May 9th
…talk about, music.
“I’m making the unseen…
…talk about, music.
“I’m making the unseen…
…Controller Port (6:42)
Benjamin Yoder argues that Balan Wonderworld’s inventive costume mechanic makes it more worthwhile to play than some negative reviews have suggested. (Autocaptions)
Soft & Hollow can’t speak highly enough of the melding of aesthetics, obtrusive gameplay and jank in indie horror The New Flesh. (Manual captions)
Lastly for April (though certainly not leastly), a couple of nice vids look at the way game stories can help us change for the better.
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…the impression of parody while in practice reinforcing exploitative values. (Manual captions)
Videogame representations of ‘the natural world’ are the focal point for these next four essays. Maria highlights a bunch of games that indulge in the visual aesthetics of “cottagecore”, before arguing that Minecraft’s combination of survival gameplay, crop growing mechanics, and mods and texture packs, make it the ‘perfect’ cottagecore game. (Manual captions) DimeTree is enthusiastic for forests (and particularly The Great Outdoors
…
…media and cultural industries, more generally, the cultural intermediaries literature, also, like going back a little further, when I was doing my dissertation research, like the sociology of art and aesthetics was a big sort of area that I read, read in and sort of informed my work a lot. And so part, part of the answer is just like, and again, this is, I’m just like borrowing from Brendan again, but like a better game video games aren’t special, right? Like you keep like you can, you can use these, these sort of theoretical and methodological toolkits for all…
…into.”
Now for a pair of perpsectives themed around “retro” aesthetics, traditions, and logics in modern games.
“See, on Itch, it’s Halloween 1998 every single…
…a lot of people can identify with these, with these narratives. So, I think that it doesn’t really speak only about a regionally specific experience, but also more broadly about going to marginal or peripheral experience, because a lot of people in the US and you know, in the UK, also kind of had pirated copies of games. And they might have also kind of made, you know, like, DIY, freeware, and shareware games. And I think that the, the practices and the, the attitudes, and the aesthetics were in, in many ways similar.
Emilie: That’s really cool and…
…undertaking to produce criticism and interviews about some of the games comprising that giant Queer Games Bundle you can still get on Itch for the next seventeen days. If you’re looking for some essential indie games journalism in the wake of not-E3, well, buddy, here’s a great place to start.
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…dismiss as somehow separable from everything else that makes up a culture.”
Ok I know the tarot-themed anthology piece is a bit of a stretch fit here but bear with me.
…eleventh hour, thanks to several people’s efforts, and one day it will be rebuilt and playable again.”
Here we have a pair of design-focused pieces looking alternately at addiction and horror, both in games well-loved and games well…played.
…fires.
“You basically have to make R-Type your hobby, a regular fixture in your life. Maybe starting from the start more often gives you an edge over me especially because you get to keep your power-ups, maybe you’re better at video games than I am, but for as perfectly likely as those propositions sound to me, I kinda…