Search Results for:

lana polansky

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

June 24th

…another kindred spirit: Lana Polansky. Who could put six shots into the word ‘censorship’ before it hit the dirt:

What [Beckles]’s saying is that the media which displays problematic material for the sole purpose of using it to entertain, or does so uncritically, has this nasty habit of normalizing or trivializing the thing it is portraying. As a result, this feeds into our perception of those concepts and informs our worldview. This has been true of all human culture since time immemorial. On the other hand, we self-censor all the time. This is not a call to “bowdlerize”

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

March 9th

…case, however, I believe those goals are summed up best by independent critic and C-D contributor Lana Polansky, who, in acknowledging the shortcomings of crowdfunding, maintains a call to openly and consistently signal-boost the kind of work we want to see:

I’m going to make it a general policy to amplify voices in criticism or development or whatever else who deserve that amplification, not because of who they are but because of what they’ve said or made. This is my general policy anyway, but before right now I hadn’t fully declared and applied it. No more amplifying those

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

This Year in Videogame Blogging: 2014

…(Critical Distance is itself funded by its readership via Patreon, so we’re part of this trend ourselves!)

Our own Lana Polansky worried about that if the legitimate anger from activism can be so easily twisted, so can the new form of support for the most in need. The anger is necessary in the face of little other support, yet can easily turn toxic and people against one another.

Along those lines, Critical Distance alumna Mattie Brice commented on how she and so many others are more than their pain, but often that is all that gets noticed for…

January 11th

…method of gathering information.

At Sufficiently Human, our own Lana Polansky writes that game design is too wrapped up in the fantasy of wealth accumulation to actually communicate anything meaningful. According to Polansky, the time may be to look outside of big-budget commercial games for a meaningful conversation.

Through a Glass, Darkly

Over at Salon, Arthur Chu interviews Tanya DePass, creator of the #INeedDiverseGames hashtag, about gaming’s insulation, representation and diversity:

[O]n the one hand it is kind of trivial to focus on video games right now, but the other side of it is — if…

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

May 2015

Hello my friends, another month has flown by, can you believe it? We’ve had an almost full month of rain here in Texas, which means there’s been every opportunity to hide away inside watching Let’s Plays. Thank you LPers for getting me through the month! In summation, here’s what May had to offer This Month in Let’s Plays:

Welcome to the Club

First, Critical Distance is pleased to report that two of its own have joined the rank of Critical Let’s Play creators this month:

In her new series Ways of Playing, Lana Polansky plays LSD

August 9th

…arcade’s image and clientele. I have some issues with the delivery of this article — it could benefit quite a lot from including a bibliography at the end — but it does cast a spotlight on the fighting game community’s efforts to improve its image.

And shifting from real-world money matters to the digital, at Fiery Screens, Yussef Cole has been dispatching military deserters in The Witcher 3, noting how humans are, paradoxically, often the greatest source of cash for the game’s titular supernatural exterminator.

Against the Stream

Writing for her own website, Critical Distance’s own Lana

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

September 6th

…five-foot-eight, 36 inches around the chest, and a worldclass rockface dangler/militia combatant/tarzan impersonator: these things speak to an ignorance of bodies, and the bitterly foolish choice to define them anyway.

Happily, as Napier notes, rebooted Lara Croft has not had so much attention paid to her proportions — outside of fan speculation, at least.

Systems and History

At Sufficiently Human, our own Lana Polansky offers as a more elegant alternative to ludonarrative dissonance the terms “coherence” and “incoherence,” describing the ways a game’s design succeeds or fails at reinforcing its themes:

Dissonance is a…

February 2nd

…Raze about Octodad as a metaphor for invisible disability.

On Kill Screen, William Drew talks about the documentary game Fort McMoney and how it presents socioeconomical changes in the Canadian boomtown Fort McMurray.

Stephen Beirne discusses how The Last of Us‘ mechanical building blocks collide with its narrative beats when you find chest-high walls in a peaceful section.

Medieval POC answers the question of whether or not having only white characters in your game can be explained with historical accuracy, as suggested by the developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance: “TL;DR: yeah they’re wrong.”

Lana Polansky talks…

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

July 27th

Let’s Talk

This article by Dan Grilopoulos on Eurogamer delving into the origins of Minesweeper could have gone further into today’s competitive scene, but it is still an interesting piece on the ubiquitous software. In it, he interviews the original developers behind the game and Microsoft’s better-known plagiarism.

Back on Paste, Ansh Patel interviews Arvind Raja Yadav, game designer of the recently released Unrest, a game set in ancient India. (Full disclosure: I am a backer of this game.)

Meanwhile, at Sufficiently Human, Critical Distance contributor Lana Polansky and alumnus Zolani Stewart get into discussion over

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

August 7th

…in any true sense, for many Civ 4 players, there was an expectation that if anyone should have an overpowered unit, it’s Rome.

The next post for this week is, well, really a series of short creative writing pieces about Far Cry 2 by Taylor Cocke at the Scoreless blog. Start with ‘Sunshine’ and then read all the stuff tagged ‘Far Cry 2’ in order. Players familiar with the game will find it uncannily evocative.

At the KillScreen daily blog Lana Polansky looks at ‘The Best of Both Worlds’ which somehow connects James Joyce’s Ulysses with Bayonetta,…