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narratives

The Witcher 3

…Videogame Narratives, in which they argue that the initial, ostensible possibility of polygamy — which is deceptive, in that this is a game in which any relationship intact at the end is strictly monogamous in nature — also points to The Witcher 3’s complete absence of queer discovery.

In The Witcher series, the player cannot make this fruitful transgression into queer discovery. At one level, this inability is a result of the designed nature of the game-world, but at another, the game’s array of sexual partners acts as a kind of buffer against queer possibility.

The macrocosmic…

November 29th

…could make for a refreshing pallete-cleanser after all the reading I’ve found for you this week?

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

Changing (Dis)Course

We open this week with three articles challenging dominant critical narratives in games and their attendent discourse. How can we talk more meaningfully about games without going in circles? What else is out there to play and cover? How can we more thoughtfully engage with the stuff that already has all of the mindshare?

  • La importancia

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Pandemics and games essay jam

…themes and others:

  • How the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped and transformed our relationships and encounters with video games
  • How it has catalyzed changes in the games industry, from design and labor issues to marketing and corporate structure
  • How pandemics and other transmissible diseases are represented in games yesterday and today
  • How game worlds, especially in social and live games, have been affected by pandemics, whether rooted in game narratives or through “viral” trends in player behavior
  • How the trauma of COVID-19 has retroactively changed the legacy of older titles

On January 4-10,…

January 31st

…is influencing local game development | GamesIndustry.biz Khee Hoon Chan talks to Indian developers about the tensions of making historical and political games in a social and political climate of rising right-wing populism.

“India is one of the most religiously and ethnically diverse countries in the world. The interweaving of narratives surrounding the numerous cultures in the country complicate the stories told about them — this is what makes retelling historical tales such a minefield. This amorphous tension is may become a challenge, particularly for Indian creators and storytellers who wish to share more nuanced perspectives about…

July 18th

…experiment with the format a little and identify a critical thread to string together all nine selections this week. That thread is Breakdowns. Every article this week involves a disassembly, a demystification, or a deconstruction of larger constituent elements or dominant narratives around a game. This may take the form of games that fail to meet expectations, as it does with Jimmy Maher, or games that significantly rise above them, as it does with Kimimi. This theme brings together works of longform criticism, experiential writing, or in the case of Joel Goodwin, a bit of both. Some pieces, as is…

May 2021

…the psychology behind the feeling of attachment players sometimes develop to videogame narratives. (Manual captions)

  • Darkest Dungeon Wants You to Succeed – Static Canvas (8:22)

    Thomas Ife finds some hidden player-assist mechanics underneath the foreboding veneer of Darkest Dungeon. (Manual captions)

    • Play Labour

    Let’s finish up with a few important pieces about linking videogames, the labour that produces them, and the ways games represent labour issues.

    • Cyberpunk 2077: some cyber, no punk – Curio (1:18:00)

      Eric Sophia lambasts Cyberpunk 2077’s problematic pastiche of orientalism, poor representations of mental health, a lack of

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    June 2021

    …in her own journey of self-discovery. (Autocaptions)

  • Queer Fantasy | Finding Your True Self in Cyberspace – Transparency (49:57)

    Transparency think about how MMORPG spaces, mechanics, and communities (such as those of Final Fantasy XIV) can allow players to explore personal questions of gender and sexuality. (Manual captions)

    • Colonial Reckonings

    These next few videos are about games engaging with, critiquing, and sometimes enacting narratives of invasion and colonialism.

    • Umurangi Generation, Colonialism, UAPs, UFOs and Alien Invasion Stories – Super Bunnyhop (22:54)

      George Weidman takes Umurangi Generation’s representation of colonial apocalypse as a

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    March 21st

    …with a trio of sections about history and ahistory. I’ve gone back and forth a bit on how to order these pieces and sections because there’s lots over commonality on things like the short cultural memory that plagues games, cyclical narratives in reporting, and art, preservation, and obselescence. In this first part, we’ve got three authors who, while focusing on specific texts and topics, also gesture broadly to the construction of cultural history and memory in the industry.

    • Too many games – Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster Kimimi interrogates the breadth and specificy of knowledge valued–even required–within games as

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    April 25th

    …Seeking alternatives to revenge narratives in games | Eurogamer.net Malindy Hetfeld considers the ways in which games alternately indulge and critique our desires for revenge, both on structural and storytelling levels.

    “Revenge gives us a clear motive, an antagonist and, in the case of games, a justification for violence, and it works surprisingly well mainly because we as humans can sympathise with the hankering for revenge. We may not dream of taking an axe to someone, but who hasn’t dreamed of getting back at someone in some way?”

    Bodies in Play

    Two very different

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    May 23rd

    …depictions of police and police power in future worlds, here looking largely at Astral Chain and Mass Effect.

    • Los policías en los videojuegos: héroes virtuales o villanos reales | Shock Julián Ramírez narrates the history of playable police in games, from Police Quest to Astral Chain, finding that even amidst increasingly “grey” narratives detailing corruption, individualistic heroism is ultimately still leveraged to uncritically rehabilitate the image of police in most contemporary titles (Spanish-language article).
    • Mass Effect’s revival reminds us it’s time to abolish the space police | Polygon Yussef Cole draws upon the theory and literature of

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