September 7th

Welcome back readers.

We’ve got a big issue this week–23 article picks, and the decision to draw the line even there had more to do with not wanting this post to be delayed into Wednesday. If you’re a fan of what we do here, our Patreon is what powers pretty much all of it, so check it out! With enough support we could do something really cool like bring video and/or podcast curation back on a more regular basis.

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

Skongform Criticism

Our opening section this week isn’t concerned specifically with Silksong–as has historically been the case, I don’t expect the deeper writing about the game itself to start emerging for a few weeks yet. Instead, this section is more a meditation on the state of critical writing as it happens to appear to us at the time of Silksong‘s release. This, then, is why Roxanne B. and Drew Cook appear here, pursuing questions about criticism as they pertain to older games unconnected to Silksong. I do think it all threads together, though.

• Hardline in the Sand: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Write about The Text | Undermatrix Junction
  Roxanne B ponders the theorycrafting and handwringing that goes into the games that could have been over the ones we actually get.
• The Wolf that Cried Boy: The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode | Gold Machine
  Drew Cook evaluates an IF work that cloaks its troubled thematic core in feints of ethos, authorship, and transparency (Further Reading: Drew on LAKE Adventure, paratext, and authorship).
• Silksong Hastens the Death of the Critic | Endless Mode
  Grace Benfell sees Silksong‘s forgoing of review codes as emblematic of a shrinking liveable space for the critic.
• Games Criticism is Dead; Long Live Games Criticism | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner takes a broader perspective, beyond the release window and beyond the major publications, to consider criticism at the margins (Further Reading: Autumn Wright chats with Joshua Rivera about the journalist-critic divide, GTA6, and more).

“By nature of our calling, critics are inextricably linked to the art we’re critiquing in at least one relational sense; without the art, there would be nothing to critique. But beyond that fact of our existence it feels strange that we should be beholden to the capitalist forces that produce some of the art we appraise, just because by letting them have that control we get a little bit closer to both the art and its—and our—audience. It’s like we’re all jockeying to be tour guides at the world’s most extractive museum for a day rate of less than $100. And, ironically, the more control we give those forces the easier it is for them to destroy us, if they wanted to.“

Three-Pointer

We’ve surveyed the state of games crit, so let’s now turn to the games industry.

• INFINITE FREEWAY | DEEP-HELL
  Skeleton hears Sony’s getting out of the hardware game.
• The GTA6 of Indie Games doesn’t exist | AURAMBLES
  Aura Triolo breaks down the differences between indie and AAA economics that prevent the former from producing a game as commercially disruptive as GTA6 (Further Reading: Mikhail Klimentov on killing the CEO in your head).
• What can a 34-year-old Sonic level teach us about videogame light? | Rock Paper Shotgun
  Edwin Evans-Thirlwell sheds a light on the labour conditions and values of game development.
• Commodity Fetishism Is Law in NBA 2K26 | Endless Mode
  Jackson Tyler grapples with the political economy of the best/worst basketball sim on the market (Further Reading: Astrid Johnson on eating the turnips).

“When discussing microtransactions in video games it is often through the lens of whether they are fair, whether the player needs to spend money or is provided enough resources through play to engage with the game’s systems. 15 minutes with NBA 2K reveal the flaw in that approach. Yes, 500 VC per daily quest is a pitiful, insulting reward, but far more compromising is to play a digital basketball game, look at your XP bar, and know instantly that your victory over the Spurs earned you precisely 41 cents.“

Jam Session

Each of these next picks has something to say about development communities and game jams, both the good and the bad.

• From Ludum Dare to Pharloom | ACMI
  Jini Maxwell talks to Team Cherry about game jams, world-first design, and more.
• Soft Aid – “Feed The World” | Super Chart Island
  Iain Mew reflects on the history and influences of the (forgive me) 1980s UK microcomputing equivalent of a contemporary Itch charity bundle.
• My Waltz into the IFComp | TIER
  Kaelan Doyle-Myerscough recounts making a VN for IFComp–and inadvertently wading into its history, its turf battles, its gatekeeping (Further Reading: Kastel on a critical tradition for personal, outsider art).

“Twine games and visual novels have long been associated with queer and gender-marginalized developers, and when I look at the arguments in favor of parser-based games – that they provide players with more agency and wide-ranging choices – I’m reminded of so many arguments in the 2010s that served to alienate marginalized people and the games they often played. And then I think again about The Traveller, a game about a mother searching for her daughter, with more than one queer alien love interest, in which players have very little active agency.“

Far Afield

The object texts in these next two pieces both find their roots in the King’s Field series, but as the authors investigate, each moves away from that foundation to do something new.

• Caput Mortum: Friction over function | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi plays a King’s Field-like with a strong phenomenological bent (Further Reading: Kimimi’s foray into the original King’s Field (or is it King’s Field II?)).
• Lunacid is Unchained from its Inspiration | Kayinworks
  Kayin praises a King’s Field-like that surpasses its inspiration in the only way such a thing is possible–by being something completely different.

“This isn’t something you’d get in a Fromsoft game. It’s the antithesis of Fromsoft. Fromsoft has merely inspired Kira. So many areas and enemies are clear references to their work. Parts of the starting area referencing Shadow Tower, Castle le Fanu clearly referencing the Castle Layer from Shadow Tower Abyss… Titanite demons, the Moonlight Great Sword, even the core plot beats being a direct reference to Bloodborne… but the goals are different. Inspiration is not a chain.“

Road Mixtape

Critical intersections between play and life.

• Grasping for Agency | Into The Spine
  Bee Wertheimer moves–and flips–house (Further Reading: Willa Rowe on Is This Seat Taken?).
• my friend, the highway | Bullet Points Monthly
  Pao Yumol takes the aux cord for a meditation on Death Stranding 2, the highway, music, and grief (Further Reading: David Wolinsky’s piece from the same series).

“drone syndrome is exactly what i’d call whatever it is that’s been gunking up my brain. my memories, like the bulk of the belongings g. and i used to share, have begun to show signs of wear. i’ve smoked too much weed and repressed too many experiences. yet i also took it for granted that i could entrust important memories to the people with whom i experienced them. without g. or n. to shelter them, i’m afraid my memories of the life we shared might be ruined by neglect.“

Player Character Agency

We’re not looking at genres here, exactly, but maybe something more like trends–dad games and cozy games, respectively–as these next two featured authors excavate productive counter-examples.

• Money Makes Kaso-Machi Go Round | Unwinnable
  Maddi Chilton considers Promise Mascot Agency as an un-cozy game.
• Fathers and Daughters in Deathloop | Death is a Whale
  James Tregonning unpacks Deathloop as an inverted, latter-day dad game (Further Reading: Samantha Trzinski on fathers and daughters in recent survival horror).

“In short, rather than lionizing the parent (which is essentially just a variation on the classic power fantasy), Deathloop explores the feeling of an unsafe childhood. It throws you into a confusing, violent world where nothing makes sense and somebody’s angry at you for no discernable reason. You sit inside that violence, you come to terms with it – learn its patterns, its habits, unpick its inner logic – and once you understand it, you’re charged to take ownership of the ways in which you’ve reproduced it – or caused it, in the game’s cyclical logic. That violence is your violence, that failure your failure.“

Batter Up

Design inquiries bring these next three pieces together.

• OFF (2025 remaster) | Indie Hell Zone
  Dari hits it off with OFF once again on the occasion of its re-release (Further Reading: Lilith on OFF).
• An Evening with Solitaire Mystery | Unwinnable
  Emily Price meditates on the ambivalent friction of a card puzzler amid a sea of slot machines and systems labyrinths.
• I Love a Good Fetch Quest, Sue Me | Inner Spiral
  Alli extols the many virtues–narrative, social, structural–of the humble fetch.

“One of my favourite uses of fetch quests is how they teach you to inhabit space. Modern games lean so heavily on minimaps and waypoints that players often never really learn the world, but chase icons. Fetch quests push back against that by making you physically walk the land.“

Media Mix

These two selections aren’t about games, strictly speaking (go ahead, call my bluff on having a working definition for “game”, I will fold immediately), but they ask game-shaped questions. Anyway, they’re good and you should read them!

• A*RAVE: A VRChat Summer Social Review | Gamesline
  Crystal debriefs on the ups and downs of hosting a summer social on VRChat (Further Reading: Jamin Warren chats with Mélanie Courtinat about creating livable virtual spaces).
• The Danger of Playing Other People’s Games | Unwinnable
  Claribel F. Millgress traces the dance of roleplay and exploitation in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.

“When we play with other people, it’s not enough that we follow the rules. We need to know that the other players are doing the same, that we’re all in agreement, doing this together.“

Critical Chaser

A coin-op closer this week.

• Street Fighter Girls (Part 1) | Jake should be Writing
  Jake Steinberg gets dusted in SFII.

“I don’t remember the match clearly. My memory insists it lasted for hours, whole pies’ worth of mozzarella bubbling in the oven. What I do remember is that Natalie knew things. Things I hadn’t guessed at, couldn’t have guessed at.“