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This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2015

…to tackle the “Hot Ryu” Meme and what it teaches about the difference between sexiness and sexual objectification.

Critical Videogame Blogging

Every year the majority of criticism is about the games themselves. They are the reflection and the roadmap of ideas. The works of criticism here both examine and challenge games, new and old.

Battlefield: Hardline

At Paste prior to his move to Giant Bomb, Austin Walker reviewed Battlefield: Hardline, calling the game a cop-out for its lack of examination of its own chosen subject matter. Anthony McGlynn for The Arcade said much the same, but…

December 4

…– Can games really be Satanic? | Gamasutra Purusharth Tomar critically challenges whether or not games can be satanic.

  • There is No Such Things as a Cinematic Video Game | Stomp Doc Buford, at perhaps unnecessary length, illustrates where cinematic techniques fail games.

    • Sex and Sexuality

    • Dishonored 2: The Stories of Women | Not Your Mama’s Gamer Alisha Karabinus praises the recent Dishonored 2 for being a game powered by women’s stories, a narrative tragically uncommon in modern games.
    • Leading Men Are Trapped in the Closet, Bro | FemHype Jillian of FemHype explores the…

    February 26

    …to reconsider the overlooked themes of Heavy Rain.

  • Sex, Death, Redemption | Polygon Simone de Rochefort offers a retrospective praising the bizarre messiness of Catherine.

    • Community

    • Visual Essay Jam Friendly reminder that we have rounded up our recent jam, and it’s ripe for your viewing pleasure
    • Blogger of the Year Lastly, our blogger of the year, Miguel Penabella, reflects on the award and recommends some of the work from our journalist and video essayist of the year, respectively Heather Alexandra and Chris Franklin. I want to add my personal congratulations to all three of…

    July 16th

    …Points Monthly Ed Smith argues that by hastening the timing of an on-screen relationship’s consummation, sex is portrayed as not a reward, but a moment of vulnerability.

  • Nina Freeman’s Games Really Get Millennial Romance – Waypoint (Spoilers for Cibele and Lost Memories Dot Net) Kate Gray praises work that explores the confusion, desire, and pain of teen sexual exploration.
  • In Tragedy, ‘Life Is Strange’ Finds Freedom for the People Who Need It Most – Waypoint (Spoilers for Life is Strange) Cameron Kunzelman looks at another game about adolescent girls, and finds the promise of renewal in its broken…

    • August 6th

    …In Tacoma, the creators of Gone Home tell intimate stories at a galactic scale | A.V. Club Clayton Purdom reviews Tacoma, Fullbright’s spiritual successor to Gone Home, which subverts the expectations of the “walking simulator” genre.

  • The Cultural and Personal Legacy of Gone Home | Paste Ed Smith dives into Gone Home and its “rejection of pure escape” in favor of a painfully recognizable aesthetic that few games have recreated faithfully since:

    • “Popular games were talking about sex, violence and politics; reviewers were doing the same. When I played Gone Home, it felt like one of…

    September 10th

    …Kotaku Merritt Kopas interviews women who work in front of webcams, and makes some remarkable observations about which social spaces involve more trolling, and which kinds of work are more respected.

    “Despite the stigma directed at sex workers, Morbid feels that camming is more accepted than streaming as ‘real work’, maybe because there’s an offline analogue–you’re a “digital stripper”, as she puts it. Streaming is a newer practice and doesn’t have the same kind of equivalent. The idea of playing games while other people watch, much less making money from it, is still a very strange idea…

    Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

    February 18th

    …growth and stagnation in different parts of the world, painting a negative picture for the US in particular.

  • Sex, Pong, And Pioneers: What Atari Was Really Like, According To Women Who Were There | Kotaku Cecilia D’Anastasio’s article on the sexism of Atari’s culture before its corporate acquisition deftly navigates the apparent contradiction between stories of harassment and women’s fond memories of working at the company.

    • “If it isn’t the women of Atari who paint a bad picture of Nolan Bushnell, it’s the culture he created there that, decades later, has mushroomed into something else.

    …

    February-March Roundup: History

    …a teenage playing through ICO and comparing it with later attempts to go through it. But while the technical shift in contemporary triple-A games has made ICO feel stiff by comparison, Milena still cherishes the memory of that first experience of its world.

    Read it now

    Reid McCarter

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance – Myth-making and Historical Accuracy

    Article contains discussion of racism, misogyny and sexual assault.

    Writing for Unwinnable, Reid McCarter considers which versions of history are most important to represent in fiction and what kinds of rhetoric do they champion. That Kingdom Come: Deliverance boasts of…

    July 8th

    …of diverse representation in videogame characters.

    • Where Are the Disabilities in Visual Novels? | Unwinnable Gingy Gibson discusses the harsh politics of desirability and fetishization for disabled characters in a genre so often focused on winning the chance to have sex with someone.
    • More Representation Won’t Help Overwatch – Timber Owls Nadia M. re-energizes critiques of Overwatch’s cultural costuming, and argues that you can’t just layer better representation on top of the bad and get all the cookies.

    “Time and time again, Blizzard’s fans have had to do the heavy lifting with their own

    …

    September 16th

    …review this week–or hell, this year–read this one.

    “while an after-credits sequence tries quickly to quell Lara’s more destructive impulses and instruct against the violence of colonialism, anything it manages is far too little, and much too late. No matter how much Lara changes in the course of this adventure, she’s still an instrument of hegemony. This world remains a constructed fantasy, one designed specifically for her.”

    Sex, Feminism, and Gender(ings)

    Four writers this week reflect on feminism in games past and present, how relationships are gendered, and how development studios have a long

    …