Night in the Woods tells the most vital story of any game in 2017. We’re only halfway through the year, but I doubt very much that it will be bested in this regard. Find out why below the fold, but beware of spoilers if you haven’t played it yet, and plan to. I will be discussing how this very important game’s themes resonate all the way to its ending.
Ian here—
For years, I didn’t know what to do with Anna Anthropy’s Realistic Female First-Person Shooter (2012).
It is, shall we say, a “minor Anthropy.” It’s not one of the games that she includes on her itch.io storefront. If you want to play it, you have to head over here. (It is, unfortunately, Windows-only, although Mac users should feel free to look at this video of the game in action on YouTube).
But despite its somewhat tossed-off status, it is a game I was serious considering including in my article on fumblecore games. There was just one problem: it seemed completely incompatible with my argument. So I swept it under the rug, but kept it in my memory, blinking in the back of my brain, challenging me, keeping me honest.
I think I’ve finally figured out what I want to say about it now, and it’s mostly thanks to the students in my “Frames, Claims, and Videogames” class. I didn’t even teach Realistic Female First-Person Shooter in that class. Instead, my thoughts began crystalizing as students reacted of Alyson Macdonald’s Twine game Female Experience Simulator (2013), one of the most contentious games we played in the course.
Ian here—
Wow, okay, so, deep breaths. Let me repeat the mantra: “I critique, because I care.”
We Are Chicago (Culture Shock Games, 2017) arrives at very particular time for me. I just finished up with a panel on Chicago game cultures for SCMS 2017, and I have also been working through some ideas on the limits of the concept of “empathy” in games.
Given these two facts, there’s no real way I could get away with not playing it, and not taking a couple of moments to try an translate my thoughts on it into some coherent writing. This task, though, is one that needs to be approached with care. In order to be fair, an acknowledgment of the commendable intentions of Culture Shock games must be balanced with a corresponding acknowledgment of the very real shortcomings of their final product. It does nobody any good to mince words, and to pretend that intention can overcome execution.
So, buckle up. I have five questions to ask about We Are Chicago.
Ian here—
What follows is an invited talk I gave last month at a university that will remain unnamed. Here, things get a little awkward: the talk in question was actually a job talk, and I am technically still waiting to hear back on the school’s final decision. Hence, the location of the talk remaining unnamed.
Originally, I was going to wait to post this talk until I had heard official word back on the status of the position (whether that news was good, or bad). I’ve decided to post it now, though, mostly because I attended an excellent panel at SCMS 2017, “Video Games and Queer Affect,” chaired by Bonnie Ruberg (an old compatriot of mine from Bard College) with papers by Whitney Pow (with whom I co-organized this conference) and Diana Pozo. Bonnie and Diana’s papers, especially, shared considerable overlap with the trends outlined here, down to including some of same case studies. It seems, then, that this material is very “of the moment,” and I didn’t want to let the opportunity to make is publicly available pass. I’m planning on moving this material forward into an article in the coming months. It’s exciting to be part of a community of peers who finds it as interesting as I do, and I’m definitely going to alter the direction and focus of aspects of this piece in response to the work I saw happening on the panel.
Intermittent Mechanism 