Search Results for “gamer” – Page 39

August 27th

…about frogs, with comic fonts and non-sequitur-delivering wildlife. I would too, but only in the context of what a good thing this is.”

Critical Chaser

Sound advice.

Common Proverbs as Video Game Tutorials | McSweeney’s Internet Tendency Matthew S. Burns sees us out with a little Gamer Wisdom for the ages.

“Distant grass will always have a greener hue. You can fine-tune the appearance of distant grass in Settings > Graphics.”

Critical Distance is community-supported. Our readers support us from as little as one dollar a month. Would…

…through the maze. “Absolute control. I’ve eliminated the mad (sic), scattering chase. That’s probably how they intended the game to be played, running around out of control. But that’s not how I play.”

Can’t Stop the Signal

I leave you with a bit of signal boosting for this great project in need of your support, brought to you by the folks at Not Your Mama’s Gamer. Samantha Blackmon and her crew are gearing up to produce a video series on race and representation in games — a vastly underserved subject and one that the NYMG’s crew is…

Stephanie Harkin | Keywords in Play, Episode 29

…example. But this move towards more the Bildungsroman/coming-of-age theme, which I think Life Is Strange is kind of a key example of that. It explores… It puts much more emphasis on those social obstacles, identity exploration, rather than epic quests and, you know, the return to home, like the Odysseus narrative is kind of used as the archetype of heroes’ narrative. But I was noticing, yeah, this shift toward the coming-of-age structure and a lot of those were from girls’ perspectives. And I think that kind of intersects with your own research on the Post-Gamer Turn. I think a lot…

September 24th

…its occasional peaks and many valleys.

“In 2023, even loosely leftist politics in games is an ongoing culture war, one which has developers actively denying the politics of their games in order to appeal to a certain type of reactionary gamer. The new shape Oddworld has taken reflects that in its cowardly equivalences. It is a peek into the new politics of Oddworld: that to revolt, one must not be revolting, that violence is not OK even in service of revolution. Gone is the counterculture, and in its place, frustrated political neutrality. In the end, all are…

Xavier Ho | Keywords in Play, Episode 30

…the street, either they are gonna go “Well, I’m not a gamer, I don’t play games” or “It’s not for me, it’s too violent, I don’t really like to use guns and stuff” or it’s “I’m not good enough, like, I’m shit at fighting games, it’s not for me”. And you have all these very interesting sort of, I guess, perceptions about what games are. When you look at more, I guess, indie games and especially queer indie games, you get to see a lot more story-driven narrative designs, thinking about someone coming out and coming of age stories and…

November 5th

…and overlooked outcome of unsustainable comsumerism.

“I believe that Redfall is an excellent test case for how capitalist gamer culture has turned some gaming consumers into a particularly odious, never-satisfied group of soulsuckers that game developers are forced to kowtow to. In other words, vampires. Mechanical issues like those that happen with Redfall occur because of toxic crunch culture, which occurs because the consumer base constantly clamors for shiny new toys at beyond the speed of light, and game devs regularly receive death threats for things like announcing project delays. The gamers help create the conditions for…

January 21st

…audiences, access to distribution and discoverability.

Gaming Needs To Expand Its Roster Of Male Voice Actors | TheGamer Tessa Kaur remarks that the stakes for Troy Baker saturation are higher now that AI-soundalikes are also in competition.
The loss of GAME’s trade-ins is a blow to video game accessibility | TechRadar Cat Bussell reflects on the erosion of second-hand games availability in the UK.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Director Proves There’s No Easy Solution For Game Subscriptions | Inverse Robin Bea contemplates discoverability, gatekeeping, and preservation in a digital landscape increasingly dominated by subscription models.
On

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January 28th

…novelty.”

Legacy Media

In a way, both of our next selections are about legacies, be they of genre, of literature, of access, of cultural baggage inherited or rejected.

It shouldn’t be this hard to play the best version of one of Japan’s great roguelikes today | PC Gamer Kerry Brunskill reflects on the massive influence and maddening inaccessibility of Shiren the Wanderer.
El Paso, Elsewhere and Inverting the Monster as Metaphor | No Escape Nicanor Gordon juxtaposes El Paso, Elsewhere and its principal players against the racist foundations of western fantasy and horror.

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March 3rd

…Cobalt Core is not a roguelike deckbuilder. It is, in fact, one of many, very creatively concealed homages to Breakout and Pong.”

The Boys Are Back in Town

Characters and themes take precedence in each of these next three picks.

Square Enix won’t let us play Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PC yet, so my consolation prize is finally playing Final Fantasy 15 | PC Gamer Emily Price kicks back with the boys to revisit the scrappy, flawed, and charming game that maybe laid some of the groundwork for the FFVII Remake series.
The…

This Month in Videogame Vlogging: March 2024

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Night of the Living Dead (Games)

As you might imagine, videogame preservation is one of Critical Distance‘s pet subjects; after all, the whole reason we’re here in the first place is to preserve the media that covers videogames. These three essays cover games that, for one reason or another, have faded into gamer legend and have either been brought back to life or simply exhumed for study.

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