Search Results for:

aesthetics

June 27th

…most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Flattening History

Our opening section this week examines historical processes both within games and around them, with particular foci on western bias and Orientalism. These trends inform games as works of art, as simulations, as commercial products, and more.

  • Sable (Demo): The Trouble with a Timeless Desert – GlitchOut Oma Keeling’s time with the demo for Sable is weighed down by an ahistorical Orientalism at the heart of the game’s whimsical indie aesthetics.
  • The Death of Adventure Games that Never Was – Vagrant Cursor

…

November 22nd

…swing towards empty aesthetic, Ghostrunner ain’t it.

  • Fear of a Yellow Planet: Why We Need to Actually Understand Cyberpunk | Fanbyte Alexis Ong embarks on a deep historical dive looking at the orientalist and sinophobic/japanophobic tropes and anxieties baked into the western cyberpunk tradition, while looking for alternatives that respond to and push back against this hegemonic narrative.

    • “Unfortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 is simply the most visible example of aesthetics-driven branding that dilutes a decent understanding of how cyberpunk, with all its Orientalist issues, came to be. And it doesn’t have to be this way.”

    …

    October 2020

    …captions)

  • A Love Letter for A Short Hike – Screen Therapy (5:57)

    Courtney Garcia recommends A Short Hike for as an effective “comfort game” for its mix of aesthetics, story and player-engagement. (No captions)

  • Blips: A Not So Spooky Halloween Warm Up – Errant Signal (26:06)

    Chris Franklin talks through the merits of five spooky-ish indie titles (Necrobarista, Cloud Gardens, Post Void, Spirits Abyss, Fatum Betula) for those wanting to get into the spirit of the season without going the full horror. (Autocaptions)

  • Big Boxes. – Ahoy (22:33)

    Stuart Brown recounts the origins and

    …

    • December 13th

    …Yellow Peril in Science Fiction | WIRED George Yang examines orientalism and othering in cyberpunk stories and worlds past and present.

    “The origins of the cyberpunk genre involve Western anxieties about the East. Techno-orientalism is the use of Asian aesthetics in cyberpunk, futuristic, and dystopian settings. There is a long and deep Euro-American tradition of using Asian symbolism such as neon signs with Japanese and Chinese lettering to express those feelings about what the future holds, including globalization and the threat of a takeover from the East.”

    Other Punks

    Nothing more countercultural than the

    …

    January 3rd

    …resolution for either of its protagonists.

  • 2020 Was Hopefully the Cusp of the Overdue Momification of Games | Fanbyte Natalie Flores explores the possibiliy that games like TLOU2, Hades, and Tell Me Why have laid the groundwork to make 2021 the year of the Mom Game.
  • We Never Asked For This – We Just Want A New Deus Ex | TheGamer Bella Blondeau looks back at Deus Ex, and Mankind Divided in particular, from the perspective of 2020’s cyberpunk discourse and looks for the ending not yet written.
  • Memento Mori, and the Aesthetics of Paradise Killer |…

    • January 24th

    …and where everyone involved is engaged (Alivegames).

  • Bugsnax & Ooblets: Cute is What They Aim For – Uppercut Ty Galiz-Rowe reflects on the distracting power of cuteness and wholesomeness in games, and warns against letting surface-level aesthetics obscure deeper critical tensions in how these games are written and who they are written for.
  • How hard is it to make your video game dog pettable? | Rock Paper Shotgun Ruth Cassidy examines the “Can You Pet the Dog” phenomenon in games and digs into its actual implications (or lack thereof) for giving indie developers exposure bumps that translate into…

    • January 31st

    …go before we lose our humanity” is central to cyberpunk aesthetics – but the game does not make loud noises about it. Instead, it’s merely an undercurrent rather than a flood – coming out in conversations, how Daniel is himself the outcome of that fusion, how the plague only exists because of crossing that line, that corporations have the power they do because everyone bought in to chipping away at their humanity to fill it with chrome.”

    Personal Play

    Gathered here are four different perspectives reflecting on personal practices of play–what the authors engage with, who they…

    The List Jam Roundup

    …Cyborg

  • Top 10 Times I Quit Playing Online Games by Shadsy
  • The History of a Relationship in 30-Odd Games (and Counting) by Oleg

    • Focusing Critique

    Instead of a list oriented around the best or most historic things, these lists took the approach of gathering examples to focus a specific critique, of representation, aesthetics or concepts circulating widely in the videogames space. In this case, a list sharpens an argument for what is overlooked and what we should be paying attention to in our discussions of games.

    • [Standing up with a gun] All right,…

    Emilie Reed | Keywords in Play Podcast, Episode 2

    …world sort of a space or the aesthetics space. Can you give us a quick introduction to the ‘Blank Arcade’ and your process in selecting some of the works, that went into that?

    Emilie: The ‘Blank Arcade’ is kind of a long-running exhibition that will occasionally go on view at iterations of DiGRA, which is the Digital Games Research Association conference that happens every year. Usually, the person who can follow it through from space to space is Lindsay Grace, who’s an American game developer and curator. I was working with him as a co-creator on this and it’s…

    Bo Ruberg | Keywords in Play, Episode 3

    …wasn’t about really first and foremost what I think, it’s about all of these amazing people who are out there making these scrappy, radical experimental queer games. So the project includes interviews with 25 queer and trans game makers, they’re presented as profiles. So people talk about their work but y’know I really wanted to get beyond this kind of standard diversity narrative of like queer people make game now, games are getting better. So instead they were like this kind of long-form in-depth interviews about people’s politics, about their aesthetics, about their art practices, about their personal histories in…