"Where is all the good writing about games?"
…Japan’s difficult situation for transgender people.
“Black people don’t have superhuman powers of endurance. We’ve been broken and killed under this country’s unjust laws and attitudes.” Two pieces look at evolving attitudes to conservatism in gamer audiences, specifically with reference to Battlefield. (Content warning for sexism and the far right)
Norms
Although it’s typical for AAA games to attract the majority of the in-depth writing, in the context of increasing tension around labor exploitation, more critics are considering the power dynamics of big publisher corporations and populist gamer culture. This week in videogame blogging, writers look at impactful mods and bootlegs, the role of games in political protest, and alternative histories.
Three writers look at creepy places and the art of creeping around.
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…way to go to create safe and equitable workplaces for women.
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…subject, Leigh Alexander wonders “if we’ve come to associate creativity with visible flaws?” and if so, that would go some ways to explaining Abbott’s response.
Kirk Hamilton wrote in to let readers know about the new blog he’s started recently with some fellow collaborators. It’s called ‘Gamer melodico’ and his post parodying both Mass Effect 2 and hipster memes gained him some serious popularity. I hope some of the newcomers decide to stick around.
Deirdre Kiai talked this week about a hunch she has that the target audiences for her kickstarter-funded indie game project Life…
…2 and find the exact same statements, almost verbatim, that I find in today’s criticism? These statements aren’t wrong, but they’re shamefully insufficient.
Peter Kirn at CDM runs down the new music based game ‘Chime’ that I’ve been hearing good things about. The game is also part of a charity based collective that aims to raise funds for children in need.
After a negative gamer piece early in the week explaining how difficult the Bioshock 2 hacking mini-game is for people with colourblindness, Dan Griliopoulos (who is colourblind himself) writes about the issue for Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
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…with women involved with games and the games industry.
CT Hutt at Press Pause to Reflect talks about how games manage the players level of mental engagement in ‘Playing with your brain’.
Frank Lantz wrote at Game Design Advance about, to quote his tweet, “Jon Blow, Sid Meier, Rob Pardo and truth in game design”, which is to say he skilfully wove a couple of threads together from GDC.
LB Jeffries looks at ‘The Literary Merits of Dante’s Inferno’ for PopMatters.
Michael Abbott at The Brainy Gamer, in a slight departure from his regular writing about…
…Michael Abbott’s McDonald’s Happy Meal toy experiment [mirror] of last week, and Dan Apczynski at GamerMelodico has a few things to add [mirror] to Tom Bissell’s excellent Observer piece from last week.
Raph Koster writes on his blog a tidy list of thing that ‘Core gamers should know about social games’, and he plays the apologist well.
Next up is an excellent pair of posts that do well to be read together; the first is Matthew Burns at Magical Wasteland writing about three treatments of apocalyptic Washington DC. Burns reminds us that,
…it’s worth considering how
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…refused, stating that the car was already owned by the person driving it. I was absolutely amazed by his response so I decided to sit back and observe how he chose to interact with this highly controversial game without the aid of a rotten-minded adult.
Sam Shahrani reticulates some splines for GamerMelodico this week, looking at why SimCity has dropped off the collective gamer radar [mirror], so-to-speak.
We’d be remiss not to mention the Hey Baby game and discussion it sparked this week, first by mentioning Leigh Alexander’s highly candid personal explanation as to why this is…
…defeated, the player should not say, “I lost,” but rather, “The villain won.” Sam Shahrani from Gamer Melodico runs down a list of Proper Villains [mirror] in video games.
All of the above topics, the self, characterization, death, opponents and so forth come together in the comprehensive, conversational examination of Indigo Prophecy (aka. Fahrenheit) done over at Raptured Reality by Michelle Baldwin (the fresh eyes) and Steven O’Dell (the re-visitor).
Finally, there are the stragglers. Leigh Alexander analyzes how the three sections of the game industry, creators, journalist and consumers treat the other two and themselves fostering a…
…Edge Online and elaborating on the issue by looking at Crackdown [mirror] in particular on his personal blog.
At Bitmob, Pat O’Malley writes about ‘How Square made Kingdom Hearts Work‘ [mirror] and Isaiah Taylor laments the death of local coop [mirror.
Pippin Barr writes for his personal blog ‘On the inability to “Stay Frosty”’ [mirror] in Modern Warfare 2.
Sebastian Wuepper writing for the Chronoludic blog explains the German Game ratings system [mirror], Germany being notoriously strict about videogame violence.
And lastly Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer blog looks at how Portal got onto the…