Thank you for all your support for our fundraising campaign. Our next fundraising target is $1900 – once we reach this, we can reboot the Month in Let’s Plays feature, as well as the Critical Discourse letter series.
Critical Let’s Plays are a form that deserves more attention. Whether livestreamed or prerecorded and edited, Let’s Plays give critics an opportunity to show-don’t-tell, and to demonstrate their reading of a game in a more immediate way. An enthusiastic video editor can even make a Let’s Play speak for itself as an argument about a game’s aesthetics or meanings, without needing to say a single word, such as the now-defunct Other Places series. Let’s Plays can be about performing a counter-cultural form of play, such as Amy Dentata’s Let’s Walk series, or they can be about bringing a group of critical thinkers together around a shared object of interest, such as the Scholars Play Twitch channel. Let’s Plays don’t have to be video-based, as demonstrated by a relatively long history of diary writing about long plays and the occasional excellent work by videogame photojournalists.
If you’re interested in Let’s Plays as a critical medium and want to support us in our fundraising campaign, one thing you can do to help us this week is create a Let’s Play and give us a hearty shoutout! It’d be particularly great if you could do any or all of the following:
- Link to our fundraising page
- Use one of the images we’ve provided on our fundraising page
- Let us know via the usual channels about your Let’s Play so that we can feature it in a special compilation.
Looking forward to seeing what you create!