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99 Free Games from 2009

…spiffy little number, and it all brims with a flair and verve that’s lacking in many commercial ventures. Additionally, for a game with very little graphic power it succeeds quite well in creating a sense of dank ambience to its surroundings. Mega-twitch gamers may find it a bit too forgiving, but it’s right in the sweet spot for others.

31. Continuity

Ragtime Games’ Flash student project is a mindbender of a game, utilizing the arrangement of sliding tiles to solve the seemingly ubiquitous videogame key/door puzzle combo. From the looks of this one it would seem ultimately destined…

May 3rd

…is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Play, Together

We open this week with three fine pieces, each about shared or social gaming experiences in one capacity or another.

  • Gamer Mom: Animal Crossing Is Teaching My Kid Financial Literacy | Sidequest Wendy Browne takes stock of what her daughter is learning about stalks.
  • Nonverbal Communication in Animal Crossing New Horizons | KathyJones on Patreon Kathy Jones discusses body language, tics, emotes, and other means on non-verbal communication in New Horizons.
  • Let’s Chill – Jedi Academy

…

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This list is updated monthly on the same weekend as newsletters are sent out…

June 7th

…Tauriq identifies a misplaced sense of guilt among the privileged–and the constant expectation that everyone else take pains to assuage that guilt–as one of the key barriers that have continued to prevent a meaningful discussion of real, existing racial inequality in games, in media, in everything.

  • \\………..//: Beyond Gamergate Liz Ryerson draws parallels between the Gamer-As-Bogeyman being a distraction from meaningful change and restorative justice in the industry, and the wider tendency in our culture to quell dissent from the status quo via the distraction of scapegoats.
  • The Video Game Industry Has No Clue How to Respond to…

    • August 22nd

    …push for in the future.

    • If a game lets you pause, it should let you rewind | Fogknife Jason McIntosh makes an accessibility case for rewind features in a wider number of games past and present.
    • Is PC gaming for everyone yet? | PC Gamer Ruth Cassidy talks with developers and organiations about the state of accessible play in the PC landscape, covering game design, input support, ergonomics, difficulty, and more.

    “Right now, the PC gaming experience feels unpredictable when it comes to accessibility. I can pick up a physically undemanding adventure game and

    …

    July 12th

    …respective games and stories with a focus on tensions of identity, whether those tensions are challenged by the game itself, or are left unchallenged until players and writers put those tensions to the test.

    • Afterparty and the Tedium of Eternal Consumption – Haywire Magazine Bartlomiej Musajew treks through nine circles of consumption capitalism, alcohol, and identity in Afterparty.
    • Growing Up As A Taiwanese-American Gamer Was The Best Of Both Worlds | Kotaku Joe Shieh describes a childhood at the crossroads between the Japanese and North American gaming scenes.
    • Their World | Bullet Points Monthly Yussef Cole

    …

    August 29th

    …need to accomplish to accomodate and empower players.

  • The Boyfriend Dungeon backlash was nothing new for queer games | PC Gamer Natalie Clayton talks to developers about the outsized scrutiny queer-authored games and media in general continually face from queer audiences.

    • “Better trigger warnings (something Yang describes as “deeply imperfect stop-gaps”) isn’t the solution to this, so much as better communication and conversation around what it means to create and consume queer art. To recognise that queerness is messy and personal in ways that will always colour representation. And perhaps most importantly, to recognise that sometimes…

    God of War (2018)

    …further away. The zeitgeist of games at the time was, perhaps unintentionally but no less effectively, inhospitable to those outside the stereotypical gamer paradigm.

    I liked the game. It just didn’t like me.

    In The Game of The Generation, Jackson Tyler takes this further, focusing not on the game’s hyperbolic misogynistic violence, but the disturbing allusions made to much more common abuse:

    Everyone knows that in God of War III, Kratos ties a topless woman to a gear, using her broken body as a doorstop as he progresses through the level. Less mentioned is the…

    Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

    Dragon Age II

    …to like me! I don’t need to help him. And if he’s making a series of poor choices that harm Miriam Hawke’s life and her other relationships? He can go to hell.

    While not necessarily about Anders’s specific actions, it’s worth noting that his sexuality was also given close scrutiny by members of the community, leading Dragon Age II scribe David Gaider to reply with a self-described “wall of text” in defense of the game’s romantic options:

    The romances in the game are not for “the straight male gamer”. They’re for everyone. We have a lot…

    Final Fantasy VII

    …writes for The New Yorker about one fan’s two-year effort to train Cloud and Barret to level 99 in the very first play area; Ethan Gach writes for Kotaku about streamer Caleb Hart’s 100% completion speedrun of the game; and there are multiple re-evaluations of the game’s notoriously subpar translation, such as Tim Rogers’ video series for Kotaku and an unofficial overhaul patch, five years in the making, which Wesley Yin-Poole writes about for Eurogamer.

    Hamilton and Alexander theorize that the game’s cryptic, complex storyline created opportunities for online discourse, investigation, and reinterpretation. By far the most hotly-discussed…