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bodies

August 21st

…the signposts that prompt you always onto the next star system.

  • Errant Signal – Firewatch (Spoilers!) – YouTube (video, auto-captions) A similar focus on presence and ambiguity over clear narrative resolution comes out in the latest Errant Signal video, on Firewatch.
  • “Between pushing environmental stories through found objects and walks through corridors that emphasize hone in distance in geography, the player is constantly getting one clear message: time and space matter”

    No Man’s Kyriarchy

    Back on earth, we have been critiquing gender and bodies as they are portrayed and catered to across games

    April 16th

    …Nick Taylor argues that “getting good” at video games transforms both the mind and body.

    That said, proficiency with games does not just modify how and what we know about them. Proficiency is also an embodied process that works to shape our sensory abilities, our capacities for attention, and our propensities for proprioception – our awareness of our bodies’ internal workings. In other words, the process of getting good is one which alters not just our knowledge of the game — it transforms our bodies.

    …To the Outside In

    Economic and social structures and

    June 25th

    …as shown only through hands, with reference to a GDC talk by Blizzard’s Matt Boehm.

    Misappropriation

    Female subjectivity and memory have been important themes in some pieces this week; additionally, an important call-out was issued about remembering the designers of game patterns.

    • Maternal Bodies: Interrogating Pregnancy-as-Risk in Orphan Black and Bound – Not Your Mama’s Gamer Bianca Batti brings feminist readings of film, games, and medical practice to bear in yet another great piece blending games studies and science and technology studies.
    • Remember Me – Guide to Games – VICE Video Mike Diver picks…

    October 22nd

    …about embalming dead bodies has attracted a great deal of attention.

    • ‘A Mortician’s Tale’ Review: This Might Be the First Game to Really Understand Death | WIRED Julie Muncy links this simulator game to the death positive movement.
    • A Game That Finds Comfort in the Banality of Death – Waypoint Kate Gray focuses on the game’s dialogue, inspired by the dissonance between triviality and grief.
    • In A Mortician’s Tale, death doesn’t have to be a downer – Polygon Allegra Frank draws attention to the perfunctory endings that human lives receive, made more apparent when role-playing as

    April 15th

    Videogames: where frustration and inconvenience can be enjoyable. This week’s roundup features writing on the design and portrayal of economic systems, emotional loops, and physical structures for human bodies.

    Fathers

    First, this week brought us three pieces about dad games, children, and conservative fantasies.

    • A Quiet Place presents a world where you can’t learn from your mistakes – Polygon Ben Kuchera argues that this game reflects the worst paranoias of a parent, without critiquing the harmful behaviors that this paranoia produces.
    • ‘God of War’ Triumphs Because It Confronts Its Own Bloody Legacy – Waypoint

    August 12th

    …– Diagnosis: Phantom Depth Fabian Fischer discusses techniques for keeping a system opaque, on the basis that when a player “sees through a system”, it no longer appears to have any depth.

    “Adding new game elements or regularly changing existing ones will guarantee that players never truly see through a system. It becomes a constantly moving target.”

    All assets are created equal

    Bodies morphed into surreal spatial objects are explored in two very different pieces, one looking at contemporary art and one an icon from the videogames canon.

    • Game Art: Lu Yang’s…

    July 14th

    …is truthful, important, and hard to convey.”

    Queer Horizons

    We’ve got two highlights this week focusing on expanding and diversifying queerness in games.

    • 10 Great Queer Games to Play After Pride Month | Paste Natalie Flores offers up a starter pack for broadening your queer gaming horizons.
    • Bear Bodies | Unwinnable Jeremy Signor seeks out some queer masculine body diversity in games, and finds much to mine in Capcom’s back-cat.

    “Sadly, you don’t see a lot of different body types that can be queered in videogames, as the masculine is commonly…

    Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

    February 23rd

    …that.

    This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

    Body Politic

    Our opening grouping this week tracks two tensions: the continuing need to push for the inclusion of more bodies and more identities in games, as well as some caution in writing off specific bodies and identities–particularly feminine-coded ones–in the ostensible name of that critique. Who gets left behind in those cases, even if the aim is to establish more positive gains?

    • I Was Wrong About Bayonetta – Irrational Passions Jarrett Green

    August 9th

    …the old to make something new.

  • Review: I Am Not Playing Variations on Your Body | Sidequest Melissa Brinks spends time with four pervasive games about bodies, trauma, and healing which she hopes to someday play.
  • ““It’s important,” she writes, “to sincerely imagine impossible things, to develop empathy towards impossible creatures, to practice being impossible.” This is the goal of the games within Variations on Your Body—to imagine a model of being that isn’t possible, but that nonetheless gets you where you need to go.”

    Communities of Creation

    Two articles this week go

    ReadySet Zam archive

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1293/talking-games-with-psychologist-laura-crawford

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1289/the-gundamization-of-games

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1273/how-games-helped-me-deal-with-tourettes

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1210/daughter-sims-and-clinton-jokes-a-conversation-with-the-original-localizer-behind-princess-maker-2

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1270/titanfall-2-and-the-trope-of-the-good-robot

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1276/the-making-of-burly-men-at-sea

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1277/the-passion-of-the-port

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1209/a-tango-for-two-isaac-schankler-talks-music-and-ladykiller-in-a-bind

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1187/become-a-glitch-girl-in-just-10-seconds-a-conversation-with-andi-mcclure

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1272/games-we-love-to-watch-other-people-play-horror-gaming-and-youtube

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1275/global-game-global-life-impressions-from-the-league-of-legends-world-championship

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1271/civanon-and-just-one-more-turn-how-civilization-sucks-us-in

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1268/the-best-game-soundtracks-of-2016

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1242/november-game-soundtrack-roundup

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1245/the-rules-change-entirely-jason-bender-on-rts-and-mobile-design

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1232/mafia-iiis-npcs-can-teach-you-a-lot-about-history-so-long-as-you-dont-murder-them-first

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1191/october-game-soundtrack-roundup

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1194/exploring-the-no-mans-sky-modding-scene

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1160/breaking-games-at-tradeshows-tales-of-a-jerkface

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1161/remember-when-call-of-duty-had-you-defend-a-border-wall-from-latinos

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1140/september-game-soundtrack-roundup

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1138/the-japanese-horrors-that-inspire-yo-kai-watch

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1134/how-civilization-vis-big-changes-will-affect-how-you-play

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1108/a-history-of-the-evil-corporation-from-abstergo-to-umbrella

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1074/gambling-dens-and-gamer-monks-asias-offbeat-videogame-subcultures

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1038/the-imaginary-racism-of-bioshock-infinite

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1014/if-soldier-76-were-your-dad

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/1006/6-historical-details-you-might-have-missed-in-the-battlefield-1-beta

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/998/the-art-of-the-trailer-how-videogame-trailer-editors-hook-us-in

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/977/godzilla-resurgence-is-actually-a-biting-political-satire

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/971/august-game-soundtrack-roundup

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/961/1000-hours-why-some-steam-reviewers-give-negative-reviews-to-games-theyve-played-forever

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/956/no-winners-or-losers-how-games-misrepresent-ecologies

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/953/no-mans-sky-is-a-captain-cook-simulator

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/947/5-weird-things-i-saw-at-gamescom

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/938/we-watched-all-of-this-resident-evil-stage-play-so-you-wouldnt-have-to

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/935/the-next-century-some-thoughts-on-the-future-of-esports

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/933/the-folly-of-calling-stranger-things-unoriginal

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/911/bodies-that-matter-an-interview-with-robert-yang

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/914/sonic–knuckes–knuckles–knuckles

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/902/the-best-pokemon-rip-offs-of-the-early-2000s

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/905/telltales-batman-mo-money-mo-problems

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/898/our-conversation-with-civilization-vis-senior-gameplay-designer—part-2

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/892/our-conversation-with-civilization-vis-senior-gameplay-designer—part-1

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/883/pokemon-go-is-developing-its-own-jargon

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/875/the-archaeologists-who-are-using-no-mans-sky-as-a-dry-run-for-exploring-actual-space

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/854/my-5-most-embarrassing-interview-questions-for-games-creators

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/862/july-game-ost-roundup

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/853/we-happy-few-built-a-dystopia-with-mod-culture-psychedelia-and-facebook

    http://readyset.zam.com/article/824/the-untold-history-of-slimes