April 14th

Welcome back readers.

Per my lofty aspirations last week, I did technically manage to publish our Fansite Jam Roundup before the next TWIVGB–even if I had to fudge things a bit and put this issue out a day late. Oh, speaking of the jam roundup, you should check it out! I am enormously grateful to everyone who participated, and every submission we received is accounted for!

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

Industry Insights

This week we’re opening with a group of articles examining different areas and aspects of the industry, from funding, to adaptation, to sales trends, to what counts as “indie”.

• Latoya Peterson: “Studios are at the mercy of this house of cards that is the funding system that we’ve built” | GamesIndustry.biz
  Marie Dealessandri recaps Latoya Peterson’s GDC talk on sustainability, labour, and funding in the games industry.
• A Tale of Two Fallouts (And How Old Fallout is *Dead*) | cohost
  Cailín Grace Brown unpacks the thematic distinctions between the different eras of Fallout games in order to understand why we got the TV series that we did.
• The Triple-I Initiative | Pressed Petals Creative Collective
  Lotus doesn’t find much that’s “indie” in the Triple-I Initiative.
• The False Revival of AAA Horror Games | Medium
  The Tax Collector Man expresses hope for a true revival of horror games–one of new ideas rather than an endless cycles of endlessly marketable remakes.

“I would like to exist in an ecosystem ruled by a different kind of beast; a landscape of comfortable artists and uncomfortable audiences; a place where there are always brand new fears.”

Relational Reflections

Now let’s take a look at topics that bridge games with the wider world in which they are produced.

• The Tusk of Ganesh and the Old Sage: Modi’s Hinduism in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy | Bump Combat
  Juliette Taing highlights Uncharted: The Lost Legacy‘s complicity in furthering Hindu nationalist sensibilities.
• The New York Times Simulator Is Not About Understanding the Press, but Changing It | Gamers with Glasses
  Luis Aguasvivas chats with designer Paolo Pedercini about how media bias serves the interests of the ruling class, and the importance of changing that status quo.
• Cozy Games, Romantic Poets, and (Anti-)Capitalist Sentiments | Gamers with Glasses
  Samantha Trzinski examines tensions between the pastoral and the industrial in Romantic-era poetry and cozy games alike.

“While poets like Wordsworth, Keats, and Smith may not have known how to reconcile the natural and industrial world, recent trends in video games show that these two worlds are not as distinct as we once thought. It is no longer possible to keep these worlds separate, and games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley show the boundless potential afforded when we consider the needs and desires of others as we progress.”

Community Contexts

Next up, we’ve got three pieces each exploring different kinds and meanings of community.

• From Bloodborne to Nightmare Kart and Pokémon’s Legal Clout: On Creative Fans Playing with Gaming IP | Medium
  Damien Lawardorn investigates the reflections between and across fanworks, remakes, and corporate IP.
• Inside the quest to finish Super Mario Maker’s disappearing levels | The Verge
  Jay Castello chats with the team of runners who made it their mission to beat all of Super Mario Maker.
• Chants of Sennaar and Reaching Out | cohost
  Jeremy Signor explores translinguistic community in Chants of Sennaar.

“It’s this sense of stagnation that is the main thing Chants of Sennaar is railing against, that we’re all richer when we reach out from each of our comfortable bubbles to try and understand people not like you. That the language barrier isn’t impenetrable, and there are many ways of learning how to make sure we understand and are understood. And we all have shared roots as well.”

Design Details

A recent puzzler–Botany Manor–has made a spash, and we’ve got two picks here unpacking it from different angles.

• Botany Manor review – a peaceful period drama of a puzzle game | The Guardian
  Sarah Maria Griffin digs into a relaxing plant puzzler.
• Design review: Botany Manor as a quiet dark detective game | Radiator Blog
  Robert Yang brushes aside the topsoil to unpack Botany Manor as a detective game.

“it’s a subtle condemnation of incremental feminism: a quiet well-behaved game about a quiet well-behaved woman trapped in a beautiful prison. It hints at the darkness buried deep in every cozy comfy wholesome game.”

Play Perspectives

Our next two featured writers explore older games in past and present contexts.

• Staying Afloat | Into The Spine
  Hannah Wolfram writes about her forays in Skyrim through her experience of bipolar disorder.
• Zombie Revenge: Bringing the dead back to life | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi checks out an intriguing intersection of the increasingly-fatigued zombie survial horror genre and peak Dreamcast-era Weird Sega.

“This is Dynamite Deka: Zombie Edition. A game that correctly reached the conclusion that punching zombies in their stupid rotting mouths might be a heck of a lot of fun years before Leon S Kennedy made a habit of roundhouse kicking the infected.”

Writing Ruminations

Our next two picks bring together reflections on time, relationships, and the writing process itself.

• Turn of the Zillennial | Unwinnable
  Perry Gottschalk contemplates the passage of time and frendships over age brackets and their cultural baggage in Emily Is Away.
• Video Games for Difficult Times | Death is a Whale
  James Tregonning talks about the need for the personal essay to have a vitality outside of the person writing it.

“You want to write about playing Halo with your dad? Write an essay about the theme of community. Tell us what Halo has to say about that concept. Bring us deeper into the game, and deeper in turn into the things that are important in your life.”

Critical Chaser

This one’s just for you, Zach.

• Mega Man X Doesn’t Begin Until Dr. Light Sings “My Blue Suit” | Unwinnable
  Levi Rubeck delivers a lyrical Mega Man meditation on the flow state.

“Is there any term as
disgusting as “flow state” and the
weight, the gall, the bile

it carries for low wattage
imaginations“