August 24th

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

Interviews

This week let’s start off with interviews. We’ve got four of ’em collected here for you, spanning topics from labour and LLMs, art and spectacle, performance, and more.

• And the Peabody Goes to 1000xRESIST: An Interview with sunset visitor | Unwinnable
  Alyssa Wejebe talks to the 1000x devs about artistic practice, stories for Asian diasporas, fanzines, and more (Further Reading – Emily Price’s interview with the team from last year).
• Video games and “cathedrals of fire”: the eye-widening wonder of Sword of the Sea | Eurogamer
  Lewis Gordon talks spectacle and spatial wonder with Sword of the Sea developer Matt Nava.
• AI Killed My Job: Translators | Blood in the Machine
  Brian Merchant talks to translators and localizers across industries about the impacts LLMs are having on their careers and livelihoods (Further Reading: Jay Castello talks to Quinn K about translating Off into English).
• “Every Story Is a Clash of Titans”: Videogame Performance Directing with Tom Keegan | Gamers with Glasses
  Alexander B. Joy chats with Tom Keegan about performance directing, collaborating with actors, and the irreducible human element of a genuine, layered performance (Further Reading: Nicole Carpenter on the filming and production of sex scenes in the games industry).

“Even if it was with AI, you still would have to do the directing work. Only you’d have to do the directing work and then someone would have to make all the choices and input all of that. And if you think of all the choices that an actor would have to do… I mean, sure, AI could predict what they would do, but it’s just going to be superficial. Again, like, where’s the subtext?”

Context Sensitive

Two more picks from the Adult Analysis Anthology!

• Sex And Color In Scarlet Maiden | BP Games Inc.
  MxMorganic contemplates the compelling but sometimes-dissonant fit between high-quality porn and high-demand action platforming.
• Bad End: The Seduction Of “Game Over” | BP Games Inc.
  Morgan K muses on Miyazaki, BDSM, and the inherent eroticism of the Game Over (Further Reading: This anonymous piece on writing erotica and sharpening your craft).

“If analyzed through this BDSM lens, to play a game is to engage in a sort of power exchange with its developers which is where I believe the latent erotic potential of Game Over is derived from. I mean, let’s be real, the idea of potentially entire teams of artists and programmers working tirelessly for potentially years just to lovingly craft a simulation of your own brutal defeat for you to harmlessly experience is kinda hot, right?”

GrimCity

This next pair of articles look at simulation games and their sometimes-unsavoury muses.

• The Sick World of Prison Tycoon Games | Current Affairs
  Stephen Prager surveys the recent and current history–and cruelty–of prison management sims (Further Reading: Keri Blakinger on D&D play groups on Texas’ death row).
• There Is No Grace In Making A Business Like Discounty Bigger | Exalclaw
  Wallace Truesdale plays a supermarket managment sim that pulls no punches in its line-goes-up critique (Further Reading: Cassandra Roxburgh on Stardew Valley).

“Discounty weaves together several mini-storylines to show how growth under capitalism is frequently at odds with the well-being of communities and their history, but Grace’s firing is a punch to the throat as far as tone-setting goes. It’s a move that reminds the players what the game is: you’re not starting a store from ground zero with nothing but a dream and a scrappy team of overachievers, but instead getting someone else rich by becoming the latest extension of an already big business. And if a business wants to get rich quicker, minimizing cost is step one.”

What a Thrill…

We’re talking about two different Hideo Kojima games this week: Death Stranding 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3.

• Does Metal Gear Solid 3 Really Need to Be Remade? | Endless Mode
  Grace Benfell observes MGS3‘s enduring influence as something entirely agnostic of remakes or rereleases (Further Reading: Ash Parrish interviews the woman who sang Snake Eater).
• Shining A Flashlight Through Your Cheek | Bullet Points Monthly
  Sam Bodrojan concludes that Kojima’s second trip to the beach is stranded in spectacular shallows.

“I’ve been holding off on saying whether I like the game, because I don’t. Gone are the days when Kojima could tell a politically trenchant story with experimental mechanics. DS2 is a frictionless toybox of total player empowerment. It improves on the first game in basically every way, and yet it somehow makes them both feel redundant.”

Dread Wolf

Here we’ve got critical analysis of a variety of recent RPGs.

• Here Because of History – Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Pixpen
  Sam Howitt brings the benefits of time and context to this self-reflexive, not-quite-the-same Dragon Age (Further Reading: Robin Bea on Veilguard making a clean break).
• The Importance of Perspective in Disco Elysium and Lovely Lady RPG | Medium
  Roses Without Gardens compares how Disco Elysium and Lovely Lady RPG execute their narratives from opposite ends of positionality and power (Further Reading: Phoenix Simms on Lovely Lady RPG).

“In the same way that Disco Elysium’s narrative depends upon Harry’s power as a police officer, LLRPG’s narrative depends on Ghost’s powerlessness. This is why there is so much power given to Ghost’s choice to continue on and make women smile, she is doing so in spite of a world that would see her and people like her annihilated. The lumbering colossus of systemic transphobia seems like it could crush the characters at any moment, they live in the luck of not being its target at the moment.”

Video Computer System

Too much RPG for one section? Let’s talk about retro games.

• UFO 50’s Velgress is simple perfection and perfect simplicity | Bloomed Wings Blog
  Cind reckons with the spike’s edge of Velgress‘ pure vertical platforming loop (Further Reading: Dari on UFOSoft contemporary Party House).
• Dragonstomper Review — A Lord With No Heirs | Gamesline
  Crystal takes a look at a fascinatingly bleak and concise console RPG on the Atari 2600.

“When I’m playing Pokémon Violet or Final Fantasy IX, I’m still playing Dragon Quest. I cross the world in search of the next field, the next town, the next dungeon. There’s always more power to be gained, and there’s always a friend to cheer me on. But I have yet to play an RPG that iterates on the efficient, focused bleakness of Dragonstomper.”

Critical Chaser

No notes, some questions.

• I ate Donkey Kong’s Whole Ass | Ferg’s Frickhouse
  Ferg is out here grappling with a case of Kongui (Further Reading: Part One of the Dumpy Kong Arc).
• games are too fucking much | Third-Tier Miscellany
  etcetega reflects on backlogs, crunch, genre, medium, and the sheer and literal enormity of games from both a production and consumption standpoint.

“games are too fucking much. too many of them, with too many layers, expecting too many hours out of my short and finite life.

but damn, I love them too fucking much to give them up. for better or worse.“