Queer Games Criticism in 2021 (so Far)
…of play in relation to both games and gender performance. I still link this one to friends–the most On-Line ones.
killing
Fallout 3
…Cook describes in “Hero of the Wastes”. When there are so few people, killing even one feels like genocide, and saving even one feels incredibly important.
Of course, the Washington D.C. setting of the game provides a touchstone for the development of personal narratives. Chris Person, whose once lived over the spot Vault 101 would be if it existed, found the game deeply affecting because of its connection to his childhood haunts. Michael Abbott, who only visited D.C., detailed a similar experience in “Second Thoughts”, in which he also ponders his meta-experience of the game. Bobby Schweizer relates the…
June 19th
…after my own heart, as he has written in to alert us to his ‘Open Letter to Dan Hay regarding non-diegetic gameplay elements in Far Cry 3’, with the trust of his issue being:
How can the game deign to reward the player for killing another human as if it knows what was right, what the context was, or what the player was feeling, Far Cry 2 nailed that moral ambiguity so well that when you enjoyed the killing, you knew its world had claimed you in its sick seduction of brutality.
Do you need a…
Spec Ops: The Line
…blogs around the game covering a vast range of perspectives and opinions. Personally, the game inspired me to try my hand at a long-form critical reading of the game called Killing is Harmless. As an appendix to this book, I compiled a Critical Compilation of posts written about the game that I will reproduce here.
Needless to say, this list is far from exhaustive, and I am sure to miss something out there on the ever-growing network of game blogs. Further, the game’s relative newness means many more conversations are likely to happen around it in the coming months….
January 20th
…swearing off swag altogether, the good along with the bad.
Game Church’s Richard Clark concurs, arguing that all gamers are in some way culpable for creating and sustaining the culture that fosters something like the Dead Island torso:
We, all of us, are the ones who sustained an industry whose product is made up primarily of different creative ways of killing. We are the ones who told ourselves it was good clean fun, while simultaneously upping the violent ante in every way possible. We are the one who paused Mortal Kombat to look up the fatalities,…
August – September Roundup: ‘Catharsis’
…how violence can prompt a form of catharsis. Coberly examines the Lancer, the default, be-chainsawed weapon of Gears of War series. As Mr. Coberly explains, the use of the totally-practical auxiliary chainsaw bayonette is rife with emotional drama:
In many games, killing an enemy is not, in and of itself, particularly tense. The badguy pokes his head out of cover, you blow it off with a sniper rifle. But the chainsaw kill is rife with tension. When you rev your chainsaw, you have to stop shooting and slowly advance towards your target…
…
…It’s brutal, egregious,
…
This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2017
…From examinations of Nazi killing to the lies of our own mythmaking to the reexaminations of works past, the games themselves has always been the forefront of the medium’s criticism. Whether that that lens be focused inwards to the work’s interior meaning, or directed outwards to the context of the contemporary world.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
- Wolfenstein II: a good argument for games to get political | Gamasutra – Bryant Francis Bryan Francis hopes developers will copy Wolfenstein II‘s methods of being a purposeful political entity the same way many hope developers would copy the Nemesis
…
July 11th
According to my working document naming convention this is the 70th TWIVGB I’ve assembled. That’s somewhat mind boggling, and so is the number of posts this week!
Greg J. Smith at Serial Consign usually blogs about architecture, and occasionally, we are blessed with an essay like this one
…
June 28th
…of games discourse history, and sometimes the voices we include in that history turn out later to have been really harmful people. As such, the Critical Distance team will be meeting to discuss and codify a permanent set of best practices and policies to ensure that our platform actively listens to survivors and remains a safe and accessible space for their voices and their work.
On a higher note, have you seen the most recent TMIVGV? Connor is really killing it over here, so check out his roundup and keep sending in your video recommendations!
This Week in…
May 2nd
…killing of Kung Lao, and I think “yes, this is appropriate, and I am happy for him.” I am not turning my brain off. This is not some kind of happy refuge from the other, more stressful world. I’ve been introduced to an engine that operates on heightened principles of mythical proportions and told to keep up or be left behind, and I’ve decided that I’d rather keep up and go on what I hope will be a long journey of sequels ahead.”
Play Feel
Our next two featured articles this week deal with the textures, sensations,…