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Discover a Critical Culture

…about videogames, opening me up to the possibilities of games and the wonders of a diverse critical community.

Critical Distance exposed me to such writers as Jenn Frank, who revealed to me the beauty of writing intimately and personally about our experiences with games. I first read Lana Polansky, Zolani Stewart, and other critics via Critical Distance, who use insightful interdisciplinary approaches to understanding games alongside poetry, photography, painting, and architecture.

Critical Distance brought me to the writings of countless bloggers and cultural critics who have challenged me to examine the (often uncomfortable and exploitative) relationships between videogames…

This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2016

…– George Weidman Super Bunnyhop looks at the first level of every Sonic game an what that can tell us about each game and era as a whole.

  • On Sonic ’06 | Medium – ZEAL – Zolani Stewart Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the travesty that is Sonic 2006 in Zolani Stewart’s continuing work in #SonicStudies.

    • Undertale

    • The Dark Side of Pacifism in ‘Undertale’ | PopMatters – Nick Dinicola Undertale is a game in favor of non-violence, but in the game’s story that has some disturbing implications, Nick Dinicola notes.
    • …

    October 15th

    …language

    Further expanding notions of how we should read games as critics, these two writers challenge us to sharpen our visual literacy.

    • Brick By Brick / Selective Chromophobia & Castlevania Doshmanziari sees bright, vivid colours where others either don’t see them, or don’t remember them, and gives us images to prove they are real.
    • Are Videogames Bad at Images? – Zolani Stewart – Medium Zolani Stewart pens something close to a manifesto, laying out a way of thinking about images and visual communication that has been largely neglected in games criticism until now.

    …

    Episode 43 – Think, Game, Love

    …work, new job at Kotaku, and speculate on the future of video game commentary.

    SHOW NOTES

    Heather Alexandra’s YouTube Channel

    Kotaku’s A Critical Look Playlist

    “Let’s Crit”: Far Cry 4

    “Let’s Crit”: Shadow of the Colossus

    Let’s Remember Skies of Arcadia

    Vanquish: Why Ya Gotta Do More Than Just Play Games

    ZAM – The Witness Review

    A Closer Look At “The Harvester” in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

    Revisiting Red Dead Redemption

    MGS2 Livestream w. Zolani and Austin!

    Opening Theme: ‘Close’ by The Alpha Conspiracy

    Closing Theme: ‘Wishing…

    September 16th

    …himself.

    C:/Miscellaneous

    Damien McFerran’s Crippled by Nostalgia: The Fraud of Retro Gaming. He asks if it’s the gameplay that makes hardcore gamers go back to vintage games or something else? Hint: He posits it might be something else.

    Carol Borden’s The Plague of the White Knight. After playing Max Payne 3, Bioshock 2 and Halo 3 she is tired of the trope of the “White Knight Savior” and the “Save The Cheerleader, Save The World” goal of storytelling so prevalent in games.

    Zolani Stewart’s An Exploration of “Whore of The Orient.” “Context is everything,” he begins…

    February 24th

    …“yes, and” level:

    [L]ongform improv comedy involves actors cooperating to “find the game” — to find the core of a joke. Each actor makes “offers” to expand upon a premise and move action forward, hopefully toward a funny destination, and usually, actors err on always accepting offers (“saying yes”) and building upon it since “blocking” offers frustrates your scene partners. However, it’s very possible to “say yes” to a premise while still “blocking” the “game.”

    Finding himself lost in a non-Euclidean alternate universe not of his own design, Corporal Zolani Stewart transmits a few notes on nature…

    April 21st

    …purest nature and that we need to strive to make games that represent this limits what we can do with games.

    DESIGN MATTERS

    Who was Nintendo’s most recent 3DS Direct for? It wasn’t for you, says Jon Irwin, who believes Nintendo is stuck in a generation gap.

    Over on Bit Creature, Zolani Stewart explores Mirror’s Edge as an aesthetic wasteland. And at Shut Up and Sit Down, Mark Wallace broaches the topic of licensed board games, good or evil?

    On Gamasutra, Mark Slabinski furnishes us with a heady list of games exemplifying Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept…

    July 28th

    …sides of the argument to Company of Heroes 2‘ depiction of Russia and the Russian Army during World War II.

    Nick Dinicola, on his PopMatter column, decides to take a closer look at Aliens: Colonial Marines and finds it a fascinating lesson in how to make a bad game.

    Austin C Howe on his blog Haptic Feedback reads into the original Metal Gear Solid as a Postmodernism masterpiece.

    Zolani Stewart looks at the meaningful design of Aaron Steed’s Ending.

    Kyle Derkson at Push Select Magazine calls courage the weakest link in the Triforce.

    Rich Stanton…

    September 22nd

    …to privileged members of post-industrial nations, leaving the rest of the world out in the cold.

    Liz Ryerson has reproduced her talk from the No Show conference, which serves as a response to both Darius Kazemi’s “Fuck Videogames” as well as the recent discussion over Zimmerman’s manifesto.

    Bright spark Zolani Stewart pens an interesting exploration of an oncoming wave of “post-gun” game design. Elsewhere on Polygon, L. Rhodes characterizes the recent Penny Arcade Expo furor as existing on a much larger time scale.

    Now for a bit of history. Everyone has heard the story of chess champion…

    December 15th

    …as such often excludes and obscures a much broader and diverse spectrum.

    Architectures

    On Medium, Liza Daly provides a great analysis of games as fulfilling jobs the same as (or different from) many other diversions.

    Elsewhere, on Higher Level Gamer, doctoral student Erik Bigras shares the interesting tale of the collective worlds built among his colleagues in Minecraft, all of which explore interesting takes on geometry, architecture, and efficiency. And on his personal blog, Canadian critic Zolani Stewart offers a fantastic textual analysis of how Mortal Kombat 4‘s level design reflects isolation.

    Basic Human Decencies

    …