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smawj's review against another edition
4.0
A very well written and compelling anothology of interesting thinkers and writers providing important perspectives that routinely get shouted down or shut out of mainstream discussion. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in video games, cultural criticism or feminism.
kyledhebert's review against another edition
3.0
Over all a good collection. Some of my favorites are The Natural: The Parameters of Afro by Evan Narcisse and Ludus Interruptus: Video Games and Sexuality by merrit kopas.
amber_lea84's review against another edition
2.0
I have so much to say about this book, I don't even know where to begin.
The intro is awful. It's like, "Hey guys, we just want to fix your games because they're racist/ sexist/ homephobic/ transphobic, why are you mad?" when a much better intro would have been, "Hey guys, we see you love games, and we'd like to build a gaming community around diversity, inclusiveness, and new types of games we've never seen before."
The latter is a good message and a respectable goal. Great! Sign me up! But the first message often gets treated as if it's the second by people who aren't listening to themselves, then when people get mad the reason for their anger gets confused.
Like bruh, the gaming community isn't attacking you, you're attacking the gaming community.
YEAH I SAID IT. But hang on, hear me out. Or don't. It's your life.
So, because it's relevant: I have lady parts and I am a gamer, and I was once told that "video games aren't for girls" by a seven year old jerk who didn't want to let me have a turn playing Mortal Kombat. Other than that, no one has ever expressed to me that they give a single shit about my gender. Do I believe that women receive gender-specific harassment? Yes. I think there are crappy things that people only say to women. Do I think women get harassed just BECAUSE they are women? Not unless they get unlucky and run into a bitter husk of a human being who has it out for women. Do I think these bitter husks make up a vast majority of gamers? NO.
Now, do I think female game critics get dump trucks full of harassment? YES. There's no doubt in my mind. Years ago I made a post about how I agreed with something Anita Sarkeesian said and a hate mob appeared and yelled at me. Which at the time made me think man, maybe being a woman on the internet really IS dangerous and scary.
In retrospect I now realize what that mob was so angry about, and in retrospect I can see they weren't a bunch of MRAs, Incels, MGTOWs and whatever other fringe group. Most of them were actually trying to talk to me but I was so terrified that I wasn't listening. (I was in the mind set of, "This is it, this is the angry hate mob I've been warned about. They found me." Turns out they literally didn't care about anything I was doing, they just wanted to talk/yell about Anita.)
So okay, I'm someone who has always been annoyed by hypersexualized women in video games because it's so distracting and gross. And I'm all for attractive female characters, trust me. I like a good looking lady as much as the next guy. But sometimes it grotesque. And not in a fun Silent Hill type of way. If a game has a girl with crazy egg boobs and I feel like at any moment I'm about to get a glimpse of her asshole, I say no thank you to that game and move on.
I think the reason some game critics inspire hate mobs is because they act as if a majority of games are unforgivably sexist/racist/etc. I think almost anyone would understand why I'm not interested in games with women who are grotesquely sexy. I can't imagine anyone would fault me for not wanting to play them. BUT if I claimed that games in general are sexist and I don't feel comfortable playing any of them, I'm going to sound ridiculous to anyone who's played more than two games in their life.
But a lot of game critics act as if the extreme cases are the norm. One essay in here claims that women in games are more sexualized now than ever, giving two examples of female characters who are sexier now than they were originally. The claim that women are more sexualized than ever before is absurd. Yes, all female characters are sexier now than they were when they were 8-bit, but the idea that 2015 was the height of sexy female game characters is...come on. Look at Laura Croft. She went from grossly weird sex symbol to normal looking person. This shit goes both ways. I would say if anything, they're as sexy as they've always been, but to me things seem much, much better.
But hey, if we tell a game developer we don't want them to make a hypersexualized character and they do it anyway...that's fine! They're allowed to say no to our business if they'd rather appeal to whoever in is into that shit.
The thing is I have a really hard time believing that gamer culture is filled with people who hate diversity and that most gamers don't want people out there making more inclusive games. Like I personally hate "interactive stories" but do I want to stop you from making and enjoying them? No. Now, if you told me that you want to make every game an "interactive story"...I'm going to get hostile, real fast, because no. gtfo.
But that's how game critics talk. They have a problem with games people love and they tell them they're wrong to like them and they say those games shouldn't exist. That's why people get angry. It's not like hey, we want to get in here and make the types of games we want to see." It's "we have a problem with your games and we want to put a stop to them."
There was recently a controversy where a developer got yelled at because all of his characters are white (and I think dudes) and he refused to change them. Why is that a problem? In my mind, you shouldn't tell a developer what to make any more than you should tell an artist what to paint. But that's what's happening. And that is the problem.
Now if someone was dictating that all his characters had to be white and diversity isn't allowed, yeah, that is racist. That is a problem worth railing against. If you go to make a game with more diversity because you're sick of seeing so many white male characters and you get backlash for simply making that game, that is a problem. If every character in every video game was white...that's a problem. People should be free to make and play the games they want.
But if you need every game to be a game you like that has what you want, you're wrong. Grow up.
Like here's an example that has nothing to do with sexism, racism, or any other ism: There's an essay in here about post-apocalyptic games, and the author arrogantly assumes that if you like them it's because you're a narcissist who thinks you'd outlive everyone else in a nuclear apocalypse and you're playing out your narcissistic fantasy. And he makes the argument that post-apocalyptic games are a problem and he basically says that they should punish you for winning and if they don't they're encouraging a mentality that's bad for society.
Okay. I like post-apocalyptic games. A LOT. You know why? Because I would definitely die first. I like post-apocalyptic games because I get to cheat death. I am an extremely high risk for a particularly deadly kind of cancer, and I really enjoy imagining I would survive against very bad odds even though I don't think I would. I think we're all afraid we're going to die before we're ready, and we all like to imagine what it would be like to survive when we shouldn't. It's thrilling to be like "Holy shit, everything is radioactive and I know I should be dead, but here I am, kicking ass and taking names." In a video game I can take a light jog carrying 200 pounds of guns and amour through a radioactive wasteland, and in real life I have to go to the doctor every six months to get a biopsy to make sure I'm going to see my next birthday. ALSO, in game I'm the good guy, helping strangers rebuild their lives and making the wasteland a better place. If you're going to criticize me for something, make fun of me for being a way better person in a video game than I am in real life.
This author doesn't know me or my motivations. But he thinks he does. He also thinks he has special insight that the rest of us don't have. You want to know what that insight is? It's that nuclear war is dangerous and not a good thing.
Yes. Thank you. I feel so enlightened.
Seriously, he keeps making the point that gamers these days don't know anything about the threat of nuclear war because the cold war is over. As if North Korea isn't a thing. What is the alternate reality this guy lives in where nuclear war isn't a threat anymore? Also, why does he think he's the only gamer that remembers the cold war? The average gamer is 30.
BUT THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. Anita Sarkeesian literally says, "We don't want to take your toys away." and the very next essay literally says, "They have astutely and correctly identified what is going on here. Their toys are being taken away, their tree houses are being boarded up."
These are people who think they're victims, but they're flinging wild accusations and acting like total assholes, and they can't see it. They just think they're being attacked because of sexism, racism, and homophobia. And not because of their garbage opinions and attitudes.
Do I think there was/is sexism in gaming? Yes. I think it used to be really bad. I think we've made a lot of progress. I think there's more that could be done, but I think we've come along way and that's exciting. People are listening to what gamers want! I don't understand why we have to be bitter that straight white guys get to have their games too. It's not like all they do is play games where they commit hate crimes.
Anyway, like three of the essays in here are okay. I'd give them at least three stars, so that's why I didn't give this whole book one star. I also picked up the game Deadly Premonition because of this book, and it made me want to see Blazing Saddles because one essay mentioned that they wanted to see a game handle race the way Blazing Saddles does.
There's one essay in here from the point of view of a Arab man who plays American Shooters and that's an interesting perspective. And while Anita Sarkeesian's opinions have since become like nails on a chalkboard to me, I actually enjoy reading things by Zoe Quinn. Obviously it's annoying that she pretends that everyone hates her because she's a lady game developer and not because her ex told everyone she's a monster, but she's a good writer and she does a good job of stating her opinions without continually insulting everyone which, considering her peers, is amazing. I can't help but feel impressed by her diplomacy.
The intro is awful. It's like, "Hey guys, we just want to fix your games because they're racist/ sexist/ homephobic/ transphobic, why are you mad?" when a much better intro would have been, "Hey guys, we see you love games, and we'd like to build a gaming community around diversity, inclusiveness, and new types of games we've never seen before."
The latter is a good message and a respectable goal. Great! Sign me up! But the first message often gets treated as if it's the second by people who aren't listening to themselves, then when people get mad the reason for their anger gets confused.
Like bruh, the gaming community isn't attacking you, you're attacking the gaming community.
YEAH I SAID IT. But hang on, hear me out. Or don't. It's your life.
So, because it's relevant: I have lady parts and I am a gamer, and I was once told that "video games aren't for girls" by a seven year old jerk who didn't want to let me have a turn playing Mortal Kombat. Other than that, no one has ever expressed to me that they give a single shit about my gender. Do I believe that women receive gender-specific harassment? Yes. I think there are crappy things that people only say to women. Do I think women get harassed just BECAUSE they are women? Not unless they get unlucky and run into a bitter husk of a human being who has it out for women. Do I think these bitter husks make up a vast majority of gamers? NO.
Now, do I think female game critics get dump trucks full of harassment? YES. There's no doubt in my mind. Years ago I made a post about how I agreed with something Anita Sarkeesian said and a hate mob appeared and yelled at me. Which at the time made me think man, maybe being a woman on the internet really IS dangerous and scary.
In retrospect I now realize what that mob was so angry about, and in retrospect I can see they weren't a bunch of MRAs, Incels, MGTOWs and whatever other fringe group. Most of them were actually trying to talk to me but I was so terrified that I wasn't listening. (I was in the mind set of, "This is it, this is the angry hate mob I've been warned about. They found me." Turns out they literally didn't care about anything I was doing, they just wanted to talk/yell about Anita.)
So okay, I'm someone who has always been annoyed by hypersexualized women in video games because it's so distracting and gross. And I'm all for attractive female characters, trust me. I like a good looking lady as much as the next guy. But sometimes it grotesque. And not in a fun Silent Hill type of way. If a game has a girl with crazy egg boobs and I feel like at any moment I'm about to get a glimpse of her asshole, I say no thank you to that game and move on.
I think the reason some game critics inspire hate mobs is because they act as if a majority of games are unforgivably sexist/racist/etc. I think almost anyone would understand why I'm not interested in games with women who are grotesquely sexy. I can't imagine anyone would fault me for not wanting to play them. BUT if I claimed that games in general are sexist and I don't feel comfortable playing any of them, I'm going to sound ridiculous to anyone who's played more than two games in their life.
But a lot of game critics act as if the extreme cases are the norm. One essay in here claims that women in games are more sexualized now than ever, giving two examples of female characters who are sexier now than they were originally. The claim that women are more sexualized than ever before is absurd. Yes, all female characters are sexier now than they were when they were 8-bit, but the idea that 2015 was the height of sexy female game characters is...come on. Look at Laura Croft. She went from grossly weird sex symbol to normal looking person. This shit goes both ways. I would say if anything, they're as sexy as they've always been, but to me things seem much, much better.
But hey, if we tell a game developer we don't want them to make a hypersexualized character and they do it anyway...that's fine! They're allowed to say no to our business if they'd rather appeal to whoever in is into that shit.
The thing is I have a really hard time believing that gamer culture is filled with people who hate diversity and that most gamers don't want people out there making more inclusive games. Like I personally hate "interactive stories" but do I want to stop you from making and enjoying them? No. Now, if you told me that you want to make every game an "interactive story"...I'm going to get hostile, real fast, because no. gtfo.
But that's how game critics talk. They have a problem with games people love and they tell them they're wrong to like them and they say those games shouldn't exist. That's why people get angry. It's not like hey, we want to get in here and make the types of games we want to see." It's "we have a problem with your games and we want to put a stop to them."
There was recently a controversy where a developer got yelled at because all of his characters are white (and I think dudes) and he refused to change them. Why is that a problem? In my mind, you shouldn't tell a developer what to make any more than you should tell an artist what to paint. But that's what's happening. And that is the problem.
Now if someone was dictating that all his characters had to be white and diversity isn't allowed, yeah, that is racist. That is a problem worth railing against. If you go to make a game with more diversity because you're sick of seeing so many white male characters and you get backlash for simply making that game, that is a problem. If every character in every video game was white...that's a problem. People should be free to make and play the games they want.
But if you need every game to be a game you like that has what you want, you're wrong. Grow up.
Like here's an example that has nothing to do with sexism, racism, or any other ism: There's an essay in here about post-apocalyptic games, and the author arrogantly assumes that if you like them it's because you're a narcissist who thinks you'd outlive everyone else in a nuclear apocalypse and you're playing out your narcissistic fantasy. And he makes the argument that post-apocalyptic games are a problem and he basically says that they should punish you for winning and if they don't they're encouraging a mentality that's bad for society.
Okay. I like post-apocalyptic games. A LOT. You know why? Because I would definitely die first. I like post-apocalyptic games because I get to cheat death. I am an extremely high risk for a particularly deadly kind of cancer, and I really enjoy imagining I would survive against very bad odds even though I don't think I would. I think we're all afraid we're going to die before we're ready, and we all like to imagine what it would be like to survive when we shouldn't. It's thrilling to be like "Holy shit, everything is radioactive and I know I should be dead, but here I am, kicking ass and taking names." In a video game I can take a light jog carrying 200 pounds of guns and amour through a radioactive wasteland, and in real life I have to go to the doctor every six months to get a biopsy to make sure I'm going to see my next birthday. ALSO, in game I'm the good guy, helping strangers rebuild their lives and making the wasteland a better place. If you're going to criticize me for something, make fun of me for being a way better person in a video game than I am in real life.
This author doesn't know me or my motivations. But he thinks he does. He also thinks he has special insight that the rest of us don't have. You want to know what that insight is? It's that nuclear war is dangerous and not a good thing.
Yes. Thank you. I feel so enlightened.
Seriously, he keeps making the point that gamers these days don't know anything about the threat of nuclear war because the cold war is over. As if North Korea isn't a thing. What is the alternate reality this guy lives in where nuclear war isn't a threat anymore? Also, why does he think he's the only gamer that remembers the cold war? The average gamer is 30.
BUT THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. Anita Sarkeesian literally says, "We don't want to take your toys away." and the very next essay literally says, "They have astutely and correctly identified what is going on here. Their toys are being taken away, their tree houses are being boarded up."
These are people who think they're victims, but they're flinging wild accusations and acting like total assholes, and they can't see it. They just think they're being attacked because of sexism, racism, and homophobia. And not because of their garbage opinions and attitudes.
Do I think there was/is sexism in gaming? Yes. I think it used to be really bad. I think we've made a lot of progress. I think there's more that could be done, but I think we've come along way and that's exciting. People are listening to what gamers want! I don't understand why we have to be bitter that straight white guys get to have their games too. It's not like all they do is play games where they commit hate crimes.
Anyway, like three of the essays in here are okay. I'd give them at least three stars, so that's why I didn't give this whole book one star. I also picked up the game Deadly Premonition because of this book, and it made me want to see Blazing Saddles because one essay mentioned that they wanted to see a game handle race the way Blazing Saddles does.
There's one essay in here from the point of view of a Arab man who plays American Shooters and that's an interesting perspective. And while Anita Sarkeesian's opinions have since become like nails on a chalkboard to me, I actually enjoy reading things by Zoe Quinn. Obviously it's annoying that she pretends that everyone hates her because she's a lady game developer and not because her ex told everyone she's a monster, but she's a good writer and she does a good job of stating her opinions without continually insulting everyone which, considering her peers, is amazing. I can't help but feel impressed by her diplomacy.
tyberius's review against another edition
This is a great primer for those interested in what video games can mean to us culturally. The anthology is well curated, with essays covering violence, religion, and sexuality. What does it feel like to be a black man whose favorite video game can't take the time to make character creation tools that accurately depict your hairstyle, or feature protagonists that aren't either thugs or goofballs? How is the mindset of a large shooter-loving Arab game-playing population affected when their favorite Western franchises constantly feature bad guys that look like them? Is the way our representations of apocalypse in video games changed from the 80s to the 90s indicative of a larger shift in national mood or cultural zeitgeist?
My only quibble is that the collection can radically shift in tone and structure from essay to essay. The transition back and forth between raw emotional personal essay to dryer academic analysis can be jarring, and I would have preferred to read everything in one style or the other. Perhaps because games criticism as a field is still relatively young, at least in the realm of published, printed content, there is simply a lack of material out there to keep the style consistent throughout the collection.
My only quibble is that the collection can radically shift in tone and structure from essay to essay. The transition back and forth between raw emotional personal essay to dryer academic analysis can be jarring, and I would have preferred to read everything in one style or the other. Perhaps because games criticism as a field is still relatively young, at least in the realm of published, printed content, there is simply a lack of material out there to keep the style consistent throughout the collection.
nickfourtimes's review against another edition
5.0
1) "More than any other form of creative expression, video games are highly dependent on, and to a certain extent an offshoot of, advances in computing and digital technology. This means games have traditionally been engaged with and discussed as products of technology rather than products of culture, which is why most game criticism still tends to read a lot like a review of a mobile phone or a car. [...]
Video game production has historically been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, giving big-name publishers a virtual monopoly on production, sales, and marketing. As a result, the cultural identity of the 'gamer' was from an early stage largely appropriated and shaped by the dominant corporate interests of the industry. This created a consumption-centric culture with its own norms and value systems, clustered around a small number of brands and big-budget franchises while showing little concern for identities other than the prime demographic of the young, white, Western male." ---Daniel Goldberg & Linus Larsson, "Introduction"
2) "Everywhere, it seemed, we saw a puzzle, a mystery. Why was that bundle of twigs leaning against an old oak? Why did some stones glitter when you struck them, and others stank of gunpowder? Under this log, a salamander, and under that, a nest of beetles. There were loamy, unseen living things always scuttling just out of reach. We left notes and signs wherever we could get away with it, and it felt like important work. [...]
There were, there had to be, gorgeous infrastructures beyond what I could reach, just waiting for me to know the right words. The whole world was a blinking prompt, daring me, ENTER COMMAND." ---Leigh Alexander, "Advent"
3) "What excites me about being black is being connected to a history of resistance, innovation, and improvisation---a history extruded out from under the most inhumane physical, psychological, and systemic oppressions in human history. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is only trenchant, angry, and darkly funny because it rebelliously gives voice to an existence that defied all the forces that tried to suppress it. Of course, I don't have to live inside any of that understanding if I don't want to. I can take from it as I want or need. Canadian poet Dionne Brand once remarked that, 'To live in the Black diaspora is I think to live as a fiction---a creation of empires, & also self-creation."
Yes, the empires of the video game landscape---big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision---are making slow, stumbly tentative progress. But it's really the self-creation of black video game characters and universes that I hold out the most hope for." ---Evan Narcisse, "The Natural"
4) "You decide to cope with everything feeling too big and too serious the best way you know how: by being totally absurd.
You and your friend find an Angry Birds piggy bank and fill it with sequins because, let's face it, you're still a game designer and care about particle physics. You climb up to the roof of the theater where he works at two in the morning, throw the stuffed bird off the roof, and scream 'FUCK VIDEO GAMES!' into the night as a sacrifice to the gods of gaming for better luck. It's ridiculous. It's asinine. It's cathartic." ---Zoe Quinn, "A Game I Had to Make"
5) "Every game needs some kind of goal or endgame. In this one, women are kind of like the ball being tossed between competing men. Other times we're the point system. Still other times, we're the damsel waiting to be rescued and victoriously smooched by the gentleman hero. More often than not, we're the final boss in need of a strategic takedown, barring the way between the male player and his final triumph. [...] If you want to know what 'objectification' means, that's a good place to start.
Our game metaphor grows out of Anita's study of her own harassment and Katherine's sociological work on the wider phenomenon of harassment in gaming. Both of our analyses converge on one key point: harassment happens because the dehumanization it entails takes the shape of gaming itself, with all the suggestions of play and inconsequentiality therein. If it's just a game, then it's not real, and if it's not real then no one can get hurt and no harm is truly done. The corollary to this, of course, is that if people believe no one is really being hurt, then no one will be punished or held accountable for the harm." ---Anita Sarkeesian and Katherine Cross, "Your Humanity is in Another Castle"
6) "In a way that might be disturbing, I really liked that permanence, that ability to see my performance of Doom inscribed on the virtual space. I could walk back through the space and see where I blasted that imp or squished that zombie under a door. In more recent violent video games, like Hotline Miami, this gets even more detailed. [...] I don't think it is simply ordering these spaces that is so satisfying, but personalizing them with my performance." ---Cara Ellison & Brendan Keogh, "The Joy of Virtual Violence"
7) "We play games because games are stupid, like drawer pulls are stupid. Flappy Bird is a game that accepts that it is stupid. It offers us an example of what it might feel like to conclude that this is enough. That it's enough for games just to be crap in the universe, detritus that we encounter from time to time, and that we might encounter as detritus rather than as meaning. That we might stop to manipulate them without motive or reason, like we might turn a smooth rock in our palms before tossing it back into the big ocean, which devours it. For no matter how stupid it is to be a game, it is no less stupid to be a man who plays one." ---Ian Bogost, "The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird"
8) "Equally interesting is the post-apocalyptic landscape The Last of Us presents. In Fallout's post-nuclear worlds, bomb-ravaged decimation makes perfect sense, but The Last of Us imagines how nature might reclaim man-made cities. Instead of burned-out buildings and piles of rubble, a lush green overgrowth takes over.
This nature reclamation theme appears in a handful of recent pop culture outbreak narratives (in two films, Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys and M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening; the NBC show Revolution; and Margaret Atwood's splendid book The Year of the Flood) but it strikes a tone seldom seen in video games, which tend to rely on the dark, eerie mood of horror films. Without humanity, the world doesn't collapse---it just moves on. In this way, The Last of Us shuns the anthropocentrism apparent not just in zombie games, but in most first-person shooters." ---William Knoblauch, "Game Over?"
9) "It's a simple move, but it effectively shifts sex to being an everyday, normal, maybe even kind of boring thing that isn't the ultimate goal of your character but is just a part of their daily life. Later in the game, you might get in a car and sing along to the radio with a character you fucked earlier, or fight hordes of aliens alongside them. [...]
Sex here isn't a quest or minigame; it's not part of the goal structure of the game at all. It's true that Saint's Row doesn't depict sex mechanically---but it doesn't have to. And actually, by de-emphasizing sex as a goal and refusing to allow the player monogamous relationships, the game mirrors a queer politic of deprivileging romantic relationships and elevating friend relationships. In other words, this means trying to treat everyone we're close to in our lives with the same respect and tenderness that heteronormative culture tells us to reserve for our One True Love. In this sense, Saint's Row IV does more interesting work aroud sex than the games it's satirizing." ---merritt kopas, "Ludus Interruptus"
10) [Spoilers: Deadly Premonition]
"When this switch occurs, it is much more than a multiple personalities trope Fight Club-style---"It was me all along!"---No, when Zack understands who he really is---that he is Zach and that York is the fake with whom he has been conversing all this time---the game implicitly switches the places of the player and the played, the ruler and the ruled, the creator and the created. The personality that we believed to be 'us' was really 'him' all along; the alien of the story is, in fact, its protagonist. In story terms, this is really the moment of redemption for Morgan. It is the point where knowledge destroys ignorance, where the dichotomy between creator and created is finally inverted. He is himself the 'god of the game' that we, in all our vanity, believed ourselves to be." ---Ola Wikander, "The God in the Machine"
Video game production has historically been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, giving big-name publishers a virtual monopoly on production, sales, and marketing. As a result, the cultural identity of the 'gamer' was from an early stage largely appropriated and shaped by the dominant corporate interests of the industry. This created a consumption-centric culture with its own norms and value systems, clustered around a small number of brands and big-budget franchises while showing little concern for identities other than the prime demographic of the young, white, Western male." ---Daniel Goldberg & Linus Larsson, "Introduction"
2) "Everywhere, it seemed, we saw a puzzle, a mystery. Why was that bundle of twigs leaning against an old oak? Why did some stones glitter when you struck them, and others stank of gunpowder? Under this log, a salamander, and under that, a nest of beetles. There were loamy, unseen living things always scuttling just out of reach. We left notes and signs wherever we could get away with it, and it felt like important work. [...]
There were, there had to be, gorgeous infrastructures beyond what I could reach, just waiting for me to know the right words. The whole world was a blinking prompt, daring me, ENTER COMMAND." ---Leigh Alexander, "Advent"
3) "What excites me about being black is being connected to a history of resistance, innovation, and improvisation---a history extruded out from under the most inhumane physical, psychological, and systemic oppressions in human history. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is only trenchant, angry, and darkly funny because it rebelliously gives voice to an existence that defied all the forces that tried to suppress it. Of course, I don't have to live inside any of that understanding if I don't want to. I can take from it as I want or need. Canadian poet Dionne Brand once remarked that, 'To live in the Black diaspora is I think to live as a fiction---a creation of empires, & also self-creation."
Yes, the empires of the video game landscape---big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision---are making slow, stumbly tentative progress. But it's really the self-creation of black video game characters and universes that I hold out the most hope for." ---Evan Narcisse, "The Natural"
4) "You decide to cope with everything feeling too big and too serious the best way you know how: by being totally absurd.
You and your friend find an Angry Birds piggy bank and fill it with sequins because, let's face it, you're still a game designer and care about particle physics. You climb up to the roof of the theater where he works at two in the morning, throw the stuffed bird off the roof, and scream 'FUCK VIDEO GAMES!' into the night as a sacrifice to the gods of gaming for better luck. It's ridiculous. It's asinine. It's cathartic." ---Zoe Quinn, "A Game I Had to Make"
5) "Every game needs some kind of goal or endgame. In this one, women are kind of like the ball being tossed between competing men. Other times we're the point system. Still other times, we're the damsel waiting to be rescued and victoriously smooched by the gentleman hero. More often than not, we're the final boss in need of a strategic takedown, barring the way between the male player and his final triumph. [...] If you want to know what 'objectification' means, that's a good place to start.
Our game metaphor grows out of Anita's study of her own harassment and Katherine's sociological work on the wider phenomenon of harassment in gaming. Both of our analyses converge on one key point: harassment happens because the dehumanization it entails takes the shape of gaming itself, with all the suggestions of play and inconsequentiality therein. If it's just a game, then it's not real, and if it's not real then no one can get hurt and no harm is truly done. The corollary to this, of course, is that if people believe no one is really being hurt, then no one will be punished or held accountable for the harm." ---Anita Sarkeesian and Katherine Cross, "Your Humanity is in Another Castle"
6) "In a way that might be disturbing, I really liked that permanence, that ability to see my performance of Doom inscribed on the virtual space. I could walk back through the space and see where I blasted that imp or squished that zombie under a door. In more recent violent video games, like Hotline Miami, this gets even more detailed. [...] I don't think it is simply ordering these spaces that is so satisfying, but personalizing them with my performance." ---Cara Ellison & Brendan Keogh, "The Joy of Virtual Violence"
7) "We play games because games are stupid, like drawer pulls are stupid. Flappy Bird is a game that accepts that it is stupid. It offers us an example of what it might feel like to conclude that this is enough. That it's enough for games just to be crap in the universe, detritus that we encounter from time to time, and that we might encounter as detritus rather than as meaning. That we might stop to manipulate them without motive or reason, like we might turn a smooth rock in our palms before tossing it back into the big ocean, which devours it. For no matter how stupid it is to be a game, it is no less stupid to be a man who plays one." ---Ian Bogost, "The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird"
8) "Equally interesting is the post-apocalyptic landscape The Last of Us presents. In Fallout's post-nuclear worlds, bomb-ravaged decimation makes perfect sense, but The Last of Us imagines how nature might reclaim man-made cities. Instead of burned-out buildings and piles of rubble, a lush green overgrowth takes over.
This nature reclamation theme appears in a handful of recent pop culture outbreak narratives (in two films, Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys and M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening; the NBC show Revolution; and Margaret Atwood's splendid book The Year of the Flood) but it strikes a tone seldom seen in video games, which tend to rely on the dark, eerie mood of horror films. Without humanity, the world doesn't collapse---it just moves on. In this way, The Last of Us shuns the anthropocentrism apparent not just in zombie games, but in most first-person shooters." ---William Knoblauch, "Game Over?"
9) "It's a simple move, but it effectively shifts sex to being an everyday, normal, maybe even kind of boring thing that isn't the ultimate goal of your character but is just a part of their daily life. Later in the game, you might get in a car and sing along to the radio with a character you fucked earlier, or fight hordes of aliens alongside them. [...]
Sex here isn't a quest or minigame; it's not part of the goal structure of the game at all. It's true that Saint's Row doesn't depict sex mechanically---but it doesn't have to. And actually, by de-emphasizing sex as a goal and refusing to allow the player monogamous relationships, the game mirrors a queer politic of deprivileging romantic relationships and elevating friend relationships. In other words, this means trying to treat everyone we're close to in our lives with the same respect and tenderness that heteronormative culture tells us to reserve for our One True Love. In this sense, Saint's Row IV does more interesting work aroud sex than the games it's satirizing." ---merritt kopas, "Ludus Interruptus"
10) [Spoilers: Deadly Premonition]
"When this switch occurs, it is much more than a multiple personalities trope Fight Club-style---"It was me all along!"---No, when Zack understands who he really is---that he is Zach and that York is the fake with whom he has been conversing all this time---the game implicitly switches the places of the player and the played, the ruler and the ruled, the creator and the created. The personality that we believed to be 'us' was really 'him' all along; the alien of the story is, in fact, its protagonist. In story terms, this is really the moment of redemption for Morgan. It is the point where knowledge destroys ignorance, where the dichotomy between creator and created is finally inverted. He is himself the 'god of the game' that we, in all our vanity, believed ourselves to be." ---Ola Wikander, "The God in the Machine"
lojarive's review against another edition
5.0
Great selection of essays about different aspects of video game culture. There really is so much more than pointing and shooting, rescuing the princess from the ogre, or reaching the finish line without falling off the cliff. This series of essays by video game journalists, game developers, critics, etc. is a great introduction for video game beginners or just for those of us who have become intrigued about what's beyond "just playing" and the use of video games as art or social critique. Also, there are great recommendations for different types of games.