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November 3rd

Happy November, one and all! While we’re still nursing our post-Halloween party hangovers, let’s indulge in that old-fashioned remedy, that hair of the dog, a nice tall glass of This Week in Videogame Blogging.

Starting us off, Jessica Famularo’s brief but sweet article on Pixels or Death contemplates why we grown-ass adults can’t seem to outgrow the juggernaut that is Pokemon.

On Game Quiche, already a combination of two things I love, Alex Park posts his own short-but-sweet post on the abstraction, imagination and memorability of Ultima IV.

Over at Pop Matters, Eric Swain dissects tension,

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This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2013

…credit so far.

Ghosts In The Machine is a short story anthology of 13 pieces by a variety of video game critics edited by Lana Polansky and Brendan Keogh.

Critical Video Game Blogging

Every year the focus of most of the work is on the games themselves, ranging from a holistic overview, to narrowing in on a single aspect or connecting it to the greater trends and themes of the medium. This is true for games of the present and of the past.

Without a doubt the most talked about game of the year is Bioshock…

January 12th

…difficulties in writing interactive fiction.

Mark Filipowich wrote some of his thoughts on games writing and community involvement with links to quite a few other writers’ pieces and their responses to the current situation from Patreon to creating new games writing outlets.

Zolani Stewert launched the first issue of the Arcade Review, a digital magazine focusing on criticism of experimental games. It includes pieces by Line Hollis, Lana Polansky, Alex Pieschel and Zolani Stewart himself. Also, Objective Game Reviews launched while we were away. Finally, a site that gives nothing but truly objective reviews of video games.

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January 26th

Hello, dear readers. Let’s have a chat, you and I. Rather, let’s have many, since this week’s posts could easily be summed up in one word: conversation.

Welcome to This Week in Videogame Blogging!

All Our Sins Laid Bare

First, Paolo Pedercini, the development mind behind (Unmanned, Every Day the Same Dream) took to Kotaku to interrogate Introversion Software’s alpha build of Prison Architect. Pedercini views the game from the perspective of the United States prison-industrial complex, challenging its representation of things like rioting, labor, recidivism, solitary confinement, and the list goes on. He offers insights

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February 9th

…to the language used by many publications to demonize Dungeon Keeper, recognizing it as a cultural gating tactic. Meanwhile, Shaenon K. Garrity highlighted in comic format the backwards thinking of much sexist modern wisdom.

Fighting the Good Fight

If you’re looking to see what came of value from the recent Candy Jam, a collage of defiance and grassroots activism, Lana Polansky had this to say of its value as a rhetorical event:

I don’t know by what measure we would call Candy Jam a success. But to me, it’s served at least three powerful and necessary

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February 16th

…its quality.

On The Daily Beast, Leigh Alexander likens the rise and backlash of Flappy Bird to the 1990s grunge scene. Lana Polansky sees the game as earnest if it is anything at all. And Aevee Bee believes the situation says more about games journalism than it does about Flappy Bird‘s developer.

Dispatches from Vienna

German language correspondent Joe Köller shares the latest happenings from the German games blogosphere.

On Spiegel Online, Dennis Kogel discusses streaming and Binding of Isaac League Racing in particular. Elsewhere, Sarah Geser talks about browser-based music game The Silver Gymnasium…

March 2nd

…amazing analysis of what queer game mechanics can look like. Read it.

Reid McCarter writes about guns in games and guns in the world and how those two things are related to one another through the fantasies of humans in “On Guns, Real and Virtual.”

Matt Barton asks some open ended questions about Neo-Marxism and how it could operate in games.

Stephen Beirne says some things about “detective mode” and how it is implemented in games.

Lana Polansky extols the virtues of the eroticism of games, championing the ones which manage to be “bleeding and vulnerable.”…

March 9th

…case, however, I believe those goals are summed up best by independent critic and C-D contributor Lana Polansky, who, in acknowledging the shortcomings of crowdfunding, maintains a call to openly and consistently signal-boost the kind of work we want to see:

I’m going to make it a general policy to amplify voices in criticism or development or whatever else who deserve that amplification, not because of who they are but because of what they’ve said or made. This is my general policy anyway, but before right now I hadn’t fully declared and applied it. No more amplifying those

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May 4th

Welcome to another invaluable edition of This Week in Videogame Blogging. Today we’re bringing you thoughts on the four fundamentals of the universe: time, space, death and taxes.

Follow the Money

Starting us off is Dan Joseph at Drop Out Hang Out Space Out kicking us all in the material consciousness with a transcript of a talk he gave at this year’s Theorizing the Web Conference in NYC. The dense, but very readable transcript interrogates Eric Zimmerman’s notion of “The Ludic Century” by asking what that looks like by looking at things like “real money transfers”

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June 1st

…Polygon and read Matt Leone’s “How to Dig Up a Landfill.”

Alternately, If you want to dive into the metaphorical meaning of the game’s burial and the presence of deep ditches in the game itself, Lana Polansky’s got the article for you.

Really, though, I suggest digesting them all so you feel good and full.

Historical Lenses that Cloud Our Vision

While the location and excavation of the E.T. Atari game will certainly be remembered as a historical moment in video game culture, Peter Christiansen reminds us that any medium dealing with history “makes implicit arguments…