good lists!

“To one degree or another, all RPGs re-create aspects of the tabletop experience, but how much they use and how blatantly they pull from Dungeons & Dragons could put them at risk — of seeming derivative, I suppose, but also of infringing on intellectual property. For this reason, a lot of attorneys would tell creatives to avoid using intellectual property they don’t own and, better yet, come up with their own ideas so they can own them. To a degree this is what Final Fantasy has done, as it moves away from using most but not all D&D monsters, but it’s tough guessing whether the motivations are legal, creative, or some mix of the two.”

Critical Chaser

Last week a blunt, this week a stein.

“It’s impossible, I think, to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 without playing a boozer, even if you’re only boozing in cutscenes. The game’s 15th century world is greased by many splendours of hooch, from the wine used in potion-brewing through the finer vintages at banqueting tables to the viral pondwater they sell in seedier taverns. A lot of the time, the writing views alcohol as a means of teeing up some slapstick debauchery reminiscent of Paul Bettany’s character in A Knight’s Tale. It venerates the spectacle of having a large one, with custom dialogue and voice-acting for protagonist Henry when you woozily explain your antics to guards. But sometimes, perhaps despite itself, it expresses something about the culture of drinking and the unpleasantness of being militantly exhorted to drink.”

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]]> 10517 February 16th https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/02/17/february-16th-3/ Mon, 17 Feb 2025 20:16:03 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10506 Welcome back readers.

We’ve got a nice compact issue for this week. Think of it as a little CD snack (curator’s note: please do not attempt to snack on CDs. They’re quite jagged, probably made with toxic chemicals, and above all, inedible).

Also, don’t forget our Patreon! We’d really appreciate having enough of a cushion to grow our operation and sock a little bit of money away for a rainy day (or a snowy day. Where I live, winter is back, folks).

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Developing Stories

Our opening section this week is all about game dev, be it mission statements, jam debriefs, or interviews with creators.

“You don’t have to recreate an entire sport. Only make what you need to think. Sometimes what you need is none. Or sometimes you need a whole new sport.”

On Deck

Here are a couple of recent plays from frequently-featured writers.

“When of the Devil talks about a concept, like laws that exist to anonymize the wealthy, or even something as simple as the fight for right to repair continuing unsuccessfully, they’re contextualized in events, in slopes and time. These aren’t bits created just to demonstrate capitalism’s chokehold in a vacuum, they’re given excuses, the same way it’s happened since time immemorial, and continues to happen right now.”

Cultural Production

Now let’s look at intersections of games and culture, including gaming culture, industry culture, and language culture.

“Gaming isn’t broken. The way people engage with it is, but that can change. You just have to be willing to let go of the safety net of cynicism. You have to be willing to care. Because, in the end, that’s the real rebellion. Caring when the world wants you to be in perpetual fear.”

Critical Chaser

Somebody pass Saulden a blunt. And maybe a hug.

“Majula, specifically the little terrace on the second floor of the mansion, you need to get the key from Cale but its worth it for the view. Chillin with some friends or by yourself, listening to the music and eternal sunset of the place, its just peaceful and nice enough to mellow out”

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]]> 10506 February 9th https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/02/11/february-9th-3/ Tue, 11 Feb 2025 04:45:16 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10503 Welcome back readers.

Apologies for my absense last week. I caught a nasty strain of flu, and I think having it right after a bout of COVID made it a nastier experience still. Owing to that, this week’s issue is extra-long–29 picks, to be precise!

These longer issues are quite a bit more work to put together, so I make no apologies for inviting you to kick a few bucks our way, if you support our mission and have the resources to do so. If you haven’t already, you can check Zach’s update on our finances.

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Civilization VII

Our first few sections on this catch-up week each focus on recent noteworthy games, with a pair of articles to account for each. We’re leading with Civ 7.

“It’s hard not to resign myself to powerlessness in the face of severe catastrophes that seem to appear out of nowhere. But persevering in the face of disaster usually means making it out to the other side, eventually. Remember that the potential for change can work both ways. The civilization that makes it out of a crisis often won’t look anything like the one that went in.”

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Next up, let’s talk about the Atlus RPG that made waves late last year.

“If you enjoy playing RPGs, Studio Zero’s Metaphor is a highly competent title. This essay was a mere critical exercise examining some of the racial dynamics that feel flat. They are far from highly offensive, without depth and lacking real-world understanding.”

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Our next section concerns BioWare’s latest foray into Thedas.

“Before The Veilguard, I often felt Dragon Age didn’t actually believe in anything. Its characters did, but as a text, Dragon Age often felt so preoccupied with empowering the player’s decisions that it felt like Thedas would never actually get better, no matter how much you fought for it. While it may lack the same prickly dynamics and the grey morality that became synonymous with the series, The Veilguard’s doesn’t just believe that the world is full of greys and let you pick which shade you’re more comfortable with. It’s the most wholeheartedly the Dragon Age universe has declared that the world of Thedas can be better than it was before.”

Car Games

Next up, here are thoughts on two very different car games–a retro-styled RPG, and a retro-playing PS2 revival.

“Here we are in 2025, then, and Genki, the Japanese developer best known for the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series (also known variously as Shutokou Battle and Tokyo Highway Challenge over the years in various regions) has just put out a new entry in the long-dormant franchise. Not only that, it’s been getting near-universal praise from press and public alike, despite launching on Steam in an unfinished “Early Access” state, albeit with a substantial chunk of game to enjoy already. And the thing at the forefront of my mind is, “why didn’t this happen sooner?””

Sleeper Hit

This next section of mostly-but-not-all-reviews covers games that were primarily featured in one selected article this week.

“I stop to battle, and I stop to fight, and I stop to die. Sometimes the world drops more mobs on me then I can handle with my equipment and reflexes. The world stops, I regenerate at the bus stop at the end of the world – a hole-in-the-wall shopping gallery that exists for me to mindlessly hold the joystick forward through. There’s nothing to see here, not for me: just recycled art assets and palettes from Hyper Light Drifter feeling like I wouldn’t notice. I’m insulted it’s a rogue-lite – the idea of playing this forever fills me with a deep-set horror. The same sword combos, the same guns, the same world broken up into incremental upgrades and played for the sake of it: doesn’t this look neat?”

Blueprints

Here are our design-focused picks this week, with some interesting conversations on interactivity, stillness, and balancing.

“What I see in Freedom Fighters is a game that encourages and allows for enormous player agency. But that sense of agency is enabled by a streamlining of mechanics and features rather than allowing the player to operate and participate in a successively large number of mechanics and features.”

Ball Is Life

It is! So let’s talk a bit about sports games.

“Sports, at every level, is about losing. Even fans of serial winners craft situations where they are the underdogs. They beef with sporting laws, they beef regular laws, or they just plainly lie that ‘everyone’ doubted them. To be a sports fan, and especially a fan of a bad team, is to embrace vulnerability. It is loving knowing you will be hurt. To paraphrase Ryan Hunn, founder and co-host of the Stadio podcast, watching football is trusting your happiness to eleven strangers who do not know you exist. You lose so when you win it’s that much sweeter. It’s the promise of a better life to come. It’s religion.”

Cave Stories

Our next three selections unpack different interactions and intersections between the virtual and material.

“Today when I see somebody shouting threats because a diversely-coded reviewer awarded their favourite puppet show less than 9 out of 10, I cannot help but think of the people in Plato’s original allegory with their heads chained to a motherfucking wall. A stream of ‘new releases’ goes continuously by, to which they cheer & boo & hiss. In between the releases go streams of product reviews: 9 (cheer), 9 (cheer), 9 (cheer), 9 (cheer), 8 (boos & death threats). Everything & everyone they see around them now has become a part of the show—shadows upon shadows, scrolling past them on the wall. These people aren’t here to consider the wild possibilities; they’re only here to expect things (and the things they expect are atrocious).”

Copy that Floppy

Legacy media–and the discovery practices they entail–feature in this next pairing.

“So, how do we bring back the feeling of discovery in an era dominated by algorithms and homogenization? It starts by changing the way you think about media. By completely rejecting the idea that everything needs to be smooth and seamless, with embracing friction, randomness, and experimentation. It starts with taking risks. As players, we can seek out games that aren’t algorithmically optimized. We can support indie developers and niche projects.”

Queer Matters

Two pieces this week explore queer themes large and small in games and structures.

“A list can be surveillance, power, control. A list can be categorisation, record. A list can be poetry, written into the soil over thousands of years. A list is confirmation.”

Critical Inquiries

Art, affect, and autonomy are the guiding themes of this section.

“I recognize now, well over eight years into writing about games, that I simply didn’t know where to look. Outlets like Critical Distance were not yet on my radar, whereas GameSpot and its kin were. Mistakenly reducing games discourse to these market-driven outlets, I concluded that no one had felt the same way I did with The Last Guardian, so I started trauma-dumping to everyone I knew who cared about games – including Ben Vollmer. Because Ben and I worked together, I soon tapped into his idea for a website-community hybrid, where games and the lasting impact they left were celebrated in the way that a museum celebrates artworks that make a lasting cultural impact. Several conversations later, Epilogue Gaming was born.”

Communal Effort

Different ideas of community–in and out of the game world–guide these next two selections.

“The water ritual fundamentally alters your relationship with the world around you. You will be adored by those who love your water-sib and despised by those that feel negatively about them. Since water is such a precious commodity, the water ritual transforms a simple act of kindness into a praxis with deep societal consequences. It is a sacred act, spiritual in a way, with its forming and strengthening of bonds across cultures and species.”

Critical Chaser

Still the coolest battle theme out of the SNES games, too.

  • Ode to Benjamin | Unwinnable
    Alexander B. Joy raises his glass to an underappreciated Final Fantasy protagonist who trucks through cosmic adversity with an easy shrug.

“He’s not special – he’s available. Less a hero of destiny than a hero of convenience, Benjamin represents the latest in a line of disposable warriors. Is he the Chosen One? Who cares? He’ll do.”

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]]> 10503 January 26th https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/01/27/january-26th-3/ Mon, 27 Jan 2025 23:06:18 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10495 Welcome back readers.

The first thing I’m going to plug this week is an Itch bundle–this one is a big collection of TTRPGs and materials in support of the Trans Empowerment Project. Good games, good creators, good cause.

The second thing I’m plugging this week is, once again, our Patreon. Zach has an update on the site that explains our situation in greater detail, but in short, we’d like to move the needle from “treading water” to “room to grow”. Help us do that if you can, and if you appreciate the work that we do!

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Story Time

Our opening series of highlights this week are all narratives about games and play, so pull up a chair and settle in for a tale.

“You know, it’s hard not to be taken in by him, and by his enthusiasm. It is a great story. That it should all begin with top secret information divulged by a whispering Tom Clancy – who’s also not around to verify any of this – is not what I expected at all. It’s a story that evokes an era where people had secret conversations, when knowledge was a little less centralised, and where the gaps existed for stories like these to materialise. Who knows? Perhaps it is true. But every so often I catch little inconsistencies in what Stealey tells me and I begin to wonder.”

Crisis Core

Our next three picks examine the entanglement of games within our world’s many ills from different angles.

“Indeed, what propelled Everything to Play For into existence is a rallying cry: “We can either allow this vast cultural space to be eternally entangled in the awkward nets of conservatism and financialisation that will suffocate and deform both it and the players who touch it, or we can fight to rescue it.” As I read this, I asked myself, can the video game industry be rescued? Should we even try? Everything to Play For answers back with a resounding Yes!”

The Workshop

Here we’ve got designers talking design and craft, from both narrative and systems angles.

“So here’s my real hot take: focusing on immersion in video games is at the detriment of having them being appreciated as craft. Interesting games writing makes you pause and consider intentionality and authorship. Immersion, at least as its popularly used to refer to getting “lost” in a game, doesn’t leave space for the pleasures of engaging with the gameworld as artifice.”

Artificial Industry

These two pieces establish context and examples for the proliferation of large language models in gamedev and, what do you know, they still just make things worse than they need to be.

“You could pay a writer £500 to do a much better job – but why pay £500 when you can pay nothing for a bad job that people won’t notice until it’s too late?”

High Score

Let’s switch gears now and look at a pair of reviews for games past and not-yet-out!

“Exciting stories, sim-like detail, the messy reality of life amongst the stars… Star Trader is all of these things at the same time, and because that was made crystal clear before I’d gone anywhere near its discs the game’s constant swaying between two genres only ever feels seamless. This is a story that starts with a bold girl with tales of missing relatives and gods and ancient legends and ends with me shooting at something big and evil at the centre of the galaxy, like all good sci-fi stories should.”

Hit Me

This section pivots from play to player, as the authors work their subject games into their own narrative arcs.

“I hit the final challenge, to beat the game Jokerless, that is to say learning how to only play the cards and never the jokers and beat a run and was harder than anything I had done before and relied on luck more than skill and it felt so good once, and it felt so good when I got close, and then it felt bad but I couldn’t shake it. Suddenly it had been an hour, and I still had the game in my hands. Then it had been two. It felt so good, once, I think, but now I wasn’t sure. Then it was the next day, and I was still playing, and then it was the next day, and I was still playing, and time seemed to become something new, something amorphous, something like water, moving swift, pushing along with dangerous purpose. Suddenly it was the next day again. It felt so good. Once. Didn’t it? Does it still? I started to get annoyed, flustered, angry. My heart beat faster every time I edged on victory. When I lost I swore under my breath and I felt bad and started another round. I told myself I would only play one more, as the hours melted away. I felt so bad, but I kept going, because I had to win and I had to claim victory and in doing so I would feel so good again, the way I had before. When I finally sat it down to focus on other tasks the music haunted me and the clicking of buttons haunted me and I thought about how good it probably will feel the next time. I thought about how good it felt before and how good it might again and I needed it to feel like that, just once more. I didn’t notice my teeth grinding against each other as I thought about good it might feel.”

Critical Chaser

Very cool imo.

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]]> 10495 2024 Critical Distance Update https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/01/21/2024-critical-distance-update/ Tue, 21 Jan 2025 22:04:23 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10493 I last gave an update on Critical Distance’s finances at the beginning of 2024. Now that it’s a new year, it seems like a good time to check in again.

We are just on the brink of financial stability. Some months we are only $10 short from balanced books, but the work we put into the yearly roundup means we were $400 short of being able to pay our excellent curators to review an entire year’s worth of writing without dipping into our savings last month. Have you signed up for our Patreon? It could easily make the difference!

We did have to stop running the video roundups. They were time consuming and therefore costly to run. We experimented with them for a few months, which dipped into our savings without bringing in any additional Patreon funding. Therefore, we don’t have the reserves to fund experiments that we desperately want to run, such as “hiring a WordPress developer to finally fix archives”. However, a generous donor was able to give us a much better search experience! We are combing through grants to try and find avenues for additional funding, but this is also a time-consuming and difficult task. (We have a channel in our Discord for this purpose if you’d like to volunteer!)

All that said, our Discord has never been livelier or more welcoming. It’s for everyone who wants to talk about games and games writing, regardless of whether you are a Patreon or not. Please feel free to join us on Discord, whether you simply want to discuss games, help run some community activities, or find ways to continue making Critical Distance the place to find the best games writing on the Internet.

As always, our Patreon is the primary way you can support us. We use this money to pay our editors to find, review and curate their favorite games writing on the internet week after week. As social media continues to fragment, we want to continue standing. Your support helps us do that. If you can’t contribute, telling your friends about our site helps too!

]]> 10493 January 19th https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/01/20/january-19th-3/ Tue, 21 Jan 2025 02:28:53 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10488 Welcome back readers.

I mentioned last week that I would be plugging the Patreon a little harder going forward. We’ve experienced some really great community growth in the last couple of years–there are lots of fun conversations happening on our Discord for instance–but we’ve also been a bit hamstrung on implementing and maintaining features without some additional slack in our operating budget. People are regularly sending video submissions our way, for instance, and we want to keep our eye on those, but that means we need to have the funds in the tank for the labour hours that go into that work. So… check out the Patreon!

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Indiestructable

We’re starting this week off with industry-focused conversations, looking specifically at the structural pitfalls of AAA development and the problems with some of the alternatives proposed.

“Is it all just wasted effort because we are vulnerable to exploitation and burnout? I don’t think so. I am deeply aware that some of my tendencies are not sustainable in the long run because I have a day job on top of other commitments. But in the end, I keep coming back to them because I enjoy letting people know what I think about niche games and the effort people have put into them.”

Rosetta Stone

Polygon just posted an interesting series of interviews on localization, so we’ve earmarked some here!

“With no support, little time, and a mountain of made-up words to translate, Blaustein improvised, packing the game with references. Many were right in front of him: The game’s first relic, the Cube of Zoe, is named after his daughter (not a 19th-century Russian empress, as many speculated). For others, he turned to his favorite works. J.R.R. Tolkien’s influence was particularly pronounced. The translation includes the swords Glamdring and Crissaegrim, enemies called Wargs, the Rings of Varda and Feanor, and many more references to Middle-earth. “I saw Castlevania as a big world,” he told Dongled last year, “and I wanted it to feel epic. So I reached into mythology and Tolkien to give things weight.””

Forward Thinking

This next series explores new frameworks for thinking about games, interactive media, and the world that produces them.

“I’ll be frank about my status ailments post-COVID – so far I can identify silence, often induced by fatigue and confusion. I’m definitely built differently now, but not necessarily with regard to resilience in the traditional sense.”

Strange Spaces

I don’t actually have a strong critical throughline for these next two pieces, beyond the strangeness of the games they talk about. They’re both worth your time all the same!

“Yume Nikki felt, like, so opposite to how most games or, honestly, life is set up. It didn’t care if I “got it” or if I felt like I was making progress. In fact, it almost seemed to thrive on me feeling unsure. And I’m not gonna lie, that’s kind of rare, right? We’re so used to needing answers or rewards, like, “What’s the point?” But this game didn’t even pretend to have one.”

Well Played

These next two are about locating joy in recent games.

“AAA games will probably get more and more insufferable in their use of microtransactions, for as long as players are willing to suffer indignities like being asked to pay $30 to play Call of Duty as faceless avatars of the Squid Game show. Whether anybody buys these self-parodying monstrosities or not, Call of Duty’s player counts are going to keep going up, which will do nothing but encourage ActiBlizz to crank the firehose of this crap higher and higher. Meanwhile, the Lugsteins of the world will be quietly spending years perfecting a lower-poly, higher-fun box of joy, with a simple message for everyone: let’s race.”

Critical Chaser

This writer’s got the juice.

“Chao have a lifespan. When they evolve, they’re surrounded by a bubble. When they die, there’s a different bubble. Mystic’s bubble is pink and returns a baby, already Good.

Tango gets a gray bubble. When the bubble goes, there’s nothing inside but grass.”

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]]> 10488 January 12th https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/01/13/january-12th-4/ Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:53:15 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10484 Welcome back readers.

First order of business today–I’m plugging the Patreon, and will be doing so more regularly going forward. We are a directly reader-supported operation. That support is what allows us to highlight cool and interesting games writing year-round, produce monthly and yearly recaps, organize fun community events, commission critical compilations, and keep the website up and running! Right now our intake is a little tight and not quite enough do be doing all the things we’d like to be doing (i.e. video curation!). If you’ve got a few bucks to spare and you appreciate what we do, consider helping us out!

Additionally, if you still haven’t done so, go see Kaile’s ginormous year-in-review issue! If you want to add to our reading list with your own recommendations, come hang out with us on our Discord.

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Interviews

This week we start with interviews from independent developers on topics ranging from sustainability to elevating Palestinian voices.

““The goal is to let the player feel and understand what happened to the Palestinians during this dark era, which is still shaping our daily lives,” says Abueideh. “I want to deliver a message that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is an ongoing process that started in 1948. At that point, [players] will be able to understand what is happening today and can take a stand.””

Retrograde

Next up we’re collecting different conversations on “retro”–be it the commercialization of nostalgia, gatekeeping, or “lateral thinking with withered technology”.

“Reclaiming nostalgia isn’t just about saving money, it’s about saving culture. It’s about ensuring that the joy of gaming remains a shared experience, not a privilege for the few. Supporting preservation initiatives, like the Video Game History Foundation and the Internet Archive, open-source emulation projects, and communities is a start. These efforts don’t just safeguard games; they preserve the stories, contexts, and connections tied to them. These organizations remind us that the past isn’t a product to be owned but a legacy to be shared and understood.”

Critical Consciousness

Our next section looks at power structures–ideological, racial, capital–in and out of the industry.

“Like Ursula K. Le Guin observed, “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” What Civilization V understands is that deep societal discontent cannot long be ignored. No matter what form your government assumes, failing to deliver good governance has consequences. The governed can, and will, revoke their consent.”

Art and Craft

Here we’ve got some thoughts on character writing and artistic identity.

“The point of art, such as it is, seems to be to make something that only the creator could do, something that could only be the product of their ego. And if it’s not that, we call them hacks. Except, apparently, when they remake a videogame we like.”

Critical Chaser

This one was posted a year ago but I couldn’t not.

“Most of the things Peter asked for eventually came true. The 3DS can now be hacked on all firmwares, including, should one desire, the ability to downgrade from an 11.0+ firmware.

The gacube emeleter, however, was never finished. And it was, and still is, the “devs obofihation“

We, the devs, are obligated. Let’s make it happen.“

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]]> 10484 January 5th https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/01/06/january-5th-2/ Tue, 07 Jan 2025 02:16:28 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10477 Welcome back readers.

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks! While I always take one week off around the holidays, this year I was persuaded (by myself) to extend that holiday to two weeks on account of catching COVID (Curator’s note: Do not recommend! Wear a mask!). Now that I’m back on my feet, I’m ready to return with a catch-up issue accounting for submissions we’ve received over the last three weeks.

Additionally, if you haven’t already done so, check out our humongous year-in-review issue. Once you’ve done that, consider joining our Discord and dropping a thanks to Kaile for their hard work in putting that gargantuan issue together.

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven twenty-one days.

Tales from Gamindustri

This issue we’re starting with a wide range of articles and commentaries about The Industry–development, press, past, present, back, over, historical, ahistorical, monolithic, plural.

“I think it’s right to think that video games belong to everyone. I think however that we should consider what genuine inclusion looks like. One of the contradictions inherent to predatory F2P is that while they are often the only games that low-income players can access, they are also actively hostile to those users.”

Communities of Play

Something noted in Felipe Pepe’s article above is that communities form around games and play everywhere–whether at conventions or the carceral state. That’s the focus in these next two selections.

“People in line at mealtimes discussed the health of their animals. Afternoon workers en route to their prison jobs disclosed locations of the elusive Stones of Truth. Prisoners sitting beside one another in the dayroom, tablet screens aglow, narrated their moment-by-moment progress at harvest time. A gaming community had been established.”

Jumpscared

We’ve got a bunch of different angles and approaches to horror games in this next section, including formal analysis, allegory, metanarrative, and more.

“Whether Jimmy and Curly experience the horror sequences or not is beside the point. They are for the player ultimately. They reveal what happened in a more elemental way than just telling or showing the events. And they also artfully communicate a character’s state of mind and, well, character in ways that simple retellings just can’t.”

Genre Exemplars

I’m being a little more broad in my grouping here, but each of these next picks resonates in some way with the larger idea of genre, whether by examining the features or examples of particular genres, or unpacking the concept itself.

“In spite of Heisei’s flashiness and surreality, the game is at its core a lyrical expression of the failings of their society to support and include people like Heart. Like Menhera vent art and fashion, Heisei is an expression of people who don’t fit ideal and convenient categories or roles for productive participation in a change-resistant society.”

In the Loop

Ok, you got me. I’m being excessively cheeky here and drawing a theme between Joey Schutz’s critique of gameplay loops and Kimimi’s review of a Sonic game with loops. Moving away from that ridiculous framing, each of these next pieces does a different kind of design analysis, breaking up games into their constituent components to better understand their successes and shortcomings.

“If our gameplay loops are just facilitators of content, it’s no wonder their games are left hollow and inert. It’s no wonder we stop playing them. Why bother if everything that awaits us is just fluff, filler, sound and fury? If we’re just hamsters spinning wheels?”

Queer and Trans Futurities

This next pair of articles are really gratifying trans and queer analyses, respectively, on Heaven Will Be Mine and Legacy of Kain.

“When the Elder God spits venom about his hatred of the Vampire, it is because they exist outside the wheel of death and rebirth that the Elder God sits over. “Kain’s abominations trap the essence of life”, as the thing itself puts it. It is not that Kain is a mass-murderer who has crafted an empire on the bones of humanity that seems to bother the Elder God: it is that Kain exists outside of the reproductive hierarchy that the Elder God embodies. Raziel can kill all the humans he likes throughout his journey – there exists an enclave of human survivors that you can find and slaughter or spare as you wish without comment from the game – and the Elder God won’t care: he just wants the stain of vampirism, this way of life that is incompatible with the Elder God, to be wiped clean from the world.”

Critical Chaser

This week we close with some poetry.

“I have fought
midnight shadows
but wake to
golden mornings.”

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]]> 10477 This Year in Videogame Blogging: 2024 https://www.critical-distance.com/2025/01/01/this-year-in-videogame-blogging-2024/ Thu, 02 Jan 2025 02:24:55 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10467 Welcome back to Critical Distance‘s annual roundup of great videogame blogging! We’ve taken one more trip around the Sun in our ongoing mission to highlight and archive some of the best, most thought-provoking and poignant writing about games, whether that writing comes from the academic, professional or amateur realm. As always, some absolutely incredible work got published and sent our way in 2024, work that furthers our understanding of games as a medium and artform, pokes at various gaming practices, and brings “gamer culture” into conversation with the world writ large, and vice versa.

Senior Curator Chris Lawrence, with the help of the Critical Distance Discord community and various other supporters, put together 49 weeks’ worth of roundups, recording conversations on the myriad of games and “gamer discourses” that came out this year as they happened. Combined with monthly supporter updates at Patreon and a decent run at trying to bring the TMIVGV feature back, 2024 was truly a packed year for thoughts on videogames. A major thank you must go out to those who submitted pieces for consideration this past month as well. Without further ado, here’s our look back at the year in videogame blogging for 2024.

Rebirth, Remake, Reminisce

This year was once again full of games that stretched the definition of “remake” or “remaster,” and suitably, critics had some thoughts about them. Starting things off, Paste Magazine‘s Jackson Tyler dives into developer decisions and fan expectations in the Final Fantasy VII Remake series, wondering what the point is in attempting to answer that one question. In a similar vein, following a preview event for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Polygon’s Jay Castello ruminates on the legacy of the Metal Gear franchise’s creative origins and Konami’s self-evidently selfish motives in remaking the now-21-year-old game. Elsewhere, at Bullet Points Monthly, Astrid Anne Rose puts another Konami remake, Silent Hill 2, under the microscope to uncover the streamer-era cravenness at its grossly-lengthened core. From Jay Marksman’s perspective, remakes don’t replace their predecessors, no matter how hard they try – and they should stop trying. And as Aidan Moher demonstrates through reporting, more than a few game developers are even treating remakes as opportunities to try to tell new stories.

Industrial Tensions

Remakes and remasters are but one symptom of an overtly conservative and skittish games industry. This year many critics looked past the games and laser-focused their attention on the industry itself—an industry rife with even more layoffs and studio closures. Ted Litchfield and Wes Fenlon started the year out at PC Gamer by creating a visualization of the 16,000 layoffs that took place in 2023. Deep-Hell‘s Skeleton fed Microsoft to the fire over its merger with Activision-Blizzard. Brendan Sinclair, formerly of Games Industry dot Biz, dug into both Microsoft and Sony’s use of conflict metals for the production of their consoles. And Bijan Stephen daydreams an industry that actually bothers treating its employees with respect.

Kamiab Ghorbanpour reported on how the Persian dub of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown came together, while Matt Cox delivered, word-for-word, the largest headline of the year in his PC Gamer article on the localization of Thank Goodness You’re Here. Meanwhile, Phoenix Simms made a convincing argument in defense of the labor rights of voiceover actors for Container Magazine.

Francisco Dominguez talked to developers behind Saltsea Chronicles and Jusant to uncover their views on game design and sustainability, while Anna C. Webster examined the use – and possible appropriation – of Algonquin folklore in Until Dawn. Finally, Lotus took a stab at interrogating the so-called “Triple-I Initiative,” and its implications for further blurred lines between independent video games and games made by major corporations.

Tech Specs

One of the recurring arguments that took place this year revolved around the presence of yellow paint in videogames. Kayin argued that yellow paint angst was essentially a red herring, a distraction from the possibility that AAA games are getting more frictionless and less willing to do anything but hold players’ hands. On a similar track (though not explicitly about yellow paint) was Noah Caldwell-Gervais’s Baffler essay, where he argued against industrially-mandated and manufactured unchallenging drivel.

Elsewhere, ghoulnoise walked us through the process of creating a constructed language, or conlang, explicitly designed for singing in Jett: The Far Shore, and Xiri wrote down the process he used in developing the cutscenes for HITM3. Critic Jeremy Signor lovingly detailed a beginner’s path into Kaizo Mario platforming sickodom.

Finally, Gabrielle de la Puente reflected on what a 2017 game about being a worker after AI nonsense took hold got right, and Anna Weiner picked apart Unreal Engine’s entertainment dominance. To wrap this section up, Diego Nicolás Argüello investigates the corporeal, material, and structural stresses of VR QA and testing.

Art/Games

Patricia Hernandez put forward a spicy take that the games industry has not escaped from the gravity well of that one Roger Ebert post from 2010. Samantha Trzinski at Gamers With Glasses reviewed some art made about games in the form of Stephen Sexton’s If All The World and Love Were Young. James Tregonning explored how games have changed our relationship to art, while Crushed made a Cohost post recapping Electronic Gaming Monthly‘s bizarre obsession with “nongames” in the Wii era.

Digital Spaces

The centerpiece of the discussion around digital spaces and nostalgia in 2024 was Liz Ryerson’s essay, “Let’s Play Life,” which was itself a semi-sequel to 2023’s “The California Problem.” Taken as a set, these posts chart a course from the naive idealism of the early Internet to the more cynical nostalgia-chasing of many reactionary forces on social media, especially YouTube. Of particular interest in “Let’s Play Life” is Ryerson’s account of Pokecapn’s Sonic 06 let’s play on the Something Awful forums, which often took a more intimate and complicated parasocial form than the let’s plays of the YouTube era.

Elsewhere game designer Frank Lantz mused on the ludic provenance of the Backrooms, as did Nathalie Lawhead and Luis Aguasvivas. Erin Donegan brooded on questions of idealized personhood in life sims, Sabrina Imbler confronted the possibility that being a billionaire is unethical in any context, even in something like Neopets, and Duncan Fyfe found out what happens when “Press F to Pay Respects” breaks meme containment.

Günseli Yalcinkaya spent some time with people and groups trying to preserve memories and moments in strange corners of the web for Dazed Digital, while Alexis Ong explored early game websites and their capacity for community-building.

Games in Community

Matteo Lupetti broke down the work that went into making the Italian games festival Zona Warpa. Joseph Earl Thomas embedded inside the competitive Pokémon community and reported back at The Paris Review. Anne Sullivan and Anastasia Salter built communities inside and out of their feminist game studies classes. These stories each in their own ways demonstrate why community is important and necessary for a healthy culture to thrive.

They’re joined by Rowan Zeoli’s reporting on the TTRPG community affected by Hurricane Helene, Victoria Kennedy’s interview with the developers of the social platform/game Kind Words, and Stephen Wilds chronicle of how a game both out-of-time and ahead-of-time came into its own and found its community.

Preserving History

Roxy S. tells the tale of a toylike MSX dungeon crawler two decades in the making for Kritiqal. Anna Washenko chronicled the enduring power of words and choices on a screen through conversations with their pioneers and proponents. In Sam Howitt’s final Final Fantasy game review (for the moment), they take on a game that takes on the entire series’ history. Jimmy Maher looks at the game which both calcified Blizzard’s design ethos and established gaming as a national sport. Madeline Blondeau situates the history and context of the esoteric, edgy, and avant-garde entries that continue to define the legacy of Sega’s iconic Genesis. Cameron Kunzelman meets a guy at a lighthouse and asks if Columbia is any good. Vidyasaur reviews the ambivalent, open-ended legacy of the fourth Monkey Island, and the era of adventure games it serves as a bookend to.

Political Play

Yoel Villahermosa Serrano details the othering tropes, white saviors, and Indigenous mouthpieces that continue to dominate western gaming’s engagement with Latin America, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and elsewhere. Caitlin Cooper delves into a game about the pivotal role of journalism in post-revolutionary Mexico, and talks to the game’s creators about their journey, outlook, and goals. Joshua M. Henson measures the true worth of Wolfenstein II‘s revolutionaries by who they make room for at their table. Juliette Taing highlights Uncharted: The Lost Legacy‘s complicity in furthering Hindu nationalist sensibilities. Gita Jackson tires of the bad-faith discourse swirling around an Assassin’s Creed game.

Elsewhere, Kastel thinks about how future generations of Chinese diaspora will receive a difficult, remarkable game in 1000xRESIST. Janus Rose reflects on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and the moral imperative to stand up against the violence of militant imperialism. Both Peter Sahui and Sam Dee consider the highly political themes, narrative and simulation qualities of Suzerain. Both at Polygon, Jack Sheehan and Zoë Hannah gamed election season with looks at the modding community around The Campaign Trail and the game Democratic Socialism Simulator, respectively. And finally, the Gamers With Glasses crew outlines some antifascist principles of criticism and play.

Gaza and Games

Skeleton treks through a digital warzone that bears only superficial semblance to the real thing. Sara at Game Assist situates Palestine in a historical context that extends beyond myopic views of the conflict between the besieged state and Israel, all with the help of the Assassin’s Creed series. Giovanni Colantonio approaches TLOU2‘s reissue of a three-year old game as already a work out of time. Nicole Carpenter highlights a stylish graffiti skating game and the team’s efforts to crowdfund a path to secure their programmer’s safety. (Related: another Palestinian developer is raising money to fully fund his next game, Dreams on a Pillow.) Finally: a collective work, but organized by Hippolyte Caubet, this video examines the role of the commercial games industry in normalizing the dehumanization of Palestinian and Arab communities and nations, and charts a path for the industry out of this complicity.

Theories and Frameworks

Hannah Nicklin weighs the responsibility of worldbuilding in the world that we have, for both creators and the medium. Hayley Toth interrogates the ways in which we ascribe value to different reading practices through a save-scummer’s approach to Disco Elysium. Melos Han-Tani proposes new perspectives on understanding the relationships players form with games, designers, and design. Elizabeth Sandifer probes the ideological and ontological limitations of simulation in tabletop play. gurnburial talks process on cutting games apart and stitching them together in productive new ways. Moira Hicks turns over ongoing questions about what play can but does not always add to narrative experience.

Axes of Identity

In this set of essays, writers explored race, gender, sexuality and sex, and how those things affected their relationship with or were affected by games. It would be remiss of us not to mention the entirety of BP Games, Inc.’s Adult Analysis Anthology, a standout series of 19 critical essays about porn games. Some of the individual articles included in the anthology especially worth highlighting include Bigg’s original call to action; Callisto Jupiter-Four asking who actually has the agency and privilege to write unsafe erotica–often not queer creators! (content notification for brief mentions of rape); and Lynn “wintermute” Robinson’s examination of the conflicting porn archetypes that ultimately inform a restrictive framework for gender in Tales of Androgyny.

Elsewhere, we saw John Paul Brammer navigate relationships and his sexuality between games of Super Smash Bros. Misty De Méo explored the history and critique around Takashi Murakami’s multimodal, polarizing pornographic figure. Taylor Hicklen understands the pulse beneath Clickolding‘s subversive beat (content notification for discussions of systemic queerphobia and suicide). And Joey Wawzonek provides historical and cultural context for Hudson Soft’s very early strip-janken game.

Regarding the subject of race and Blackness specifically, the cornerstone piece was Kishonna L. Gray’s application of necropolitics to the virtual deathworlds of modern gaming. In the paper, Dr. Gray interrogates the ways in which games like The Last of Us and Battlefield 1‘s use Black death to either further white character stories or tutorialize game mechanics (by literally throwing Black bodies at a war machine in the case of Battlefield 1). She writes, “Necropolitical narratives justify continued violence in physical and digital spaces. In these games in particular, they can be understood as spac-es where creators have the sovereign right to kill Black characters.”

From there, many of the other articles concerned with race follow similar threads. Nicanor Gordon juxtaposed El Paso, Elsewhere and its principal players against the racist foundations of western fantasy and horror; he also used FF7 Rebirth as a springboard to unravel the dehumanizing, hypersexualizing, and neutering antiblack stereotypes that permeate popular media. Yussef Cole reckoned with the ways in which childhood nostalgia tilts our reception of retro revivals like Robocop: Rogue City. And Trone Dowd chats with a variety of industry creatives about getting past moving from one stereotype to the next towards more nuanced representation.

On issues of gender and feminism, we start with a pair of articles analyzing Kingdom Hearts, of all games: Latonya “Penn” Pennington muses on gender identity and transition via Kingdom Hearts, while Grace Benfell looks back at the character everyone is rightly upset got a raw deal. Megan B. Wells presents a loose chronology of gender expressivity in games over the years. Pao Yumol dissects Final Fantasy VII Remake/Rebirth to peer into the gender of it all. Drew Mackie excavates an extensive multimedia history of Birdo’s variously-gendered depictions over the years and generations (bonus: Yoshi might be trans too!).

Meanwhile, Ashley Schofield surveys the state of sapphic visibility across entertainment media. Issy Van Der Velde investigates feminine embodiment and audience framing in Stellar Blade. And Ana Diaz unpacks a recent trend of dudes posting about their love of Nikki.

Personal Reflections and Play Logs

For our last themed section, we’ve collated a group of essays that attempt to grapple with difficult, intimate and fundamental questions through games. Ruth Cassidy reflects on the mountain as an experience rather than just an obstacle in A Highland Song. Kate Sánchez observes the vibrancy with which Tales of Kenzera: ZAU captures the full emotional spectrum of grief. Steve Dixon charts a path forward to living life with Persona 3: Reload. Cind at BloomedWings plays a pair of ludic meditations on cycles of divine retribution. Boen Wang meditates on the spectre of Night/New York City. Alana Hagues thinks about space and stuff as she crosses the pond with Pikmin 4, and Flora Merigold muses on Venba, cooking-as-culture, and the severing and repairing of intergenerational bonds.

Elsewhere, Kimimi embarks upon an expansive overview of the Saturn’s flagship dungeon-crawler, Shining the Holy Ark, taking time to write about style, interface, encounter design, balancing, narrative, and more. Alex Russo chases craft in Roller Coaster Tycoon. Edwin Evans-Thirlwell comes to grips with Lorn’s Lure‘s harsh, evocative first person platforming, and Dia Lacina finds the most uninteresting possible power fantasy in a game that seems to underutilize its own setting.

Videogame Grab Bag

Renata Price likes Balatro and wants you to know it’s not what you may have read it is.

“Balatro, like many deck-builders, isn’t about the joy of being a poker player, it’s about the joy of being the house. It is a game about stacking the deck in your favor until you build a system that manipulates probability so effectively you cannot conceivably lose.”

Nathan Schmidt sums up Balatro as a game that both has The Juice while also provoking good questions about genre, and Chuck Sebian-Lander identifies Balatro as a deckbuilder you can absolutely just vibe through.

Cat Bussell explores the dissolution of meaning in the rhetoric employed by Helldivers‘ “Managed Democracy”. Cass Marshall revels in Super Earth’s self-defeating absurdity. Alyssa Mercante attributes some of the success of Helldivers 2 to its ability to evoke a sense of seventh-gen nostalgia.

“Helldivers 2 isn’t a $70 AAA shooter with advanced water physics and a litany of customizable weapons; it’s a goofy, scrappy, somewhat clunky $40 good time, like a college party with shitty beer from a stolen keg. Eventually, someone’s gonna go through a table (or dive-to-prone off a cliff), and it’s gonna be awesome. We need more games like that in 2024 and beyond.”

Emily Price talks with some of the team from 1000xRESIST about cyclical time, memory, and pop media’s presence/absence in the unpacking of collective trauma. Flora Merigold puts her feelings about 1000xRESIST in conversation with the six months of writers who have come before. Alexis Ong writes about 1000xRESIST, the messy, fragmentary nature of diaspora politics, and Hong Kong.

The invisible effects of immigration and eventual assimilation (always an intended outcome, whether you like it or not) are ugly and gruelling. It requires extraordinary long-term endurance from both body and mind. There is a constant interior tension about performance and normalcy and acceptance, because failure risks a physical expulsion from the corpus.

Dylan Atkinson concludes that for all its issues with balance, depth, and pacing, MiHoYo’s latest gacha’s got style, while Willa Rowe finds HoYoVerse’s latest to be an exercise in style over substance. James Troughton laments that even when they’re offering something fresh and new, in some ways Sony is still just playing the hits in Astro Bot. Robin Bea sees moments of wonder in a larger noncommittal structure via Neva. Grace Benfell muses on what Silent Hill 2 loses when its restless dreams are dragged into the HDR glare of the AAA limelight. Ed Smith sizes up this sleeker, more sanded-down Silent Hill 2 by unpacking its more pliable, player-oriented protagonist.

“James Sunderland is not a silent protagonist, either in the Silent Hill 2 remake or in the original game. But in the remake, he is more you, more us, more the players. He responds more to our inputs. He reacts more correlatively to our own movements, and to our ideas of what he ought to be able to do, as a person with a body. He becomes a silent protagonist not in the verbal but in the mechanical sense.”

Renata Price walks the path of a storyteller in Dragon’s Dogma II. Dia Lacina chronicles her first foray into what might be 2024’s paradigmatic sickos’ banquet. Kimimi identifies a distinct lack of consent to relationships in the otherwise agency-minded Dragon’s Dogma II. And Austin Walker presents four short essays on Dragon’s Dogma (II).

“This is the rhythm of Dragon’s Dogma II: Movement and stillness, sometimes in succession, as in the exhale-depletion of resources—like your ever-decreasing maximum health cap—and their inhale-restoration, whether through crafting or camping or simple discovery. Movement and stillness, sometimes all at once, like when you are atop a griffin, holding perfectly still—while the being you cling to cuts through the air across regions you haven’t even seen yet. Movement and stillness, like breathing, like storm wind in trees, in succession, all at once, from hub to loop, from loop to spoke, from spoke to cave, and back.”

Final Thoughts and a Look Towards the Future

It once again goes without saying that this roundup, as big as it ended up being, can only serve to be a small sliver of the total body of work that incredible critics and writers put forward every single day. Writers are what makes this whole thing work; without them, without the labor they perform, there would be no “good writing about games.” Unfortunately, this industry has continued on a downward trend in terms of outlet closures, staff layoffs and the slow, silent whittling-down of viable freelancing opportunities. It’s harder to write about games for a decent pay rate now than it was at the beginning of 2023. This only affirms our mission: it’s never been more important to highlight true independent voices talking about games.

Thank you for joining us for another year in 2024. If you want to see what we’re up to in 2025, including regarding some special projects related to our long-term archival mission, come join us on Discord! It’s the best place to interface directly with the Critical Distance team as well as submit your own recommendations for our weekly roundups. We’re also on Facebook, Mastodon, and Bluesky! Come say hi there as well.

From all of us here at Critical Distance, we hope you have a happy new year!

]]> 10467 December 15th https://www.critical-distance.com/2024/12/17/december-15th-3/ Tue, 17 Dec 2024 04:58:43 +0000 https://critical-distance.com/?p=10462 Welcome back readers.

We’re coming up on the submission deadline (December 22) to get your picks in for our end-of-year review! If you haven’t already done so, check out the announcement post for details, and if you’d like, join our Discord and submit your recommendations.

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Tonkachi Time

Our opening section this week is somewhere on a continum between art and design, and the delightful possibility space games can inhabit when they resist the orthodoxies of both.

“This isn’t about liking bad games ironically. It’s about understanding that even the messiest games have value. They might teach you what you don’t like, or surprise you with moments of brilliance. Either way, they’re worth your time.”

Disk Collection

Now let’s look at design–and play–philosophies from the NES era.

“The murder of Portopia is a prison for everyone involved. It’s a labyrinth the cast can’t escape. Just as the game itself tightens its grip on the player, traps them in endless circles of moral decay and let’s them rot, so too does the house of the murder capture Yasu. He can’t ever leave. It’s taken him, stolen him, killed him. It’s all he is. And then it all happens again.”

Affective Play

This section deals with depression, suicide, abuse, and accountability.

“A remarkably poignant exploration of what happens when you don’t hold your bros accountable. Deeply unsettling and emotionally exhausting, the theft of autonomy isn’t just a theme so much as it’s a brick thrown at my head. In a good way.”

Green Planet

These next two picks are about gardens, trees, and green spaces in games.

“In relaxing play, the action and re-action loop is slowed down, and the rhythms of the game and the player are set at a sedate pace. It is in these moments that a great deal of emotion and meaning can grow. Walking through a beautiful landscape, pausing to listen to music, or taking the time to nurture and care for plants all hold quiet and humble experiences. It’s the act of humility and care that improves both the garden and the gardener.”

Infinity Nikki

The dress-up RPG Infinity Nikki has been out for a minute, so here are some thoughts and impressions.

“I spent most of last weekend playing Infinity Nikki, not collecting outfits or working through my quest log, but simply taking photos. I haven’t completed a single Styling Challenge since the game officially launched, but I have filled up a good portion of my Photo Expeditions Guide, Liked dozens of other players’ photos, and left my mark in the form of Snapshots across every inch of Miraland I’ve seen so far.”

Thought Cabinet

Here are two more pieces unpacking the RPG genre more broadly.

“The JRPG could only ever be othering. In the past, the J in JRPG has denoted a place of origin, varying genre conventions, or arbitrary characteristics of form or content. JRPG’s have been fantasy, turn based, linear (more below), and console RPGs. They’ve been RPGs made in Japan. They’ve been RPGs with cartoony art styles. They’ve been whatever Western RPGs are not: medieval, fantasy, computer-, branching, open world, realistic. What people mean when they say JRPG has changed as much as its occident has shifted, the catalyst often the mainstream success of a JRPG at whatever then defines Western RPGs. What JRPG means as a genre label, as a rhetorical shorthand, shifts, always existing in opposition against, in binary with, orient to WRPGs.”

Inside Scoop

These next three selections tackle contemporary issues of communication, corporate control, and journalism.

“In a world in which search traffic is increasingly erratic and Google seems to have given up on curtailing AI slop, the life raft for journalism – especially tabloid journalism – is engagement and clicks. I don’t know what the newsroom situation is like in Hoenn, except that Gabby and Ty seem to be the only two producers ever around. Maybe journalism would be outright dead in the region if not for them.”

Chaos Control

How about some reflections and impressions on two more recent games?

“Sonic Generations continues to be a part of my festive season, a truth that has only increased with the addition of Shadow Generations –  a story of finding your place within your world and accepting your past and present. What may be my brightest Christmas so far happens to come around the same time as the darker half of the game that has been with me all this time, and I find something special in that.”

Critical Chaser

It’s about Luigi.

“In his average and unremarkable capacity, Luigi acts not only as us, but for us. It is not necessary to be superhuman, his example demonstrates. Look what the everyman can accomplish. In victory and in defeat, he validates the hope slumbering in every ordinary person: That conviction alone is needed for us all to be heroes.”

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