November 2015: ‘Forgiveness’
…this page immediately. We’ll also use the @critdistance Twitter account to post regular updates, so follow us!
call of duty
December 2015: ‘Joy’
…BoRT or up to one month prior.
May 1st
…give an artificial sense of life to the characters in their worlds — guards going about their duty in Skyrim, or bandits bickering in The Witcher 3 – Dark Souls places its unreality centre stage.”
Art and History
Playing with the Past « First Person Scholar
Michael Hancock reviews a new book about games and history.
“Playing with the Past‘s preoccupation is, obviously, with history and videogames, but it is how it goes about pursuing that connection that differentiates it from other books of its type. From the introduction, editors Kapell and Elliott affirm…
May-June Roundup: ‘Childhood-Parenthood’
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The importance of having these storylines occur in games is multifaceted. At the most obvious, the central narrative gets a time-tested structure upon which the action of the game can hinge. At a deeper level, this design put relationships at the center of gameplay…
I decided to get in on the action and sketched out some thoughts about quests to save parents versus quests to save love interests. It seems to me that where love or frendship related calls to action promise a reward, where quests to save parents are motivated by duty with no apparent
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October 2017: ‘Hospitality’
Greetings all to the spookiest month of the year. As much as we love horror, costumes, pumpkins and their associated spices, we decided we wanted to be a little more welcoming. This October, we invite you to do more than just trick or treat, we want to invite you in, let the mask slip and enjoy some of our best ‘hospitality’:
Hosting others can be anything a precious memory, a rare treat, a regular encounter, an inconvenient interruption, a social obligation, or a reluctant duty. What does it mean to host in a game? Is hosting a hostile act
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Here Comes a New Challenger!
…Zoyander Street remains on the Board of Directors for Critical Distance as Director of Content, and is also doing double-duty as my low-key sith master as I learn the role. He is leaving the role of Senior Curator to focus more attention on other projects, including a series of lo-fi interactive documentaries about trans people. Sign up for his mailing list here!
There’s one last item I’d like to address here, and it’s an important one. Recent changes have hit our Patreon hard, so if you want to help further our project, as well as the new and exciting…
This Year in Videogame Blogging: 2019
…and bonds that last from one world to the next. If love, sadness or duty could move from the land of the living to the dead, then perhaps these feelings of pride and solidarity can shift from the digital to the actual. We made something; we helped each other. Video game or not, there’s a comfort in that. It turns out that being an Amazon worker in the apocalypse isn’t so bad when solidarity prevails.
Phew. Elsewhere, at Rebind, Emily Rose also touched on the protagonist Sam’s relatability as a gig worker in an arguably doomed world, while…
June 2020
…backdrop of America-Japan tensions. (Autocaptions)
Kofie Yeboah crowdsources directions to try and take a simulated version of the Seattle Mariner’s record-breaking 2001 roster to the playoffs in Out of the Park Baseball. It… does not go well. (Manual captions) To finish up this roundup for June 2020 it is my duty (I guess) to present you with a couple of vids on Naughty Dog’s shiny, exhausting and discourse-hogging series. The Last of Uh
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January 9th
…of non-threatening pull possessed by one Hero of Time.
“Almost every woman you exchange more than four words with eventually admits she’s got a massive crush on you but her devotion to her duty means you can never truly be together, which only makes you more handsomely intriguing, and then gives you a beautiful jewel (the Zora’s Sapphire, the Silver Gauntlets, the Forest Medallion, a spirited mare) to remember her by. It’s the Pretty Pretty Princess game for non-threatening boys. “Everyone wants to date me! But they can’t! Everyone is pining for me at a safe distance…
July 24th
…– Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster We begin our story in the distant past. Okay, not that distant, but it is my sorry duty to report that the PSP is now old enough to drive. At any rate, let’s start with RPGs in 2006 to 2009. To that end, Kimimi locates Ys‘ identity in a willingness to embrace change, with a lookback at the series’ PSP era.
“Ys is iconic (and alive) because Falcom keeps making sure the series has games like Ys Origin and Ys Seven in it, games that are proud of the entries that came…