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Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: September 19, 2021

by Team GGW September 20, 2021
written by Team GGW

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

We’re back for another school year — footloose and fancy free. Of course, this year brings with it new COVID-19 challenges as school jurisdictions tackle surging case numbers across North America, all while trying to return to ‘normal’. For our part, Team GGW looks a bit different this year. Our Larissa Jones is the lead curator for the year. We’ve also brought in Sebastian Artola who joins as our new Community Manager – which means we’ll be working on creating community once again. And Adam Alvernaz joins as Outreach Coordinator…a role we’ll talk about more soon. We’re happy to be back.

Stay happy. Stay healthy. Here’s the update!

STUCK IN A LOOP

DEATHLOOP commentary is all over the place – a fact that makes the search for good games writing all the more interesting. On our first pass of coverage we’ve found a few reviews that made us think, challenged our own thoughts on the game, and otherwise yelling at our computer monitors like totally normal people.

At Ars Technica, the ‘sloppy’ nature of the game makes it feel like an unfinished product, rushed out for release with a vanishingly small world in both the map sense and world building sense.

Deathloop‘s missions eventually string together a vague story of the Visionaries’ crisscrossing relationships. Clearly, someone at Arkane tried building a cohesive world where these characters grapple with the high-concept weirdness that keeps the islanders not only trapped in a time loop but also able to interact with clones of themselves. When it’s good, it’s classic, Bethesda-at-its-best storytelling. There are a few moments where Deathloop‘s plot shines in unique, only-in-games ways—especially when you sneak up on certain characters talking to clones of themselves. But such highs only make Deathloop‘s general plot failures all the more disappointing.

Over at Metro, their review unironically bandies the term roguelike about while lashing out at the ‘immersive sim’ label oft applied to Arkane’s games. The criticism is pointed throughout, with a line about a ‘magic’ submachine gun catching us off guard, though it doesn’t hesitate to point out the game’s multiple strengths, either.

Jon Bailes’ review at Video Games Chronicle feels more linear than other reviews we’ve read; considering this is a game about time loops, we consider that a compliment. The review itself tracks well – ideas flow without interruption – and this review stakes its audience out early on, never waffling on it. (That audience? Those that know Arkane’s games and otherwise are familiar with the marketing for this one.)

The loop is (rightly) at the centre of Alex Donaldson’s critique for VG247. Like much of the other criticism we’ve read on DEATHLOOP, there’s plenty of reverence for Arkane’s other games, but here the critique doesn’t assume reader familiarity. It’s helpful for those of us that haven’t played Prey, for instance, but the references go to out-of-scope releases like the controversial Twelve Minutes as well. Indeed, Donaldson deftly avoids namedropping all the game’s resources, describing one instead as something “you collect while exploring and fighting”. This type of accessible writing is helpful for general audiences and we want more of it.

LINE OF THE WEEK: “Art deco buildings combine with 1960s kitsch and the towering painted billboards of Weimar Berlin, building a glorious picture of a ruinous, elitist society and spectacle.”

Keith Stuart on DEATHLOOP’s world.

We pause, for a moment, to recognize an Arkane themed piece that isn’t DEATHLOOP, applauding RPS for re-examining a four year old game. Hirun Cryer interviews the narrative team of Dishonored: Death of the Outsider who reveal all sorts of insights into that series’ and its world building. Future examinations of Arkane’s work are better examined through this lens and new information provided about the “moral world”.

Rounding out the section is WIRED‘s review noting, in its headline, the reflection of time and history DEATHLOOP presents that’s later described as a “profound meditation”. The idea that every aspect of our present can be reshaped represents a foundational point for many ideologies – after all, two of the four main points of ideology are linked to time: Our interpretation of the past and our hopes for the future. Gabriel Solis weaves in such philosophy throughout his review, highlighting the nonlinear narrative throughout, while keeping our minds, as readers, engaged. It’s a masterful critique.

HISTORY

While Solis’ piece examines history through the lens of Deathloop and philosophy, a handful of other pieces tackle the subject, and each is worth reading.

Staying on WIRED, Katherine Brodsky asks the question “can a game get young players interested in Holocaust history?” In some ways the answer seems obvious – yes. Our Evan McIntosh has taught social studies at every level from Kindergarten to Grade 12 with lessons on the Holocaust, often through short novels, starting as early as Grade 4. If books can be an ‘in’ than surely games can be!

Brodsky interviews the writers of The Light in the Darkness about their process and goals: the game strives for “accuracy and realism” in depicting the conditions leading to the Holocaust. One of the co-writers is a Holocaust survivor. The writers detail the challenges Holocaust education faces: few parts of the United States mandate education on it; many Holocaust education groups are led by an older generation who don’t necessarily understand gaming’s breadth; fewer and fewer survivors means our collective memory is dissipating; the list goes on.

Meanwhile, Natalie Raine interrogates Blackhaven, a game following a ” [black] college intern named Kendra Turner who’s working alone at a museum, while the rest of the staff is on holiday”, faced with daily microaggressions and a museum chock full of whitewashed history. Both the game and the critique feature reminders about the history that hasn’t been widely taught — and the fraught nature of progress on this front as the KKK is painted in a kinder light in jurisdictions like Texas (and even here in Canada).

Gita Jackson once again points out the history of gaming failing to accurately represent black hair – with developers Jeryce Dianingana and Jane Ng providing commentary explaining the longstanding issue. God of War Ragnarok may finally break this trend.

When thinking history and video games, Civilization is likely top of mind for many gamers. Matt Jarvis’ history of the series is chock full of goodness – particularly as it delves into the (perhaps forgotten) history of its tabletop originator. Civ fans and tabletop players alike have a worthy read here.

FIVE MORE TO READ

  1. Jack Yarwood reports on the plight of developers trying to get credited for their work on games. (The Washington Post)
  2. Michael Higham offers the ultimate Lost Judgment review – chock full of Yakuza knowledge. (Fanbyte)
  3. Paige Detlefsen talks Zelda vibes in this Eastward review. (RPG Site)
  4. Matteo Lupetti interviews the creators of various narrative driven multiplayer games on what makes those games such a rarity. (Fanbyte)
  5. Leah J. Williams provides an insight into Sydney’s largest gaming studio – World of Tanks dev Wargaming. (Kotaku AU)

Quick Hits:

Bailes, Jon. “REVIEW: DEATHLOOP IS ONE OF THE SMARTEST GAMES OF THE YEAR” (Video Games Chronicle: September 13, 2021) <www.videogameschronicle.com/review/deathloop/>.

Brodsky, Katherine. “Can a Game Get Young Players Interested in Holocaust History?” (WIRED: September 14, 2021) <www.wired.com/story/the-light-in-the-darkness-voices-of-the-forgotten-holocaust-history-game/>.

Cryer, Hirun. “The making of Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider, and how Arkane killed a god” (Rock, Paper, Shotgun: September 17, 2021) <www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-making-of-dishonored-death-of-the-outsider-and-how-arkane-killed-a-god>.

Donaldson, Alex. “Deathloop review: a thrilling, slick adventure – and Arkane’s best game yet” (VG247: September 13, 2021) <www.vg247.com/deathloop-review-a-thrilling-slick-adventure-and-arkanes-best-game-yet>.

GameCentral. “Deathloop review – the party that never ends” (Metro: September 13, 2021) <metro.co.uk/2021/09/13/deathloop-review-the-party-that-never-ends-15249265/>.

Jackson, Gita. “‘God of War: Ragnarok’ Shows How Games Can Get Black Hair Right” (Vice: September 16, 2021) <www.vice.com/en/article/wx534n/god-of-war-ragnarok-shows-how-games-can-get-black-hair-right>.

Jarvis, Matt. “The Civilization board game pioneered epic strategy a decade before Sid Meier” (Dicebreaker: September 9, 2021) <www.dicebreaker.com/games/civilization/feature/civilization-history-sid-meier-francis-tresham>.

Machkovech, Sam. “Deathloop game review: Can Bethesda rewind this time loop and try again?” (Ars Technica: September 13, 2021) <arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/deathloop-review-a-dishonorable-bethesda-discharge/&gt;.

Raine, Natalie. “Blackhaven confronts the truth behind historical whitewashing” (The Indie Game Website: September 15, 2021) <www.indiegamewebsite.com/2021/09/15/blackhaven-confronts-the-truth-behind-historical-whitewashing/>.

Solis, Gabriel. “Review: Deathloop Is a Unique Reflection on Time and History” (WIRED: September 16, 2021) <www.wired.com/review/deathloop-game/&gt;.

Stuart, Keith. “Deathloop review – chaos on repeat” (The Guardian: September 15, 2021) <www.theguardian.com/games/2021/sep/15/deathloop-review-chaos-on-repeat>.

September 20, 2021
Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: July 8, 2021

by Good Games Writing July 8, 2021
written by Good Games Writing

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

Summer is here. Wherever you are, we hope you’re happy and healthy, making the most of time in the sun and, hopefully, your own holiday at some point. For us, as a team of educators, this is a time to recharge after a difficult school year, but also time to refine our practice after reflecting on our successes and failures. That philosophy–of grinding, of ruminating, and improving–applies to games writing as well.

Reviews & Criticism:

Two games have mostly captured our attention in terms of recent criticism: Cruelty Squad and Chicory.

Describing Cruelty Squad, PC Gamer‘s James Davenport calls it a “psychedelic assassination nightmare”. The descriptive examples–the first paragraph a prime example–are helpful for establishing what the game is and what it aspires to be, and the review itself manages to discuss the mechanics without making it feel tedious. This is a review that works on every level.

Descriptive examples are the name of the game with coverage of Cruelty Squad, as evidenced by this Kotaku Australia clip:

There’s a double jump you install by cutting holes into yourself. There’s a corporate chip that basically breaks the stock market. There’s a grappling hook that’s better described as your lower intestine repurposed as a rope. You can install an implant that shrinks you to the size of a pea; you can buy goggles that transform the entire game in a black and red filter. And if you feel like it, you can also just buy a house for a million dollars.

Our favourite read on the game thus far comes from the DEEP HELL Skeleton who focuses on the slick but nauseating, textured but bright aesthetics found in Cruelty Squad, comparing it to the slick but nauseating American cultural fixtures of fast food and service stations.

It’s probably apparent which game is which, but both Cruelty Squad and Chicory: A Colorful Tale have bold visual design and strong writing albeit to completely different ends.

It’s both the differences and the similarities to Cruelty Squad that Chicory: A Colorful Tale share that make it an interesting release gobbling up our collective attention together. Chicory leans into both its colourful world and strong writing to create something altogether different but the fact it came out a few days before Cruelty Squad isn’t lost on us. For a time, it was the only game we saw splashed across our social feeds; now, its palette is interspersed with the nightmare fuel of Cruelty Squad.

Uppercut’s review lays out the hero’s journey nature of the game and masterfully avoids giving away too much more. It’s a straightforward enough review that embraces magazine/newspaper style simplicity – for our team, it was the review that put the game on the radar in the first place. For those that need more nudging, more explanation, then a different review is in order:

Chicory is more than just an interactive coloring book experience; it’s also a surprisingly poignant story and a disarmingly candid depiction of mental health, along with the ebb and flow of its symptoms.

Over at Can I Play That?, their accessibility review reveals a host of features that are helpful to players who may be overlooked, including the introduction of a “wet sounds” toggle (to remove squishy, paint sounds) and eyestrain features (changing the “warmth” of the screen), praising its wealth of options and comparing its accessibility to the landmark work of The Last of Us Part II.

(While this is a reviews section, we’d be remiss not to mention Eric Van Allen’s short piece on its hint system–a feature that’s also referenced in the above review–and how it helps landmark progress while building out the story. Cute.)

Then there’s Natalie Flores’ review which focuses on the narrative theme of the game along with its various subversions and surprises. It’s a Game of the Year contender, according to Flores, that manages to challenge its players like any good piece of art. And, like any great work, it’s tough to put that into words. Flores does just fine.

More reviews:

Other recent reviews and criticism we’ve read are varied in the games they cover and the tone they take.

First up are a pair of tabletop reviews. There’s Brandy Berthelson with a review of a Taco Bell card game that’s less about the novelty and more about its functional playstyle. We’re not sure we’d have the strength to avoid filling an article with terrible taco jokes. Then, there’s this Monopoly Deal review with a headline that proclaims it’s the “only Monopoly worth playing”. Matt Jarvis explains that this condensed version of the game packs in all the parts people remember while removing the tedious bits. If you can’t get yourself one of those Animal Crossing themed sets this one will have to do.

Monti Velez grounds a piece on Mini Motorways on the exhausting nature of life in a pandemic – both as it progresses and as we try to move on from it. The Apple Arcade release, for its part, has a soothing feel to it, and that allowed Velez to be sucked into the game for moments, recalibrating in the face of life’s daily challenges.

Tackling Chivalry II, RPS‘ review blends an accessible (to newcomers of the genre) approach with irreverent humour (appropriate for the game), with this paragraph telling us all we need to know about both the game and the review:

Throwing weapons in general is an instant spike of dopamine, so much so that I will regularly throw all my weapons, at which point I have to rummage about on the floor for a new sword, a sight that must be funny to the enemy I have missed three times, now menacingly approaching. Of course, if you fail to find a sharp bit of steel, there are other options. Maps are filled with throwable detritus. Rocks, tools, barrels, planks. You can stick your hand in a well and find a fish to lob. You can pick dung off the floor and chuck that. An enemy knight once doinked me with a roast chicken. I cannot fault his valour.

That’s not #content you’ll get anywhere else, folks.

At his personal blog, Cole Henry writes about Maneater (Shark Week is soon, innit?) and how everything it does it frames as a joke or otherwise laughs it off. In that respect, it’s a wonderful companion piece to the DEEP HELL piece featured above and the two should be read together. Shot meet chaser.

Rounding out this section is a poem review of Metroid II which is just aces. The mission oriented nature of bounty hunter Samus Aran is given the spotlight here with wonderful effect.

Competitive:

A trio of pieces in the competitive space have inspired much discussion by our team in recent meetings.

First, is the phenomenal piece on the future of competitive Tetris after the death of its most prominent player and cheerleader, Jonas Neubauer. It’s as much an obituary as it is a rallying cry for the community — a potential roadmap for the dream of getting the series into the Olympics.

Next is this scathing commentary on on the ‘Save Titanfall’ campaign which, quizzically enough, has often involved harassing Apex Legends developers and fans alike. As the author opines, the “only thing this example of extreme gamer entitlement will accomplish is getting a bunch of devs to work overtime on a holiday weekend“.

Closing out the competitive bit is a slightly older piece explaining the shenanigans speedrunners use to beat Paper Mario in a hurry. The “cartridge swapping” method was on full display at this week’s Games Done Quick so it’s a great time to revisit the piece.

And now, your guide:

We’re turning the spotlight on guides on the regular moving forward and the first we want to feature is this series of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart guides from Jordan Oloman at TechRadar. The site doesn’t neatly put them all together for you but the pieces do neatly lay out where all the major collectibles in the game are found.

Read them:

  • Armor sets
  • Spybots
  • Gold Bolts

Tech:

Mashable‘s tech coverage is reliably among the best but this science/tech piece on drones that search out screams (for noble reasons!) is fascinating enough we had to share it separately. We’re not fans of an email interview but the author gets plenty out of the research and responses provided.

At RPS, this list of the, erm, questionable art choices on graphics card packaging was both informative and eyebrow raising. Robot animals, cyborgs, and military inspired women abound.

Reporting:

At Fanbyte, Josh Broadwell interviews The Geofront, a group leading fan translations on JRPGs, highlighting the challenges and opportunities they’ve faced over the years.

On Vice, Steve Kupferman spotlights Best Electronics, “a mail-order business that has been selling Atari goods continuously for almost four decades”. Bradley Koda, the owner, has perhaps the definitive collection of unused, original Atari parts sourced directly from their warehouses. The businessman is meticulous in his work completing orders by hand but can be described as ornery. He has numerous rules–written and unwritten–such as order limits (no more than three items) and PayPal minimums. As the only game in town he writes the rules; those wanting to buy parts from Koda are ill-advised to break those rules.

If you’re a fan of Double Fine, then Blake Hester’s history of the company for Game Informer is a must-read longread, and its relationship to Microsoft is clearly highlighted throughout:

Psychonauts was in development for around five years. In that time, Double Fine learned how to operate as a team and make the game it wanted to make. But it came with some high costs. There was, of course, the crunch. “It was terrible,” Crook says. But also, Microsoft was going through its own internal changes. In January 2004, Fries left the company. Around the same time, Microsoft was beginning its transition to the Xbox 360 in preparation for its November 2005 release. This halted funding for original Xbox games planned to launch after 2004. Expensive and behind schedule, new management within Microsoft opted to cancel Psychonauts – even though, by this point, Double Fine felt it was finally making real progress.

Tension between China and Taiwan featured heavily in Red Candle Games’ work Devotion being incredibly difficult to find for the past two years. It’s available for purchase now–from the developers website–serving as impetus for Shannon Liao to interweave the story of the game’s self-publishing with review-like elements.

Can you lend a hand?

One of the premier Pokémon oriented sites on the Internet–particularly for fans of the TCG–is PokeBeach. The site has recently been hacked and in the process lost years and years of material. The owner is looking for help with data recovery. Are you someone who could help? Reach out to them.

A final shoutout:

Our last feature for today is to credit Kotaku for dedicating seemingly the entirety of their July 4th coverage to indie games through an event they called Indie Penance.

If you’re looking for a new indie–particularly with the glut of summer sales–their pieces from July 4 include 44 games you might want to take a peek at. Find the pieces below:

  • Part 1
  • Part 2
  • Part 3
  • Part 4

Jobs:

Fancy working with us on VG247? We've got a vacancy for a staff writer with a guides/service titles focus. Can be remote, but will be UK hours 8-4/9-5. Please share with anyone you think would be great in this role. Get all the details here t.co/3VGHWSFavd

— VG247 (@VG247) July 8, 2021

The Verge is hiring a weekend News Editor! This is a full-time role. It's a union eligible position and you can check the contract to get an idea of compensation. My DMs are open if you have questions. t.co/ylnIplsZfH

— 𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚡 𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚣 (@alexhcranz) July 8, 2021

Kotaku Is Hiring, Come Work For Ust.co/WxD4jsDVSY pic.twitter.com/y8zPSyiszK

— Kotaku (@Kotaku) July 8, 2021

Looking for a guides writing freelancer who knows Pokemon GO inside out. If you think that's you, mail me at Leon[dot]Hurley(at)Futurenet[dot]com. pic.twitter.com/IcwIks84Gm

— Leon Hurley (@LeonHurley) July 8, 2021

Freelance alert!

I am looking for one writer, preferably with an esports background, for sponsored articles. $100-150 per article (depending on length). If interested, send me some links or bump up your DM. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/nlV1pNxS8u

— JB (@hammersuit) July 8, 2021

Quick Hits:

Berthelson, Brandy. “Taco Bell Party Pack Card Game Review” (SuperParent: July 6, 2021) <superparent.com/article/2624/taco-bell-party-pack-card-game-review>.

Broadwell, Josh. “A Dedicated Group of Fans are Translating Entire JRPGs” (Fanbyte: June 10, 2021) <www.fanbyte.com/features/a-dedicated-group-of-fans-are-translating-entire-jrpgs/>.

Caldwell, Brendan. “Chivalry 2 review: a gore-soaked multiplayer battler with tons of humour” (Rock, Paper, Shotgun: June 16, 2021) <www.rockpapershotgun.com/chivalry-2-review>.

Castle, Katharine. “The best and worst graphics card box art of all time” (Rock, Paper, Shotgun: June 15, 2021) <www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-best-and-worst-graphics-card-box-art-of-all-time>.

Chan, Khee Hoon. “Chicory: A Colorful Tale Review” (The Indie Game Website: June 11, 2021) <www.indiegamewebsite.com/2021/06/11/chicory-a-colorful-tale-review/>.

Craven, Courtney. “Chicory: A Colorful Tale — Can I Play That Accessibility Review” (Can I Play That? : June 10, 2021) <caniplaythat.com/2021/06/10/chicory-a-colorful-tale-can-i-play-that-accessibility-review/>.

Davenport, James. “CRUELTY SQUAD REVIEW” (PC Gamer: July 1, 2021) <www.pcgamer.com/cruelty-squad-review/>.

Dowell, William. “Metroid II: Return of Samus” (100 Word Gaming Reviews: June 26, 2021) <100wordgaming.com/2021/06/26/metroid-ii-return-of-samus/>.

Flores, Natalie. “For a Game About Imperfections, Chicory: A Colorful Tale Is Practically Perfect” (Fanbyte: June 10, 2021) <www.fanbyte.com/reviews/for-a-game-about-imperfections-chicory-a-colorful-tale-is-pretty-perfect/>.

Galiz-Rowe, Ty. “Chicory Review: A Warm and Cozy Picnic” (Uppercut: June 2021) <uppercutcrit.com/chicory-review-a-warm-and-cozy-picnic/>.

Henry, Cole. “Being a Shark at the End of the World” (June 16, 2021) <inthelobby.medium.com/being-a-shark-at-the-end-of-the-world-c12e36f896d1>.

Hester, Blake. “The History Of Double Fine Productions” (Game Informer: July 5, 2021) <www.gameinformer.com/2021/07/05/the-history-of-double-fine-productions>.

Jarvis, Matt. “Monopoly Deal is the only Monopoly worth playing, because it understands why the board game sucks” (Dicebreaker: June 29, 2021) <www.dicebreaker.com/games/monopoly-deal/opinion/monopoly-deal-only-good-monopoly>.

Kupferman, Steve. “Don’t Piss Off Bradley, the Parts Seller Keeping Atari Machines Alive” (Vice: June 15, 2021) <www.vice.com/en/article/7kvkx9/dont-piss-off-bradley-the-parts-seller-keeping-atari-machines-alive>.

Leporati, Gregory. “Competitive ‘Tetris’ was soaring, then it lost a legend. What comes next is a puzzle.” (The Washington Post: May 3, 2021) <www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2021/05/03/tetris-jonas-neubauer/>.

Liao, Shannon. “A Taiwanese horror game that angered Chinese players returns. Can it move past its unintended politics?” (The Washington Post: July 5, 2021) <www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/07/05/devotion-rerelease-taiwan-china/>.

Orland, Kyle. “How to beat Paper Mario really fast by… playing Ocarina of Time?” (Ars Technica: March 5, 2021) <arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/03/how-to-beat-paper-mario-really-fast-by-playing-ocarina-of-time/>.

Skeleton. “I’M THINKIN ARBY’S” (DEEP HELL: June 30, 2021) <deep-hell.com/im-thinkin-arbys/>.

Switzer, Eric. “Congrats Titanfall Hackers, You Made A Bunch Of Devs Work On A Sunday” (The Gamer: July 4, 2021) <www.thegamer.com/congrats-titanfall-hackers-you-made-a-bunch-of-devs-work-on-a-sunday/>.

Van Allen, Eric. “Chicory: A Colorful Tale’s hint system is both helpful and extremely relatable” (Destructoid: July 2, 2021) <www.destructoid.com/chicory-a-colorful-tale-hint-system-opinion-blog/>.

Velez, Monti. “Mini Motorways Is Helping Me Get Through The Year” (Uppercut: July 1, 2021) <uppercutcrit.com/mini-motorways-is-helping-me-get-through-the-year/>.

Walker, Alex. “Cruelty Squad Is The Video Game Equivalent Of A Contact High” (Kotaku Australia: July 6, 2021) <www.kotaku.com.au/2021/07/cruelty-squad-steam-acid-trip-deus-ex/>.

Yeo, Amanda. “Drones that hunt screaming humans just want to help” (Mashable: July 4, 2021) <mashable.com/article/drones-human-screaming-search-rescue>.

July 8, 2021
Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: Not E3 2021

by Team GGW June 16, 2021
written by Team GGW

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

We’d like to begin by acknowledging the more than 500 bodies of children discovered across former residential school sites in Canada over the past few weeks. That number is expected to grow in the coming weeks. As a team of educators, the systemic racism that led to the creation of these schools, and the genocide of these peoples, is a black mark against our very profession. The very fabric of our system is built on such racism that is interwoven into many practices today. We stand with the Indigenous communities seeking truth, accountability, and action.

Indian Residential School Survivors and Family

1-866-925-4419

The Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available 24-hours a day for anyone experiencing pain or distress as a result of his or her Residential school experience.

Our Not E3 special is a longstanding tradition in which we feature smaller voices and typically non-gaming publications in the midst of the chaos that is *E3*. It’s far too easy to have our feeds devolve into a long list of trailers and reactions; while fun, it’s not for everyone. Here are a few completely E3 free pieces for your enjoyment.

Non-gaming publications

We start our collection with pieces from non-gaming sites that (sort of) fit the bill.

First is SB Nation‘s look at the rise and fall of trading card scalpers. Their demographic is sports enthusiasts but Pokémon cards have seen a meteoric rise in value in recent months. If you’re not the sports type you might be unaware that the bubble seemingly started with basketball and football cards before Game Freak’s iconic creatures became paper gold for speculators.

The fever spread from basketball into everything else. First football, then baseball, and finally Pokemon. “Pokemon makes me too nervous man,” Tyrone says to a friend who suggests they start buying it up, “we don’t know shit about those. I mean, can we break it? I don’t know. I know Luka and Ja, not Squirtle and shit. I’ll stick to what I know.”

Over on the CBC are a pair of features that reminds us the heart of games is play, and we’re remiss to forget that a game of tag counts as games writing. First is this competent consumer guide that masterfully recommends everything from a glowing hula hoop to sidewalk chalk, Spikeball to magnetic chess sets.

While that bit of service writing is well done, we appreciate Sebastian Yūe’s list of games to play in the park, which has no commercial implications whatsoever. Go run. Play pen and paper games. The simplicity and joy of park play is captured throughout the piece.

The Guardian ran this fantastic piece on gaming parents (and grandparents!) last month and it reminded us of the halcyon days of families descending on parks to play Pokémon Go: the cross-generational appeal of gaming was so clearly on display for the world. Lucy Campbell points out it isn’t just mobile experiences attracting older games–everything from Animal Crossing to Call of Duty: Warzone is played–a reminder that the 18-34 year-old demographic isn’t the end-all-be-all of game design.

Grief

This pair of pieces connects loosely with grief: the loss of a family member and the loss of home feature here.

Oisin Kuhnke details their experience with Loop Hero, a game they describe as “a game about the end of the universe”, and how that bleakness brings comfort in dealing with their own loop centred around the death of a loved one.

At the New York Videogame Critic Circle, Makeda Byfield connects the experience of grounding oneself through Wii Sports after several moves to the excitement of playing Miitopia as they enter adulthood. From there it’s a somewhat typical review format, but a promising start from this writer, nonetheless.

Craft

This final section focuses on the craft of making games in various forms.

Let’s start with another somewhat conventional review: Rowen Cameron tackles Lacuna, a “pixel art sci-fi noir adventure [with] a futuristic universe of technological advancement, uneasy planetary alliances and colossal social divides.” The review itself is punchy and filled with solid one-liners. We’ve highlighted Cameron a couple of times before and we’re happy to see her continue to improve her writing craft.

Arcade Idea reliably posts interesting retro content: This week’s entry is 1984’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This is a longread, no doubt, that’s filled with nuggets both for those looking to reminisce about the game and those who didn’t realize there was a video game adaptation at all.

Dent is only the primary player character, because the game changes which character’s perspective we control and see things through frequently, always accompanied also with flashback. Well, time travel technically: you need to collect items and possibly do tasks once-not-done in the past to change the present to give the flashback segments mechanical puzzle reasons to be there.

This moment sets up two thundering paragraphs about the character swapping that ultimately crescendos into a description of the game’s narrative structure and related decisions. This is essential reading.

In a much shorter piece, Matt Gregoire writes that Destiny is crossing a threshold with its violence, in which once squishy targets now have a narrative, a story, a life. Suddenly those bullet sponges feel far more consequential. The penultimate paragraph of this piece has some of our favourite writing so far this year, too, so check it out. Here’s but a taste…

It almost goes beyond physical violence at this point and into the realm of cruel spiritual violence; we robbed them of the Traveler’s gifts once unintentionally, and now we’re knowingly ripping away what scraps are left by force.

Chris Penwell, meanwhile, interviews a narrative designer on Returnal, discussing the importance of the role, describing them as “more of an editor and interpreter between the writer and the game designer“. The challenges of designing the narrative around the already established gameplay systems make for interesting interview fodder, too.

Finally, we end with a wonderful D&D guide on how to accurately–and respectfully–portray some Chinese dishes in your campaigns. Mouthwatering.

Because hot pot is such a social meal, it’s the perfect backdrop for any number of roleplay-heavy hooks and scenes. A scheming noble invites the party to her manor for hot pot, but one of the ingredients is poisoned. A band of thieves rolls into a hot pot tavern, demanding the best meats for themselves and no one else. Two warring clans sit down to discuss a tenuous peace treaty over a shared pot of roiling broth. The possibilities are endless. 

Quick Hits:

Arcade Idea. “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy [1984]” (June 14, 2021) <arcadeidea.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-1984/>.

Byfield, Makeda. “The Insight: A Brilliant, Brave Story About Miitopia, Miis And Being Evicted From An Apartment” (New York Videogame Critic Circle: June 11, 2021) <nygamecritics.com/2021/06/11/the-insight-a-brilliant-brave-story-about-miitopia-miis-and-being-evicted-from-an-apartment/>.

Cameron, Rowen. “Lacuna Review” (The Indie Game Website: May 27, 2021) <www.indiegamewebsite.com/2021/05/27/lacuna-review/>.

Campbell, Lucy. “‘A wonderful escape’: the rise of gaming parents – and grandparents” (The Guardian: May 7, 2021) <www.theguardian.com/games/2021/may/07/a-wonderful-escape-the-rise-of-gaming-parents-and-grandparents>.

Chang, Connie. “3 Chinese Dishes Your Fantasy Tavern Should Have – And How To Portray Them Respectfully” (Start Playing: May 29, 2021) <startplaying.games/blog/posts/3-chinese-dishes>.

Dator, James. “The rise and collapse of a scalper’s sports card empire” (SB Nation: May 25, 2021) <www.sbnation.com/22445479/sports-cards-scalpers-walmart-target-nba-nfl-pokemon>.

Gregoire, Matt. “Headshots in Destiny Feel a Bit Different Lately” (Quest Logging: June 3, 2021) <questlogging.com/headshots-in-destiny-feel-a-bit-different-lately-112faece51e8>.

Kuhnke, Oisin. “Loop Hero and the Cycle of Grief” (Into the Spine: May 23, 2021) <intothespine.com/2021/05/23/loop-hero-and-the-cycle-of-grief/>

Penwell, Chris. “Returnal’s Eevi Korhonen on how narrative designers impact game development” (GameDaily.biz: May 20, 2021) <gamedaily.biz/article/2040/returnals-eevi-korhonen-on-how-narrative-designers-impact-game-development>.

Toole, Brittany. “A very big, fun list of games and activities to play outside” (CBC: April 29, 2021) <www.cbc.ca/life/home/a-very-big-fun-list-of-games-and-activities-to-play-outside-1.6003966>.

Yūe, Sebastian. “7 super-chill games to play in the park” (CBC: May 27, 2021) <www.cbc.ca/life/culture/7-super-chill-games-to-play-in-the-park-1.6043247>.

June 16, 2021
Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: May 3, 2021

by Good Games Writing May 4, 2021
written by Good Games Writing

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

We certainly don’t like being gone for the length of time we were. As COVID-19 rages out of control in Alberta, compounded by a government keen to sit on its hands, our individual workloads as educators became monumental as we juggled ping-ponging back-and-forth between online learning and in person.

In that spirit, our updates will still look different for the next while, while we juggle the demands of our profession and try to catch up on all things games writing. These entries won’t be our usual massive lists, either, and you’ll perhaps see them more often than weekly while we engage with and read the numerous pieces we’ve bookmarked of late. You can expect a handful of pieces from the last week or so paired with a somewhat different collection of pieces from the past 45 days. We anticipate “catching up” in June!

CURRENT EVENTS

We’ll start things off with the most recent works to come to our attention before working backwards.

As Apple and Epic duke it out in court, there’s few publications we trust to give us the skinny, and high up on the list is The Washington Post. Their live updates are engaging and informative; too often, such updates can feel trite. Each of these feels like its own capsule capturing a very specific moment in time. If you’re interested in these proceedings this will be one place to watch.

At Upcomer, Aron Garst is tracking the news around Overwatch‘s Chinese teams boycotting of Park “Saebyeolbe” Jong-ryeol of the Seoul Dynasty after he made remarks angering the Chinese intelligentsia and their censors. Much of the coverage encompasses translated versions of the teams’ various statements. This is one issue not likely to go away anytime soon.

Chase Carter analyzes criticism around MTG‘s new character–and something of a mascot of the Strixhaven set–Killian Lu. While fans were initially enthusiastic about the character, new card reveals indicate the character falls into just about every Asian stereotype there is, rather than chart new territory.

“It’s the Panda Expressification of Asian Culture,” [says Michelle Rapp], comparing the attempt to the American chain of fast food restaurants known for its vaguely Asian-inspired recipes.

The current hotness in games is obviously New Pokémon Snap. Extra-thicc Bidoof capture hearts and minds while our social feeds fill with goofy, adorable, and frightening scenes. If you’re jumping into the game, the guides at TheGamer are essential, with everything from large thematic guides to nitty gritty ones focusing on individual quests. There are spoilers–namely for certain special and legendary Pokemon–so beware of that. Otherwise, these guides are top notch: Accept no substitutes.

We also appreciated Jessica Howard pointing out that in New Pokémon Snap it feels like the series is allowing at least one character to grow up alongside those that play the games. Ash may forever be 10ish but seeing a once-prominent character enter adulthood successfully hits hard.

MORE PHOTOGRAPHY

We like themes ’round here.

Kenneth Shepard explains how New Pokémon Snap doesn’t care about composition in the way we might expect. Its scoring doesn’t care about your feelings (sorry); rather, Professor Mirror wants centered shots showing the ‘mon doing something specific. If you’re a photography geek, or just have an eye for what looks good, this piece will put your head (and heart) at ease.

At Red Bull eSports, Jason Fanelli interviews eSports photographer Stephanie Lindgren about all things photography in general and in the games space specifically. While the interview is ostensibly about promoting a contest, we appreciate that it pulls back the curtain somewhat on a relatively new career path.

Over on Gamasutra, Jack Yarwood interviews the designers of recent indie games that feature a photography element, and the discussions on what works and what doesn’t in various games is downright fascinating.

Christian Donlan argues that “the best thing a game can give you is a camera” and the reason for that, is, well, that it makes it all feel more real:

This is the heart of it for me. An imaginary camera makes an imaginary reality more real, in surprising ways. They make me think: oh, I am here, and I want a picture of that. So ‘here’ and ‘that’ become real in a way that is separate from the game mechanics, from the idea of graphics and whether there’s too much bloom or if the grass looks convincing. They make me look beyond whether things are convincing, and so I am merely convinced by them.

If you’re feeling a bit nostalgic, Willem Hilhorst created a brief history of photo modes in games, and while it isn’t exhaustive, it is a trip down memory lane.

Alternatively, a throwback to February, where Rachel Watts informs us of the best photography oriented games on PC…possibly useful for those missing out on all that Bidoof action.

Finally, Lewis Gordon (and co.) make the claim that photography games may well have more in common with so-called ‘walking sims’ than most any other genre, while embracing the fact gaming is a medium of images in so many ways:

here are moments playing Nuts which resonate with what the art critic John Berger wrote in 1972: “In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.” Since then, their proliferation has only intensified, and the three in-game cameras of Nuts, each recording the squirrels’ journey in real time, emphasizes just what an eruption of images video games actually are. What’s lovely about the game is the way it asks you to print out photos of its bushy-tailed subjects. By the end of your time in the forest, you’ll have amassed a small trove of freeze frames pinned to the corkboard in your virtual camper van.

That’s a wrap!

If you’ve seen writing on Assassin’s Creed (broadly), Loop Hero, or Stardew Valley we’d love to hear about it. Give us a message on Twitter @GoodWritingVG or use the SUBMIT button to your right.

Quick Hits:

Carter, Chase. “Magic: The Gathering players say Killian Lu is the “Panda Expressification of Asian Culture”” (Dicebreaker: April 29, 2021) <www.dicebreaker.com/games/magic-the-gathering-game/feature/magic-the-gathering-killian-lu-representation>.

Donlan, Christian. “The best thing a game can give you is a camera” (Eurogamer: May 1, 2021) <www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-05-01-the-best-thing-a-game-can-give-you-is-a-camera>.

Fanelli, Jason. “Meet Esports Photographer and Capture Point Judge Stephanie Lindgren” (Red Bull eSports: March 28, 2021) <www.redbull.com/us-en/stephanie-lindgren-interview-photographer-capture-point>.

Garst, Aron. “Chinese Overwatch League teams boycott Saebyeolbe after comments about China” (Upcomer: May 3, 2021) <www.upcomer.com/chinese-overwatch-league-teams-boycott-saebyeolbe/>.

Gordon, Lewis. “Games Like Umurangi Generation Bring the Moment Into Focus” (WIRED: March 23, 2021) <www.wired.com/story/umurangi-generation-photography-games/>

Hilhorst, Willem. “Long Shutter Speed – Over 20 years of photo modes in games.” (Nintendo World Report: April 28, 2021) <www.nintendoworldreport.com/editorial/57018/long-shutter-speed-over-20-years-of-photo-modes-in-games>.

Howard, Jessica. “Heart Container: 22 Years Later, I Am Still Todd Snap” (Uppercut: April 30, 2021) <uppercutcrit.com/heart-container-22-years-later-i-am-still-todd-snap/>.

Shepard, Kenneth. “New Pokemon Snap Pushes Against Everything I Learned in Photojournalism Class” (Fanbyte: May 3, 2021) <www.fanbyte.com/trending/new-pokemon-snap-pushes-against-everything-i-learned-in-photojournalism-class/>.

Watts, Rachel. “The best photography games on PC” (PC Gamer: Feb 2, 2021) <www.pcgamer.com/the-best-photography-games-on-pc/>.

Yarwood, Jack. “How some indies are approaching photography mechanics in their games” (Gamasutra: April 2, 2021) <gamasutra.com/view/news/379089/How_some_indies_are_approaching_photography_mechanics_in_their_games.php>.

May 4, 2021
Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: April 7, 2021

by Team GGW April 7, 2021
written by Team GGW

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

We’re coming back from a much needed spring break. As vaccinations roll out across the United States, the outcomes here in Canada have been borderline disastrous. In schools, the measures taken by our governments can be described as ‘paltry’. Our team took the break as a chance to reconnect with our families (albeit at-a-distance) and soak up some fresh air.

We’re glad you’re here with us.

Because we’re playing catch up on many pieces over the past few weeks we’ll release some extra posts with the aim of giving you roughly a dozen pieces to read in each installment. You know…something readable! This is the first of three over the coming days.

REVIEWS

A couple of big releases of late but Monster Hunter Rise has to be the One Game To Rule Them All for the past month and maybe even months to come. Two reviews caught our attention.

First, Jason Coles leads his review by saying “God f— damn, Monster Hunter Rise is a good game”. It’s an evocative way to draw you in and, while we wouldn’t use it constantly, it sets the tone for the rest of the review, which flits by without second thought. If you’ve played Iceborne this review will hit a lot of notes.

Over at Prima, Jesse Vitelli places the focus on the monsters, weapons, and dogs. Yes, there’s a furry companion.

While you’re on a Monster Hunter kick we recommend Diego Arguello’s guides on the game.

Shannon Liao digs into LoL: Wild Rift and finds a game that’s both satisfying and simplified while online harassment has been tamped down–perhaps by the game’s control scheme–compared to standard LoL.

We’ve mixed feelings about Jordan Middler’s Balan Wonderworld review. On the one hand, we find sections of it to be, well, pointed:

But, honestly, there’s no price at which you should pay for Balan Wonderworld. Even if you were one of those unfortunate souls that found themselves with a lifelong Sonic perversion, Yuji Naka has conned you. This is a game for no-one. It’s such a bad platformer that if Shigeru Miyamoto was forced to play it, he might die on the spot. 

On the other hand, the review has elements that stand out as insightful and incisive:

It’s a platformer, a revolutionary one at that, being the first game in the genre, at least to my knowledge, that employs 6 different buttons to make your character jump. 

As a team of curators we haven’t felt this uncomfortable with a review in a long time. Maybe that’s a good thing.

While the reviews for Balan have generally been negative there have been some defending it. The most interesting defence we’ve read thus far comes from Matt S:

The aesthetics and theatrics of it all are to be desired – they’re impeccably evocative and inviting. So the best way to play this game is to let that sink in and don’t care about the rest. Let it be a whimsical, pointless exercise, and its many flaws around its inability to make sense or offer compelling gameplay simply stop mattering. Meaning doesn’t matter. This game is at its best when you can simply enjoy it as a wash of energy.

Over on Polygon, Nicole Carpenter’s impressions of Field Guide to Memory made us want to download the “narrative journaling game” immediately. (We did.) Previously, we’d never heard of keepsake games, but it’s an area we’re keen to explore moving forward. Carpenter weaves around the game’s narrative masterfully–this is the type of game, we sense, where spoilers matter–and the piece is enhanced by the author’s photos.

& CRITICISM

A host of interesting criticism has dropped in recent weeks.

We’ll start by highlighting a piece on our own site: Zsolt David explores the systems present in Among Us and finds a deeper meaning that help explains both economic and political systems:

As a consequence, children of blue collar workers have a smaller chance of participating in higher education in contrast with children from white collar families. The effects of work ripple through generations; that is to say, work’s implications become explications that lead to further implications and explications. In Among Us, everyone is shaped to the image of a blue collar worker who must work even after death, mirroring neoliberal ideals that imagine everyone to be similar. But it’s an illusion that depends entirely on chance, given that it’s random whether one comes to life as an impostor or as a crewmate. This birth into a crew is marred with deception that concludes to exhaustion and death.

Speaking of space horror, Super Metroid is examined through a gothic lens by Luke M, a stirring piece that weaves in critical theory and delivers a hearty conclusion involving Samus’ duality in respect to her relationship to the titular Metroid.

Similar themes are explored by Cole Henry as he lambasts the trend of media talking at viewers instead of allowing them to ruminate. Why that isn’t inherently a Gothic take the fact that horror, proper, can cause deeper reflection isn’t lost, with The Evil Within 2‘s nightmarish world where enemies simply cease being.

At Uppercut, Brady Grabowski reflects on what tanking in a game like Overwatch can mean for players, and how the author’s size is an “inescapable” observation, the first made of them. As a result, Grabowski finds himself gravitating towards glass cannon characters in many games, but in Overwatch, tanking has led to a change in perspective. (We love their take on what tanking actually is, too: it’s “positioning yourself for success, thinking ahead to protect your vulnerabilities, and not allowing yourself to be cut off from your support system”.)

While not strictly about games, Shane Ryan’s experiment/analysis of recent New York Times crossword puzzles suggests they’re getting progressively easier as time marches forward. By no means is it a scientific measure–the piece in question features the view of a handful of regular crossword aficionados–but we’re more interested in the discussion and merit of difficult crosswords. Are they really more fulfilling if they’re difficult? At what difficulty do you turn off potential players? And just how many four-letter rivers are there?

Finally, Nick Pino’s impressions of It Takes Two manages to express the game’s difficulty (there’s no way to tweak the difficulty if you’re playing with a less experienced gamer) while embracing its narrative themes, including potential “wish fulfillment” for children of divorce. And, yeah, we’re here for the Ted Lasso analogy, as you’d perhaps expect.

Quick Hits:

Carpenter, Nicole. “Field Guide to Memory is a ‘keepsake’ game written inside your own personal journal” (Polygon: March 26, 2021) <www.polygon.com/2021/3/26/22352414/field-guide-to-memory-keepsake-game-impressions-interview>.

Coles, Jason. “Monster Hunter Rise Review: Switch Exclusive Rises To The Occasion” (G-Finity: March 29, 2021) <www.gfinityesports.com/reviews/outriders-review-great-loot-shooter-fun-that-doesnt-move-the-needle/>.

David, Zsolt. “UNCOVERING AMONG US’ IMPLICIT SYSTEMS” (Liftoff!: March 31, 2021) <liftoffmag.com/uncovering-among-us-implicit-systems/>.

Grabowski, Brady. “How Tanking in Overwatch Has Helped Me Love My Giant Body” (Uppercut: March 29, 2021) <uppercutcrit.com/how-tanking-in-overwatch-has-helped-me-love-my-giant-body/>.

Henry, Cole. “It is all a horrible dream.” (March 26, 2021) <inthelobby.medium.com/it-is-all-a-horrible-dream-427f7b49fe93>.

Liao, Shannon. “‘League of Legends: Wild Rift’ is ‘League’ Lite, targeted at new players” (The Washington Post: April 2, 2021) <www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/lol-wild-rift-review/>.

M, Luke. “Alien Bodies, Alien Worlds: ‘Super Metroid’ and Gothic Space” (March 12, 2021) <lmwpb.wordpress.com/2021/03/12/metroid-gothic/>.

Middler, Jordan. “Balan Wonderworld review” (Overlode: March 28, 2021) <overlode.co.uk/balan-wonderworld-review/>.

Pino, Nick. “Josef Fares’ It Takes Two handles divorce in the sweetest way possible” (TechRadar: March 2, 2021) <www.techradar.com/news/josef-fares-it-take-two-handles-divorce-in-the-sweetest-way-possible>.

Ryan, Shane. “The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Is Getting Easier. Is That a Good Thing?” (Paste: March 29, 2021) <www.pastemagazine.com/games/crossword-puzzles/new-york-times-crossword-getting-easier/>.

S, Matt. “Review: Balan Wonderworld (Nintendo Switch)” (Digitally Downloaded: April 4, 2021) <www.digitallydownloaded.net/2021/04/review-balan-wonderworld-nintendo-switch.html>.

Vitelli, Jesse. “Monster Hunter Rise Review | Sound The Hunting Horn” (Prima Games: March 31, 2021) <primagames.com/review/monster-hunter-rise-review-sound-hunting-horn>.

April 7, 2021
Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: March 21, 2021

by Team GGW March 22, 2021
written by Team GGW

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

There was no shortage of good games writing this week. In fact, there was actively too much worth reading, such that we may have to revisit pieces we left off the list this week. We read well over 100 pieces this week: Among the things we didn’t manage to include in the round-up are Xbox Wireless Headset reviews, Marvel’s Avengers content around Hawkeye and dogs, the impending death of Mario, or even any of the Genshin Impact guides that dropped.

There was a lot.

If you think we missed something awesome hit the big ol’ SUBMIT button to your right or throw us a tweet @GoodWritingVG.

REPORTING

Rebekah Valentine kicks off the Weekly with two pieces: In the first, she explains what Roblox‘s high valuation–it eclipses Take Two and Ubisoft combined–means for gaming. In the second, Valentine delves into the history of Six Days in Fallujah while interviewing Arab and Iraqi game devs as well as a US military veteran:

At best, those we spoke to worry that a group of people with sympathy and vested interest in the US military will inherently be biased toward it, and may consciously or otherwise tell an inaccurate story that portrays the military in a more favorable light while casting those who lived in the country it invaded as villains. That worry has already born out somewhat, given that Victura has done little in the way of actively disclosing its previous military connections as a potential conflict of interest, and has in fact actively tried to separate itself from them despite clear evidence the game was, at least at one point, clearly wrapped up in them.

Both pieces offer additional context and insights worth considering.

At Vice, Khee Hoon Chan documents efforts to preserve Flash games, chronicling the rise of HTML 5 and the demise of Flash, proper. It’s a piece that’s about the people behind the games as much as it is about the games themselves.

A different kind of preservation is at the heart of Wesley Yin-Poole’s latest report: a “never-before-seen” game found under a tree on a pallet. The simple Q&A format works wonders for the piece. Also, the strapline is sublime.

Hitting the one year mark of dealing with COVID-19 directly has us daydreaming of travel. Super Nintendo World is on the list of destinations we’d love to take in…eventually. For now, Robert Sephazon’s comprehensive review of the attraction will have to do. And we mean comprehensive.

REVIEWS & CRITICISM

Our largest section tonight so let’s go rapid fire.

We start with more Loop Hero. We really liked Steve Hogarty’s review because it has potentially the best description of the game yet:

Round and round they go, trapped but resolute, like a greyhound on a malfunctioning racetrack, where someone forgot to turn off the hare and the crowds have long since gone home. Your hero will do this for as long as you let them, or until they die, because with each completed loop the monsters become incrementally tougher.

Then there’s Stella Chung’s review of Apex Legends which now feels like the definitive take on the game in all its forms.

The Outer Worlds has new DLC out and we continue to adore Elise Favis’ review/interview hybrids. We dig how nuggets such as how the game’s influenced by works like Murder on the Orient Express weaves naturally into the criticism of the actual product.

On the criticism-at-large front, the variety of games covered is staggering.

Let’s start by shouting out what is potentially the series we’re most looking forward to following through the year. Kate Willaert is launching a series on playable female protagonists in games. The first episode is a bit of a taster on what’s to come. We think you’ll like it.

The removal of agency from boss fights is at the heart of Jeremy Signor’s take on a Mario kaizo hack, Invictus, asserting that the hack loses both aspects of Mario and the spirit of kaizo in the process:

It’s important to make the player feel like they’re actively participating in ending the fight through their own power, which is why having moments where you can hit him would have helped the fight feel less out of your control. Even if those moments would be relatively easy, they would make a world of difference for making the player feel like they’re actually doing something.

At Wireframe, Ian Dransfield interviews Arsi “Hakita” Patala, creator of ULTRAKILL, and finds an Early Access release that just feels right.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell tackles The Medium, the technical limitations of hardware, and some degree of neuroscience at Bullet Points.

The Medium‘s dimension shifts aren’t really a celebration of the technology it runs on; rather, they expose that technology for a kind of horror story itself.

Evans-Thirwell manages to tie in cyberpunk game Observer into the criticism as well. At Gayming Mag, a cyberpunk bartending game called The Red Strings Club is the focus of Ty Galiz-Rowe’s latest, and the implications of our cozy relationship with Big Tech is neatly laid out, revealing a cause-and-effect that’s, well, uncomfortable to think about.

Stacey Henley revisits Celeste and finds herself reflecting both on Badeline and herself. The article involves something of a recap of “controversies” before going into the toxic nature of Madeline/Badeline and the author’s own attempts to exorcise those elements from herself.

At In The Lobby, a discussion on Far Cry 5, and the implications of “forests filled with profit”: hunting is expressly put in the crosshairs. That hunting exists only for profit in the game is itself a problem, but that it resembles a culture that has moved increasingly away from subsistence, to one of trophy hunting, makes it all the more alarming.

Finally, former Team GGW member Joseph Knoop, finds that four years and a story-oriented season later, Fortnite doesn’t land a compelling narrative, instead opting to keep pushing “the next big thing”. Knoop, by the way, covers Fortnite ad nauseum with every update and we consider him to be one of the most trusted authorities on the game.

USUAL SUSPECTS

Our Usual Suspects list this week is made up of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and only ACNH. As the game crosses the one year marker we expect to see another flood of great #content about the game. For now, two pieces by sister sites, touching on different feelings about the game a year on.

First, Alexis Ong returns to her island after a four month hiatus to a tale as old as time: Villagers guilt-tripping the absent player. Giving a fresh coat of paint to the topic, Ong integrates discussions on ‘ghosting’ into the piece, and how that’s gotten a lot easier in the midst of a pandemic.

At Polygon, Nicole Carpenter released a “year in review” of sorts of the game, creating a compelling timeline of the game’s biggest events. It’s a compelling list…especially for those of us who’ve dipped in and out of the game.

TECH

NFTs continue to amaze and mystify us. The speculation based phenomenon is detailed in practical effect at cnet — it’s perhaps the best explanation we’ve gotten yet. Naturally, any market that’s exploding has those trying to cheat or rob the system, and we haven’t been disappointed in hearing about NFT art heists.

The rest of this section is really about communities on social media platforms.

Cariad Keigher addresses the “audience harassment problem” on Twitch. Some of the factors leading to this longstanding problem include the ease in creating an account on the service, a legal team that challenges any user-made solutions, and a general unwillingness by the company to do anything on the issue.

Our team of curators works entirely in the education sector. When our students started talking about a “new sexuality” called “super straight” we immediately sought out information. If you missed the concerning and frankly transphobic campaign you can read Mashable’s comprehensive reporting.

We appreciated this list of 15 video game streamers to recommend to your kids…it’s free of “energy drink-sponsored dudebros”. We’ll be adding these streamers to our weekly watchlist.

ODDS & ENDS

Our final section is always something of a grab bag. We throw in the reads we loved but couldn’t easily integrate elsewhere. You never know what you’ll get in this section…

Gavin Lane’s love letter to 2D Zelda games–particularly the Oracle releases–is a treat:

They built upon the foundation of Link’s Awakening not only graphically, but spiritually, with a bizarre cast of characters to rival the series’ most loveable and oddball NPCs. Old favourites turn up, such as Malon and Ingo from Ocarina, Guru-Guru the phonograph player (phonographer? phonographist?), and — a personal favourite — the creepy toilet hand from Majora’s Mask. Returning favourites rub shoulders with a host of enchanting newbies, most of whom we haven’t seen since: Skeleton pirate Cap’n, Bipin and Blossom (and their son, who you have the honour of naming), the subterranean Subrosians, Allan the Poe, and many more. And who can forget Link’s trio of ridable animal companions, Ricky the kangaroo, Dimitri the dodongo, and Moosh the blue bear (who can fly, natch).

At Input, Rowen Cameron delves into the point-and-click genre, revealing the current generation of releases we’ve all been sleeping on, including Primordia and The Blackwell Epiphany. A similar piece focusing on indie horror releases also caught our attention. Between the two you should find *something* you haven’t played before.

On the topic of horror, Olly Smith argues that Call of Duty: Warzone is the best horror game of the last year and we find the argument strangely compelling.

Finally, Ben Bayliss challenges publishers to embrace accessibility as part of their marketing campaigns, both in what they promote and how they promote it. From using alt text to readable open captions, being up front about what accessibility options will need to be employed by some gamers to working with the community, Bayliss hits it all. This is our read of the week!

Quick Hits:

Bayliss, Ben. “Accessibility in games is advancing — now marketing needs to catch up | Opinion” (GamesIndustry.biz: March 17, 2021) <www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-03-16-accessibility-in-games-is-advancing-now-marketing-needs-to-catch-up-opinion>.

Cameron, Rowen. “It’s time to give point-and-click games the respect they deserve” (Input: March 17, 2021) <www.inputmag.com/gaming/its-time-to-give-point-and-click-games-the-respect-they-deserve>.

Carpenter, Nicole. “The year we spent in Animal Crossing: New Horizons” (Polygon: March 19, 2021) <www.polygon.com/22339720/animal-crossing-new-horizons-one-year-timeline>.

Chan, Khee Hoon. “Tracing the Sprawling Roots of Flash Preservation” (Vice: March 18, 2021) <www.vice.com/en/article/wx8y5y/tracing-the-sprawling-roots-of-flash-preservation>.

Chung, Stella. “Apex Legends Review – 2021” (IGN: March 15, 2021) <www.ign.com/articles/apex-legends-review-2>.

Dransfield, Ian. “Ultrakill – improvisational and impulsive” (Wireframe: March 16, 2021) <wireframe.raspberrypi.org/articles/ultrakill-improvisational-and-impulsive>.

Evans-Thirlwell, Edwin. “Cutting Edge” (Bullet Points: March 12, 2021) <bulletpointsmonthly.com/2021/03/12/cutting-edge-the-medium>.

Favis, Elise. “‘Murder on Eridanos’ DLC is ‘Outer Worlds’ at its comedic best” (The Washington Post: March 17, 2021) <www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/murder-eridanos-review/>.

Galiz-Rowe, Ty. “The Red Strings Club understands the dystopian nightmare of Cyberpunk is already here” (Gayming Mag: March 15, 2021) <gaymingmag.com/2021/03/red-strings-club-cyberpunk/>.

Henley, Stacey. “Celeste Reminds Me Of How Mean I Was Before I Transitioned” (TheGamer: March 16, 2021) <www.thegamer.com/celeste-transgender-madeline-badeline/>.

Hogarty, Steve. “Loop Hero review” (RPS: March 19, 2021) <www.rockpapershotgun.com/loop-hero-review>.

In The Lobby. “The land means nothing. Burn it, kill everything, and make money.” (Medium: March 15, 2021) <inthelobby.medium.com/the-land-means-nothing-burn-it-kill-everything-and-make-money-ca15c2446cdd>.

James, Allisa. “The independent scene keeping horror games alive” (Overlode: March 10, 2021) <overlode.co.uk/the-independent-scene-keeping-horror-games-alive/>.

Keigher, Carriad. “Twitch chat harassment remains unaddressed despite complaints and evidence of potential fraud” (Medium: March 15, 2021) <katelibc.medium.com/twitch-chat-harassment-remains-unaddressed-despite-complaints-and-evidence-of-potential-fraud-d7fc66f95d88>.

Knoop, Joseph. “Nearly four years in and Fortnite’s story is still going nowhere” (PC Gamer: March 17, 2021) <www.pcgamer.com/the-foundation-fortnite/>.

Lane, Gavin. “Feature: The Brilliance Of Zelda: Oracle Of Ages & Seasons Forced Nintendo To Up Its Game” (Nintendo Life: March 15, 2021 <www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/03/feature_the_brilliance_of_zelda_oracle_of_ages_and_seasons_forced_nintendo_to_up_its_game>.

Ong, Alexis. “FEAR AND SELF-LOATHING IN ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS” (The Verge: March 18, 2021) <www.theverge.com/22337736/animal-crossing-new-horizons-nintendo-switch-anxiety-fear>.

Sephazon, Robert. “SUPER NINTENDO WORLD REVIEW: A GUIDE TO UNIVERSAL’S MARIO MECCA” (Video Games Chronicle: March 15, 2021) <www.videogameschronicle.com/reviews/super-nintendo-world/>.

Signor, Jeremy. “Agency and Progression: A Critique of the Invictus Kamek Fight” (March 17, 2021) <thelifeofgame.wordpress.com/2021/03/17/agency-and-progression-a-critique-of-the-invictus-kamek-fight/>.

Smith, Olly. “CALL OF DUTY: WARZONE IS MY FAVOURITE HORROR GAME OF THE LAST YEAR” (New Game+: March 10, 2021) <newgameplus.co.uk/2021/03/10/call-of-duty-warzone/>.

Stuart, Keith. “15 video game streamers your teens should be watching” (The Guardian: March 15, 2021) <www.theguardian.com/games/2021/mar/15/15-video-game-streamers-your-teens-should-be-watching>.

Sung, Morgan. “The ‘super straight’ campaign taking over TikTok is actually just ugly transphobic trolling” (Mashable: March 14, 2021) <mashable.com/article/super-straight-tiktok-transphobia/>.

Valentine, Rebekah. “Roblox Is Now Worth More Than Ubisoft and Take-Two Combined: What Does This Mean for Gaming?” (IGN: March 15, 2021) <www.ign.com/articles/roblox-is-now-worth-more-than-ubisoft-and-take-two-combined-what-does-this-mean-for-gaming>.

Valentine, Rebekah. “Six Days in Fallujah Is Complicated and Painful For Those Connected to the Real Events” (IGN: March 19, 2021) <www.ign.com/articles/six-days-in-fallujah-is-complicated-and-painful-for-those-connected-to-the-real-events>.

Van Boom, Daniel. “NFTs don’t make sense but that won’t stop them” (cnet: March 17, 2021) <www.cnet.com/news/nfts-dont-make-sense-but-that-wont-stop-them/>.

Wodinsky, Shoshana. “The NFT Art Heists May Have Begun” (Gizmodo: March 15, 2021) <gizmodo.com/the-nft-art-heists-may-have-begun-1846476077>.

Yin-Poole, Wesley. “24-year-old, never-before-seen Hyper Neo Geo 64 game prototype found under a collapsed tree in a California field”. (Eurogamer: March 17, 2021) <www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-03-16-never-before-seen-hyper-neo-geo-64-samurai-shodown-64-prototype-found-sitting-under-a-tree-in-a-californian-field>.

March 22, 2021
Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: March 14, 2021

by Team GGW March 15, 2021
written by Team GGW

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

A time change means one less hour to enjoy March 14th. Here, the sun is shining and the birds are singing, a sure sign that spring is on our doorstep. The time change also brings challenges to our sleep cycles–as if a global pandemic weren’t challenge enough–ushering in a week we always struggle to manage. Such a week cannot derail your work; we know it’ll be a week like any other, filled to the brim with excellent writing. This week, though, there might be a little more sunshine.

REVIEWS

We’re fans of the recent rise of short reviews. WALL JUMP‘s reviews capture brief moments in games and we enjoyed this one on If Found. It says enough to tell you if this is the game for you, capturing the game’s poignancy while avoiding spoiling any of the game’s finer moments.

Early modern medicine and astrology blend together in Emily Price’s Astrologaster review. There’s a helpful dose of history thrown in for good measure.

Loop Hero is the new hotness taking over social media (and our attention spans) so it’s no surprise we’ve been drawn to writing on it. We’ll start with Anthony McGlynn’s review which is the most direct and helpful explanation of the game we’ve read so far.

We then arrive at Kat Bailey’s review, aimed squarely at dedicated RPG and roguelike fans, a review that knows both about systems and narratives.

Then there’s Jordan Oloman’s review/interview hybrid (let’s call it a feature) on the game: It’s tailor-made for those of you who haven’t bitten on the hype just yet, those who play compulsively, and those who just want to bop along with the soundtrack. That interview? It’s with the game’s composer and it adds just enough to the piece to fit NME’s particular niche.

& CRITICISM

Andrew King takes six paragraphs to introduce the subject proper—Umurangi Generation’s Macro DLC–as both the piece and the DLC skewer right-wing propaganda machines.

But, if Umurangi Generation’s PragerU equivalent, Liberty Inc., is to be believed, the end of the world isn’t all that bad. In Gamers Palace, side by side with the escapist VR, videos of smug propagandists play, each arguing that the end of the world as we know it isn’t the end of the world as we know it.

At Into the Spine, Emma Kostopolus reminds us that just because a game is ‘cute’, doesn’t mean it gets a pass from criticism. In this case, that criticism is leveled both at a system (breeding slimes) and the implicit imagery that it brings (surrounding keeping pure bloodlines).

City-builders and related genres aren’t successfully contending with concerns around pollution, enhanced climate change, or environmentalism writ large in Luke Shaw’s latest. When efficiency is what’s rewarded, these games lead to a series of min-maxing decisions that encourage the harvest of raw resources, not at all unlike what’s happening on our planet right now. “Functionally unlimited” resources don’t abound on Earth. Shaw points out these games attempt to manage pollution but the consequences are, well, read on:

Factorio does feature a pollution mechanic that punishes the player by sending swarms of aliens after their precious constructions. However, the player can either contain the pollution or outfit their base with enough firepower to repel the attacks. If anything, this approach leans even closer to the dynamics of resource exploitation in the real world, except it’s pissed off alien insectoids rather than innocent, displaced populations. It’s pretty wide of the mark, but it’s something.

We always appreciate Access-Ability’s video features and the newest is no exception. In it, microtransactions and the insidious way they target consumers, particularly disabled gamers, is put under the microscope. This is an example that also (thus far) has a comment section worth reading.

REPORTING

Chase Carter interviews Coyote and Crow designer Connor Alexander about the game’s inspirations and systems as the game seeks funding on Kickstarter. The game promises to place an “emphasis on decolonising traditional assumptions about how RPG stories should play out”.

Blaseball is still one of the most intriguing experiences in and around gaming. As its new season gets underway, IGN‘s Rebekah Valentine chats with the developers, creating an effective rundown of the game, one that reminds us the role the community and its lore plays.

Stephen Bell, another one of The Game Band, adds, “What do people maybe need to know, to jump into the new era from what happened before? Basically, there was a baseball league, and then the fans voted to open the Forbidden Book. And then, like 11 seasons later, they killed God. There’s stuff in between, but that’s where we’ve left off.”

At Metro, Deadly Premonition creator Hidetaka ‘SWERY’ Suehiro is interviewed about upcoming release The Good Life, and there’s plenty of interesting tidbits, particularly for critics and reviewers.

Keith Stuart blends literary analysis with a gaming-centric interview with author Raven Leilani. The interview touches on her gaming experiences and how they influence the narrative she writes and the unique vulnerability found in games.

Luster is filled with beautiful, intricate observations – she places brand names, specific disco songs and other cultural artefacts with the exactness of an artist setting up a still life painting. This, she says, is something she learned from RPGs. “You follow a character on this journey of self-discovery, and I like the work that it entails. I like going into villagers’ houses and finding what’s there, I like talking to NPCs and exhausting my options. I love being rewarded for that attention and rigour … It’s hard to articulate the magic of a world that responds to you in that way.

Wooden sets, paintings, and puppets are often at the heart of Jiří Barta’s films. Those films and their aesthetic serve as inspiration for the design of games like Creaks that use “puppetry to bring energy and agency to an assortment of lifeless objects” according to Ewan Wilson. The piece, incidentally, pairs well with this piece on the developers who use live action in games, a sprawling read well worth the time.

Our read of the week goes to Nicole Carpenter. Reporting on Neopets‘ long-standing black market, Carpenter digs into that underground economy, particularly the one surrounding “unconverted pets”. The piece is part Neopets crash course, part economics primer, and all quality reporting. The position of the Neopets team is an untenable one in which few leave happy.

THREADS

This section recognizes discussions that emerge through the week. We only feature it when we see trends that emerge and discussions arise. This week, three pieces made us think about our relationship with our games, all in different ways.

First is Erik Twice who considers the role of so-called “alpha players” in co-op tabletop games. Players choosing not to engage in toxicity can help manage this; so, too, can intentional game design. *Strong language warning*

Then, there’s Kieran Harris’ argument that online trophies should be scrapped from games. Who has time to be #1 on the worldwide leaderboards of a game?

Finally, Swapna Krishna reminds us that it’s OK to drop a game that’s no longer entertaining you (or bringing you pleasure).

USUAL SUSPECTS

Our Usual Suspects section is for the games we find ourselves talking about at every turn.

This week that includes The Witcher 3, Mass Effect, and Final Fantasy.

On The Witcher front, Jessica Howard provides a helpful timeline of the series’ happenings, creating a handy bullet-point list of key details. Nice.

Yussef Cole reflects on his time with Final Fantasy XIII and finds a game that is filled with a “color cast of heroes” but also “chunks of bland, repetitive battles”. To play such a game is all too often to enter a period of self-isolation, Cole writes, an experience that doesn’t hold up when compared to the richness of life outside the game’s world.

Kenneth Shepard, meanwhile, appreciates the way Bioware evolved in its approach to dialogue, adding icons to convey certain meanings.

This categorization of spoken words isn’t exclusive to romance. These games assign tone to every response you’re allowed to give, whether that be humorous, emotional, or stoic. The understanding that comes from these little pieces of art at the center of a dialogue wheel have become key tools in roleplaying a character.

Worth Reading:

Briefly, two other pieces worth reading, one of a game that may well become a “usual suspect” for all the wrong reasons, while the other is of a game that was, once upon a time, regularly covered ad nauseum.

  • Imran Khan doesn’t pull any punches with respect to the creators of Six Days in Fallujah. “They’re asking you not to believe what you see or what you hear and telling you that they know better.”
  • Jordan Oloman jumped back into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer and found a dedicated player-base and a lot of fun. This piece is pure gold from end to end.

JOBS

We spied only one new job this week and it’s for a website editor at PocketGamer.biz.

Polygon re-upped its pitching guide. It’s always worth a look. Mind which email you send what to and don’t forget to include the relevant information in the subject line.

Keith Stuart posted a primer to getting into games writing on his Substack. It’s worth a peek.

That’s it for this week’s update. If you’ve seen any good games writing let us know. Ditto for jobs and pitch requests! We’d love to share it!

Quick Hits:

Bailey, Kat. “Loop Hero taps into the deepest parts of RPG history” (RPS: March 10, 2021) <www.rockpapershotgun.com/loop-hero-taps-into-the-deepest-parts-of-rpg-history>.

Carpenter, Nicole. “Neopets is reckoning with black market pet trading” (Polygon: March 8, 2021) <www.polygon.com/22319750/neopets-uc-pets-trading-black-market>.

Carter, Chase. “RPG Coyote and Crow’s indigenous-led design team has created a tabletop world beyond the colonised mindset” (Dicebreaker: March 8, 2021) <www.dicebreaker.com/games/coyote-and-crow/news/coyote-crow-indigenous-rpg-kickstarter>.

Cole, Yussef. “Digital Distractions” (Unwinnable: March 8, 2021) <unwinnable.com/2021/03/08/digital-distractions/>.

Harris, Kieran. “Why online trophies and achievements should be scrapped” (The Sixth Axis: March 13, 2021) <www.thesixthaxis.com/2021/03/13/why-online-trophies-and-achievements-should-be-scrapped/>.

Howard, Jessica. “‘The Witcher’ Timeline Explained, From the Elder Races to the White Frost” (Collider: March 5, 2021) <collider.com/witcher-timeline-explained/>.

King, Andrew. “Propaganda in the Bunker” (Video Dame: March 10, 2021) <videoda.me/propaganda-in-the-bunker-c92a9de4d767>.

Khan, Imran. “The Creators of Six Days in Fallujah Think We’re Fucking Morons” (Fanbyte: March 8, 2021) <www.fanbyte.com/trending/the-creators-of-six-days-in-fallujah-think-were-fucking-morons/>.

Kostopolus, Emma. “The Peculiar (Dis)comfort of Slime Rancher” (Into the Spine: March 6, 2021) <intothespine.com/2021/03/06/the-peculiar-discomfort-of-slime-rancher/>.

Krishna, Swapna. “Sometimes It’s OK to Give Up” (WIRED: March 10, 2021) <www.wired.com/story/its-ok-to-quit-video-games/>.

McGlynn, Anthony. “Loop Hero Review: Groundhog’s Roguelike” (GameSkinny: March 12, 2021) <www.gameskinny.com/8z5nq/loop-hero-review-groundhogs-roguelike>.

Oloman, Jordan. “‘Loop Hero’ will ruin your life but you really need to play it” (NME: March 12, 2021) <www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/loop-hero-will-ruin-your-life-but-you-really-need-to-play-it-2899026>.

Oloman, Jordan. “Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer on Xbox Series X is just as good as you remember” (NME: March 12, 2021) <www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/modern-warfare-2-multiplayer-on-xbox-series-x-is-just-as-good-as-you-remember-2899024>.

Price, Emily. “‘Astrologaster’ Review: Reach for the Stars” (Fanbyte: March 8, 2021) <www.fanbyte.com/reviews/astrologaster-review-reach-for-the-stars/>.

Redenius, Ingo. “Layer by Layer” (WALL JUMP: March 3, 2021) <wall-jump.com/layer-by-layer/>.

Shaw, Luke. “Industrial strategy games still aren’t dealing with climate change” (PCGamesN: March 10, 2021) <www.pcgamesn.com/factorio/factory-games-climate-change>.

Shepard, Kenneth. “Thank You Bioware For Giving My Gay Ass a Heart Icon to Flirt With” (Fanbyte: March 12, 2021) <www.fanbyte.com/trending/dragon-age-mass-effect-romance-heart-icon/>

Stuart, Keith. “‘I learned about storytelling from Final Fantasy’: novelist Raven Leilani on Luster and video games” (The Guardian: March 11, 2021) <www.theguardian.com/games/2021/mar/11/raven-leilani-luster-video-games-final-fantasy>.

Twice, Erik. “The “alpha player” in coops is a symptom, not the disease” (March 12, 2021) <eriktwice.com/en/2021/03/12/alpha-player-cooperative-games-symptom/>.

Valentine, Rebekah. “What Is Blaseball? Developers Answer as Game Enters New Era” (IGN: March 10, 2021) <www.ign.com/articles/what-is-blaseball-developers-answer-as-game-enters-new-era>.

Weber, Michael. “SWERY’s The Good Life – why Japan’s master of jank swapped suburban US for rural England” (Metro: March 10, 2021) <metro.co.uk/2021/03/10/swerys-the-good-life-why-the-master-of-jank-swapped-the-us-for-uk-14214618/>.

Wilson, Ewan. “Video Game Puppets Have Become a Creepy, Creaky Portal to Empathy” (Fanbyte: March 10, 2021) <www.fanbyte.com/features/video-game-puppets-have-become-a-creepy-creaky-portal-to-empathy/>.

March 15, 2021
Weeklies

Good Games Writing Weekly: March 7, 2021

by Team GGW March 11, 2021
written by Team GGW

The best games writing from around the web.

The Weekly is your round-up of all the best in games writing and related spaces. Reviews, news, features, and more await you each week as the curators of Good Games Writing scour the Internet for the best of the best. Some themes are for older audiences.

This is the Weekly for March 7th even though it’s being posted late on March 10th. Time is confusing sometimes. In all actuality, we held off on posting this in deference to The Goodies, as lots of BIG awards were being dropped, and we wanted those winners to get their moment. We also didn’t want these pieces to be overshadowed. We’ll revert back to a Sunday schedule for the foreseeable future!

REVIEWS & CRITICISM

This week we started reading reviews on Gnosia. We expect we’ll be discussing writing on this release for some time, but Eric Van Allen’s review is our favourite of the bunch so far:

That might be Gnosia’s best trick: how it gradually turns these avatars slinging accusations at one another into people you can understand. Loop over loop, you have to adjust to what you’re given and what you can learn over time, all the while relying on how well you know these characters to stay alive.

Zsolt David writes on the “erotic interplay between violence and death” in an interesting (and short) essay on Doom.

Queen: Rock Tour is not a game we thought we’d be writing about, but Zack Zwiezen notes that it’s a relatively cheap experience ($3) with no hidden microtransactions, gauges, or other nuisances. We’re willing to give it a look.

At TheGamer, Stacey Henley writes about the secret standout character of Spider-Man: Miles Morales:

Hailey is never identified as “the deaf girl” or anything like that, she’s often called “the artist” when she’s not simply called Hailey. She’s in the game for this artistry, and for her efforts in community organisation, not to hit a diversity quota. It’s very rare for deaf characters to be in a game at all, much less for them to be allowed to stand for more than their deafness and to actively communicate with the hero.

Over at Vice, Nico Deyo examines Blizzard’s cast of female villains and the “meat grinder” they are put through, along with the unique nature of Blizzard’s never-ending narratives. It’s an analysis made for fans of StarCraft or Overwatch or just good characters in general.

The idea that someone who was made into a shade of her former self suddenly has no living left to do after being robbed of her emotional catharsis is horrifying. The desire to kill everyone else and sow discord feels like an punishment on her character and furthers the idea that these women are not allowed to reach an emotional conclusion, but rather spread that anger and pain out to everyone else, whether they deserve it or not.

REPORTING

This week the reporting category is super-sized.

We’ll start with a pair of development-oriented interviews that caught our eyes. There’s this interview with Disco Elysium: The Final Cut’s lead writer Helen Hindpere that we missed last month that delves into the writing process (and more) of the game’s script and how it was designed with voiceover in mind.

Finding the ideal actors for the likes of The Deserter and Paledriver has been one thing, but the biggest challenge ZA/UM faced was finding a voice to bring the whole experience together. “The narrator is the voice of Disco Elysium,” Hindpere emphasises. “He reads all non-direct speech. This means every object, every parenthesis, and so on. Only when we miraculously stumbled upon Lenval Brown did we know: ok, we have the voice of Disco Elysium now. We can really attempt to do this.”

Patrick Klepek, meanwhile, reports on a developer that uses a DMCA to pull its own game from Steam, as part of an ongoing legal conflict with the publisher. The dev claims the publisher hacked the code and uploaded an improper and/or illegal version of the game. This story is still developing but we trust Klepek to stay on it.

At Dicebreaker, Chase Carter reports on the cancellation of a Kickstarter campaign, a rather ordinary event. The extraordinary part? It’s a Kickstarter executive that launched the campaign and the collection included a contribution by a streamer who previously roleplayed “a non-consensual sexual assault scene” on an actual play stream. Fallout was immediate.

A pair of interesting pieces captured our imagination at Eurogamer. First, there is Wesley Yin-Poole’s description of when “players came together en masse to “reboot” the vanilla experience on one of the least populated servers” in World of Warcraft Classic. An extensive collection of screenshots is included for your viewing pleasure.

Then there’s the fascinating tale of Valheim‘s Body Recovery Squad, an elite group of players that freely help others recover their lost loot. Emma Kent’s reporting showcases this as a community initiative that is born from the grassroots and is set to keep growing rapidly.

Although he doesn’t know exactly how many bodies have been recovered so far, Lucas believes he can confidently say over 100 players have been assisted by the BRS – and that number could potentially be higher. It seems the BRS is also sticking pretty firmly to its policy of doing all this for free: Lucas said the group doesn’t accept payment, donations or gifts of any type.

Diego Arguello dives into the community of people just trying to get a PS5. Their efforts include social media accounts, bots, and fighting scalpers at every turn.

Crunch has been at the centre of several reports over the past year. People Make Games’ latest video examines what happens when that crunch is outsourced. We also read the comments (gasp!) and found several leads we hope enterprising journalists take up and chase.

Finally, our Read of the Week is Liana Ruppert’s “An Epileptic’s Guide To Gaming“. It’s exactly what it claims to be: a guide to gaming for those living with epilepsy. The piece isn’t strictly reporting–it blends in Ruppert’s experiences with seizures–but it’s an important topic. Both the explanation of the shades of epilepsy and the tips for managing it while gaming are instructive.

TECH

The overlap between tech and gaming remains high. Here’s a few posts we read that got us thinking this week:

  • Shoshana Wodinsky challenges us not to give Google a free pass on the privacy front just because they’re ushering in the death of the cookie
  • NFTs seemed to be the acronym of the week. This is the piece that made it sort-of make sense to us.
  • A new YouTube audio feature is being used by Ubisoft to improve their trailer’s accessibility.

USUAL SUSPECTS

This section is for the games and series that always seem to inspire good games writing.

Resident Evil creeps on to this week’s instalment with a pair of posts. First, there’s Kyle Campbell’s question of “What is Resident Evil?” The answer focuses on Resi 4, naturally, but it’s a neat ponderance that drifts through the series’ later entries.

Then there’s Kieran Harris’ look at how VR elevates the horror experience of Resi 7 and while we’re glad Harris found enjoyment we think we’ll pass.

We were interested by this analysis of Zelda’s role in Breath of the Wild. While we disagreed with some of the takeaways–particularly the relatability of the princess-we think it should spark some lively debates. It pairs well with this Twitter thread by Tristan Cooper as he drops incredible observational nuggets on the design decisions in BotW.

Genshin Impact has earned its place as one of our usual suspects. While it’s easy to discount it as a BotW (or Skyrim?) clone, such a reduction misses the point, while revealing a great degree of ignorance. Khee Hoon Chan reflects on the many mobile games making waves in a year where players were anything but mobile. It’s not just Genshin, of course, but we can feel its impact everywhere we look.

While we’re at Polygon, it’s worth noting that the next installment of Matt Leone’s oral history of Street Fighter series has dropped, and this one’s a doozy. Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game gets the longread treatment and more colons than we can shake a stick at.

Mass Effect, Vampyr, The Outer Wilds and more get the nod in Andrew King’s analysis of how games make it fun to be villains. There’s an extra dose of psychology in this read along with interesting stats and quality interviews. Whether you think it’s good to be bad or always attempt a pacifist run you’ll get something out of this one.

But… why? Video games have famously invited us to rampage. There’s even a famous video game called Rampage. So why the unease about making bad choices? Do certain kinds of games evoke guilt? And what kind doesn’t? How does the Jaws-simulator Maneater, for example, make it feel effortlessly fun to massacre innocent human beings? How does Carrion’s limb-ripping carnage sidestep guilt in favor of glee? By contrast, why do choice-based RPGs–which often ask us to do small unkind acts in the name of roleplaying a villainous character–often leave us with pangs of regret? And how do skilled developers coax players over the moral threshold?

That’s this week’s entry! You can always submit links for our consideration by tweeting us @GoodWritingVG or using the SUBMIT form to your right on the goodgameswriting.com website. Thanks for reading.

Quick Hits:

Arguello, Diego. “Hunting for a PS5 has become an entire subculture” (Polygon: March 1, 2021) <www.polygon.com/2021/3/1/22298268/the-hunt-playstation-5-how-to-buy-ps5-scalpers>.

Bayliss, Ben. “How YouTube’s new audio feature is helping Ubisoft make its trailers more accessible” (TechRadar: March 6, 2021) <www.techradar.com/uk/news/how-youtubes-new-audio-feature-is-helping-ubisoft-make-its-trailers-more-accessible>.

Campbell, Kyle. “What is Resident Evil?” (March 7, 2021) <thekaycee.ca/2021/03/07/what-is-resident-evil/>.

Carter, Chase. “Kickstarter executive cancels The Perfect RPG campaign amid backlash to Dungeon World co-creator’s involvement” (Dicebreaker: March 1, 2021) <www.dicebreaker.com/topics/kickstarter/news/the-perfect-rpg-canceled-kickstarter>.

Chan, Khee Hoon. “Mobile games have quietly exploded” (Polygon: March 3, 2021) <www.polygon.com/2021/3/3/22311787/core-mobile-games-among-us-genshin-impact-trends>.

David, Zsolt. “Sexual Glee and Doom” (Medium: March 4, 2021) <zoltdav.medium.com/sexual-glee-and-doom-f74bf64fd262>.

Deyo, Nico. “Blizzard’s Long History of Manic Pixie Nightmare Girls and Fear of Women” (Vice: February 14, 2021) <www.vice.com/en/article/wxeze5/blizzards-long-history-of-manic-pixie-nightmare-girls-and-fear-of-women>.

Eardley, Siobhan. “Dealing With Calamity: Princess Zelda’s Relatable Struggles in Breath of the Wild” (JumpCut Online: February 25, 2021) <play.jumpcutonline.co.uk/2021/02/25/dealing-with-calamity-princess-zeldas-relatable-struggles-in-breath-of-the-wild/>.

Harris, Kieran. “Resident Evil 7: How VR Elevates An Already Great Horror Game” (UploadVR: March 6, 2021) <uploadvr.com/resident-evil-7-vr-elevates-great-horror-game>.

Henley, Stacey. “We Should Be Making A Bigger Deal About Hailey In Spider-Man: Miles Morales” (TheGamer: February 24, 2021) <www.thegamer.com/hailey-spider-man-miles-morales/>.

Howcroft, Elizabeth and Ritvik Carvalho. “How a 10-second video clip sold for $6.6 million” (Reuters: March 1, 2021) <www.reuters.com/article/retail-trading-nfts/insight-how-a-10-second-video-clip-sold-for-6-6-million-idUKL8N2KV6X9>.

King, Andrew. “How Games Make It Fun To Be The Villain” (GameSpot: March 6, 2021) <www.gamespot.com/articles/how-games-make-it-fun-to-be-the-villain/1100-6488487/>.

Kent, Emma. “Valheim’s Body Recovery Squad will help get your items back” (Eurogamer: March 5, 2021) <www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-03-04-valheims-body-recovery-squad-will-help-you-get-your-items-back-and-all-for-free>.

Klepek, Patrick. “‘The Sinking City’ Developer Uses DMCA to Remove Its Own Game From Steam” (Vice: March 2, 2021) <www.vice.com/en/article/epdw7p/the-sinking-city-developer-uses-dmca-to-remove-its-own-game-from-steam>.

Leone, Matt. “Street Fighter: The Movie: The game: An oral history” (Polygon: March 1, 2021) <www.polygon.com/2021/3/1/22296705/street-fighter-the-movie-the-game-an-oral-history>.

Purslow, Matt. “Disco Elysium: Bringing a Million Words to Life for The Final Cut” (IGN: February 9, 2021) <www.ign.com/articles/disco-elysium-the-final-cut-voice-acting-console-release>.

Ruppert, Liana. “An Epileptic’s Guide To Gaming” (Game Informer: March 3, 2021) <www.gameinformer.com/2021/03/03/an-epileptics-guide-to-gaming>.

Van Allen, Eric. “Gnosia review: A single-player impostor game that still brings the drama” (Polygon: March 5, 2021) <www.polygon.com/nintendo-switch/22315451/gnosia-review-nintendo-switch>.

Wodinsky, Shoshana. “Stop Letting Google Get Away With It” (Gizmodo: March 5, 2021) <gizmodo.com/stop-letting-google-get-away-with-it-1846414787>.

Yin-Poole, Wesley. “Thousands of World of Warcraft Classic players descended upon a single server to get a fresh levelling experience – and it was absolute chaos” (Eurogamer: March 7, 2021) <www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-03-06-thousands-of-world-of-warcraft-classic-players-descended-upon-a-single-server-to-get-a-fresh-levelling-experience-and-it-was-absolute-chaos>.

Zwiezen, Zack. “Queen: Rock Tour Is Packed With Great Music, Not Ads And Microtransactions” (Kotaku: March 5, 2021) <kotaku.com/queen-rock-tour-is-packed-with-great-music-not-ads-an-1846416911>.

March 11, 2021
Site

The Goodies 2020: Games Writer of the Year

by Team GGW March 9, 2021
written by Team GGW

Awarding Games Writer of the Year marks the formal conclusion of #TheGoodies2020. Each nominee represents a different aspect about what, in our estimation, 2020 entails. This process, from beginning to end, is a celebration, and that celebration formally concludes with a “winner” being crowned here.

There are no losers at The Goodies. Each piece, publication, video, and author nominated deserves attention. Hundreds of other pieces do as well. We encourage you to share them. Highlight them. Uplift them.

Just as gamers may be frustrated by the pace media moves on from releases as it’s swamped by a deluge of new releases, we share the sentiment when masterful works are lost only to be found by some rabbit-hole years later, a work that endures but is forgotten. Good Games Writing runs these awards to celebrate these pieces. And we challenge you to celebrate your own; be they works you’ve created, or those you simply adore, it’s never too late to celebrate.

The nominees…

GAMES WRITER OF THE YEAR

KAT BAILEY is one of those writers who could be celebrated for many different reasons. At every juncture this year we’ve praised her work on sports games–we consider her the pre-eminent figure on that beat–but it grossly underrepresents her range. Consider if you will her meditation on Ghost of Tsushima which is in itself a reflection on open-world games. The piece isn’t exclusively negative about Tsushima but it lands intentional, thoughtful blows, shattering its fragile confidence. Bailey is also one of the figures we trust when it comes to RPGs, big and small, and her article on Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon‘s Switch release feels like a magazine article of yore. In that sense, Kat Bailey reminds us of the games media we grew up with, while boldly propelling herself, and the medium, forward.

~

NICOLE CARPENTER doesn’t neatly fit any one box. We’ve come to know Carpenter as a strong reporter who can handle serious stories while also juggling in softer news, adding context that is often lacking elsewhere. So, too, can she deliver criticism, ranging from tentpole releases to more intimate experiences. There’s really no beat Nicole Carpenter can’t handle, except, perhaps, returning to her Animal Crossing island.

~

YUSSEF COLE delivers incisive criticism. We’ve already lauded his work on Star Wars Squadrons in these pages–challenging what it means to be fascist in a game that attempts to paint its villains as inclusive–but it is representative of the depth Cole can deliver. The (then) current political moment is deftly woven into the criticism of the game. It’s something he pulls off in his criticism of The Last of Us Part II. Cole weaves in works reflecting on American exceptionalism into his takedown of the Call of Duty franchise, one that mischaracterizes the nature of American involvement in the Gulf, unironically casts heroes only for them to be cast aside by the forces they fight for, and otherwise lacks ideology.

~

COURTNEY CRAVEN is but one person, one part, of Can I Play That?, a website dedicated to accessibility in gaming. Her reviews, in particular, have changed our views on what needs to be covered, on what’s important. Her PS5 review puts more focus on the DualSense than practically any other we’ve seen while also tackling baked in features like the system’s screen reader. Her Deaf/Hard of Hearing reviews have revealed new insights into game development that we’ve previously allowed ourselves not to notice. And her willingness to discuss chronic illness and how it impacts every area of life, including recreation, made us that much more willing to discuss our own similar challenges.

~

ELISE FAVIS produces works that we find ourselves getting lost in. Her review/interview hybrid of Spiritfarer stands as one of the most interesting works we read in 2020 despite it looking, well, pretty average. It’s not, in fact, a review, but the way Favis knows her subject and appreciates it is fully on display, and the resultant interview sings. We had a brief fascination with Ooblets largely because of Favis’ work covering it, bugs and all, because again we were sucked in by the writing and framing of the piece. It isn’t all rainbows and lollipops, though, and Favis can pull together a breaking news story as she did when Montreal police investigated a hostage threat at Ubisoft Montreal.

~

NATALIE FLORES is capable of delivering in depth insights into games like few others. When it came to The Last of Us Part II, Flores’ work included “a gender double standard“, a thorough examination of Dina through the eyes of those who brought her to life, motherhood, and seeing herself represented in the game. There were reviews–her best are done in the hyper-focused constraints at Fanbyte–but ultimately, Flores excels when she bares a bit of her soul and expands the minds of her audience as she does in one of the most important pieces of 2020.

~

ARON GARST is a jack-of-all trades who can seemingly be found everywhere. When we talk about service writing–the people that track game updates on the regular for us–we think Garst. Fortnite, PUBG, CoD, whatever, Garst can handle it. He’s also one of the people we ascribe to being keenly aware of Among Us’ rise and writing some of the best pieces on it to date. That breadth of writing means when Aron Garst tells us enough is enough on the player front in CoD: Warzone, we listen. When he drops an Overwatch League profile we take notice. And when he explains the new hotness in games we pay attention.

~

STACEY HENLEY has already won our ‘Best Feature’ award for her masterful examination of Cyberpunk 2077’s toxic marketing. But it’s fitting that on International Women’s Day she be named to this group as it was a piece on this day last year that began a change in our thinking that dawned on the realization this was going to be Henley’s year. That year is built on reporting of topics that won’t always get noticed, Genshin Impact guides, and surprising angles. And it’s built on work at Into the Spine like this fantastic piece.

~

MICHAEL HIGHAM pours himself into his writing. You can see it in so many of his pieces but it’s especially noticeable when he’s talking Final Fantasy or Tony Hawk. He handles ongoing coverage of Among Us masterfully and his Xbox Series X impressions, benchmarking, and review were all stellar. It’s no wonder GameSpot continues to trust him with some of the biggest and heaviest reviews though he can still knock it out of the park with even something a little smaller.

~

CIAN MAHER is forever linked to The Witcher 3 in our eyes. He’s its chief evangelist when he’s not promoting Guinness. And we mean that with all due love and deference. Seriously, have you seen this piece on the pub in Dishonored? If someone has a Witcher take out there it’s best you cross-reference the idea with his body of work. When he’s not Witcher-ing, he’s reporting on indies (we’re counting that last one as a Witcher piece, by the way) or dropping features with interesting angles. Cian Maher is all hustle all the time.

~

Those are the 10 games writers we think embody the very best of 2020. There’s guides. Reporting. Criticism. Accessibility. Sports Games. RPGs. And The Witcher 3. It’s all there. These writers are our present and our future.

Our hats off to each and every one.

Little remains to be said about our winner except to say the future is bright. Daily news, service writing, in-depth criticism, and powerful features are all in Flores’ wheelhouse. We could spotlight more pieces, if you like: This Necrobarista review plays to her strengths just as this cautious approach to FF’s writing does. Her Bird Alone diary entries fascinated us almost as much as the game itself. This piece on romance in games is exquisite. Even her news reporting is buoyed by a unique point-of-view that enhances everything she touches.

For those reasons we are pleased to announce that Natalie Flores is the 2020 Games Writer of the Year!

March 9, 2021
Site

The Goodies 2020: Publication Awards

by Team GGW March 8, 2021
written by Team GGW

The publication awards aren’t based on any individual work. Instead, they’re a feeling, a check on a publication’s entire body of work. Two categories–one for independently run sites, and one for those run by formal businesses–each holding incredible works. Neither award is considered more important than the other.

MAJOR PUBLICATION

Each of the nominees for major publication–GameSpot, Fanbyte, Polygon, and USGamer–scored multiple nominations in The Goodies. More importantly, they actively produced the type of content worth celebrating, whether through phenomenal guides, in depth reviews, video features, news, or more.

At GameSpot we enjoyed reporting on collector’s editions, quality commerce writing, snappy retrospectives, thoughtful criticism, engaging written and video features, and so much more. Ongoing FFXIV coverage was something we read with great interest.

Fanbyte is a publication with voice. It easily has the best Twitter account around. The site’s guides–be they Animal Crossing or Yakuza–are always direct and informative. Different angles and approaches to the games everyone’s talking about are commonplace there.

While Polygon has changed a lot over the years it still produces some of the most memorable reads around. It’s the reporting that stands out most to us when thinking about 2020. There’s no shortage of quality retrospectives, tabletop coverage, and great reviews, either.

While USGamer is sailing to the great beyond it doesn’t mean we can’t honour it. There, we always expect to find works on games that don’t quite get the same coverage elsewhere, be it Blaseball, Disco Elysium, NHL, or Moon. Thank goodness Axe of the Blood God is still going.

Given how the judges voted it might not come as a surprise Polygon was voted in. The site scored two nominations in longform, one in family gaming, two in sports (which it won), a nom in indie game coverage, another in global pandemic writing, a nod in tabletop coverage, one in gamedev, a nomination in ongoing coverage, one in reporting, and it won best feature.

The judges regularly recognized the variety of pieces Polygon produced while spreading their nominations to writers like Stacey Henley, Sam Greszes, Ben Kuchera, Charlie Hall, Matt Leone, Cole Henry, Kazuma Hashimoto, and Nicole Carpenter.

Congratulations to each of the nominees!

INDIE SITE

There’s a greater range and more noticeable differences between the indie sites than the major sites in some ways. Bullet Points‘ and Into the Spine are both crit-centric, Uppercut offers a bit of everything, and Can I Play That? focuses on an important niche.

Their similarities are more apparent:

  • These sites are home to daring and thought provoking critical analysis.
  • Many of the writers overlap.
  • They’re home to a mix of established voices and relative newcomers alike.
  • Each offers pieces you won’t find anywhere else.
  • Their stuff is just really good.

To compare these sites against one another is a near-impossible job. Each represents the best of games media in the here and now while building a better future for our space.

We can’t really speak for our judges on this because we don’t know how they arrived at their decision. Each of these publications consistently shines.

Uppercut deserves this commendation for many reasons. It offers a blend of content including a fun podcast and a stellar column. It stepped in to recover EGM’s cancelled freelance pieces – an astonishing collection that warrants your attention even months later. Its “end of year letter series” produced consistently thoughtful reads. Uppercut has become one of our most read sites over the course of 2020. We’ve no doubt that will continue into 2021 and beyond.

There isn’t much left to say except CONGRATULATIONS to Uppercut and all nominees.

March 8, 2021
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