This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics ranging from a dig through the patent filing of Midway’s 1983 Tapper to the war economy of The Witcher 3.
Mirrors, Apertures, Doors
At Offworld, Leigh Alexander profiles &maybetheywontkillyou, a game in which players physically don a black hoodie and navigate a system of racist microagressions and capricious law enforcement.
Meanwhile, FemHype had a stand-out selection of writing this past week from three aptly alliterative authors. First, Sloane looks to Dontnod’s Life is Strange as a queer coming of age story. Next, Sylvia returns to Dragon Age II as a tale of immigrants and (resistance to) assimilation. Lastly, Sheva delivers the results of a recently conducted survey with more than 3,500 transgender and non-binary players on their experiences in a frequently hostile space.
A Host Image
Mark J. Nelson digs into the patent filing for Tapper, the 1983 arcade game. The document seems to veer from dense technical language to machine poetry:
At PopMatters Moving Pixels, Scott Juster has a look at the database structure of Her Story from a historical technological perspective and concludes the game “presents something that looks like the 1990s, but it only contains a small portion of the rules that governed that world.”
At Paste, Suriel Vazquez chronicles the (ongoing) push by a popular arcade to establish itself in a new community, amidst resistance from older residents and stereotypes concerning the arcade’s image and clientele. I have some issues with the delivery of this article — it could benefit quite a lot from including a bibliography at the end — but it does cast a spotlight on the fighting game community’s efforts to improve its image.
And shifting from real-world money matters to the digital, at Fiery Screens, Yussef Cole has been dispatching military deserters in The Witcher 3, noting how humans are, paradoxically, often the greatest source of cash for the game’s titular supernatural exterminator.
Against the Stream
Writing for her own website, Critical Distance’s own Lana Polansky writes lucidly on why the design philosophy of ‘flow’ acts as “a kind of ideological container”:
Fellow Critical Distance contributor Cameron Kunzelman expands on Polansky’s remarks in a response piece of his own, concluding:
Responding to both posts, Heather Alexandra of Trans Gamer Thoughts offers her own take on the sort of vocabulary stalemate we find ourselves in, and lends this memorable paraphrase from the world of improv: “The Game says ‘Yes’. The Player says ‘And.'”
Links of Interest
At Normally Rascal, Stephen Beirne has compiled a list of Irish game developers, critics, websites and conventions, in a bid to highlight their contributions.
Speaking of Stephen Beirne, he appears in the latest issue of Five Out of Ten magazine is out now, which is now up for sale. Be sure to check out the newest Unwinnable Weekly too!
Good day, good day, good day
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