Category: Read
-
‘Borders’ Shows the Struggles of Mexican Immigrants
Borders opens with your player character alone in a desert cluttered with equal amounts of hardy plants and human trash. Cacti and bushes might be normal, and even helpful for hiding in, but piles of clothing raise more worrying questions. And then there are the skeletons. There is a spot just a few feet from…
-
You Won’t Like the Solution to the Loot Box Problem
There’s no such thing as a good loot box, all of them are capital ‘B’ for Bad no matter which way you slice them. We’ve established that much: so what are we going to do about it? As NPD analyst Mat Piscatella outlined to GamesIndustry.biz, for all the furore and the calls for boycotts, the…
-
Empathy for the Devil: Destiny 2’s Manifest Destiny
Previously we looked at plain toast, microwave burritos, and how Destiny 2‘s Guardians are basically Mussolini with blue mohawks. It was a grand old adventure, aside from all the brain aneurysms. This time, we go into detail about FashQuest‘s unfortunate portrayal of its alien races. If the idea that art created by humans might reasonably serve as…
-
Self Care Jam 2 Brings Brilliant, Stress Free Creations
Self Care Jam 2 wrapped up this week, bringing in over fifty entries covering everything from phone backgrounds to novellas to poetry. And of course, there were also plenty of games to enjoy. Self Care Jam, which ran for the first time last year, differs from other jams in that it’s supposed to be entirely…
-
10 Gifs That Perfectly Describe Gamers on Live Chat
Let’s face it, almost all of the bigotry that comes from online gaming comes straight from the live chat. Whether it’s via text form or over voice chat, you always get a slew of gamers who just do not know when to stop talking. Sometimes you’ll find feminist-friendly servers, or at least a match full…
-
Why Video Game Criticism Exists
As defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, two of the three definitions of the word, “criticism” address the art of critiquing a work of art or literature. The first known usage of the word appeared in Thomas Dekker’s A Knight’s Conjuring (1607), according to the 1971 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The art of critique…
-
Don’t Make Love: Sex, Death, and Mantises
‘At once victors and vanquished’ is a fairly unusual juxtaposition for a game. Often, you fulfil the conditions of a win state, get dragged along through the firework display of congratulatory cutscenes, cup your willing hands before you to receive the gold-hewn power star of definitive success. Tragedy is a peripheral concern like air and…
-
It’s Not Your Fault You’re Fascist, Destiny 2
I’ve always found the term ‘hate symbol’ misleading. Symbols, like technology, plain toast, and Jaheira from Baldur’s Gate are true neutral. We can charge them with significance or repurpose them, the same way we can use microwaves to heat burritos or build death-rays. Unless you’re Geralt of Rivia, though, a sign with no context is powerless.…
-
Elizabeth LaPensée on Thunderbird Strike, Eco Terrorism, and Other Bad Behavior
Recently, the lobbying group Energy Builders released a statement accusing the 2D side scroller Thunderbird Strike of attempting to ‘encourage eco-terrorism or other bad behavior’. Naturally, the alarmist press lapped it up with all the predictable zeal of a Pavlovian pooch. Boundary-pushing design and unique auteurial vision is a major draw of the indiesphere, but rarely…
-
Horizon Zero Dawn Shows the Problem with Game Reviews
Horizon Zero Dawn met rave critical acclaim earlier this year. Reviews praised its polished (if unoriginal) gameplay, its unique and compelling story, and the jaw-dropping graphics. It also got a lot of attention for its diverse representation of America, featuring a cast full of people of color and various sexual orientations. Despite its Dutch heritage…
-
Authentically Combat Gun Violence With Thoughts & Prayers: The Game
As America struggles with its epidemic of gun violence, many citizens feel powerless. Fortunately, there is an app for that in the form of Everyday Arcade’s Thoughts & Prayers: The Game. Never before has a game so accurately portrayed the power of doing absolutely nothing. The game is free-to-play and browser based. It consists of…
-
Revisiting Horizon: Zero Dawn’s Best Scene
Yay! Horizon Zero Dawn is temporarily relevant again thanks to some new DLC and a Monster Hunter: World crossover, which means I have a flimsy excuse to effusively gush over my favourite part of the game. Spoiler alert: It does not involve robots, dinosaurs, or any combination thereof. This is the point where an apparition of my…
-
Super Mario Odyssey Continues the Series’ Struggles with Gender Politics
My first few hours with Super Mario Odyssey were really uncomfortable. In the first few minutes of the game, when Peach is being kidnapped by Bowser, he taunts Mario by saying, “Are you jealous?” My skin crawled when I heard that. The suggestion was, Mario would be going on his Odyssey because, yeah. He was…
-
Kill the Walking Simulator
Imagine this hypothetical scenario; In a parallel universe, I am not merely an imposter with a penchant for thesauruses who once played Bubsy 3D for twenty minutes and feels that grants me the inalienable right to pontificate endlessly about games on the internet, but an actual game designer with, you know, talent and vision and…
-
Call of Duty WWII’s Missed Opportunities and Future Possibilities
When it comes to representation of women in gaming, Call of Duty has always had a spotty record. There was a playable female character as early as the second game in the series (Finest Hour, not Call of Duty 2) in 2004. After that, it wouldn’t be until Black Ops II’s zombie mode in 2012…
-
It’s Time For Gabe Newell to Fix Steam’s Abuse Problem
It’s incredibly easy to use Steam to abuse people. Curation groups with homophobic and racist slurs in their names; antisemitic foundations; or outright white supremacy are left well alone, as Motherboard reports (content warning for all of the above at the link). Valve responded to review bombing with the addition of a graph that is…