Gentle Gamers
Gentle Gamers started life as a physical list of game recommendations; I had a friend who wanted to get into video games, but felt overwhelmed by the culture surrounding them. So, she asked me to make a list of my favorite games, which tended to be "gentler" than mainstream recommendations.
When I learned that my list was being passed around from acquaintance to acquaintance, I created gentlegamers.com to serve as a review and critique site, dedicated to exploring the artistry and effect of video games to those who have difficulty finding inroads to the medium.
ALL IN THE TIMING: QUEERS IN LOVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD & WHERE THE GOATS ARE
A look at two games that incorporate time into game design in a non-antagonistic role.
Excerpt:
I doubt it's solely a modern metric, but there definitely seems to be a trend in contemporary art criticism: the exultation of "getting lost" in artwork.
Living in the era of binge-watching television means that television must (natch) be binge-watch-able. Good books are "page-turners." I've lost count of the number of times I've heard theatre-goers lament the show that feels too long. ("Two intermissions? Who needs two intermissions??")
This metric is equally applied to video games, and I know it well. Whether it be my childhood obsessions with The Sims and Age of Empires, or my more recent dives into Dead Cells or Stardew Valley, it's really no challenge for me to log dozens (if not hundreds) of hours in the world of an especially immersive video game. Indeed, all the games I listed have been lauded as "easy to get lost in." It is seen as a positive virtue when you are so enrapt in a game that you forget how long you've been playing it.
However, this metric assumes an antagonistic relationship between art and time. By the above criterion, art is good when it surpasses the oppressive weight of time, allowing people to feel -- however fleetingly -- that they are removed from time's binds and limitations.
PAPERS, PLEASE
A review of Papers, Please through the lens of modern protest culture.
Excerpt:
Right here, in 2017, I find myself in a world where the US government passes down orders and expects folks to execute those orders exactly as they are stated. It's always been that way, but it somehow feels more that way these days. A quick Google search reveals that folks are noticing the connection between Papers, Please and current news stories about immigration.
More than anything I've played, Papers, Please made me truly a little disgusted with myself. Sure: the game provided no other out (unlike the world outside my computer), but it was a little reminder of the times I've stayed silent or followed the rules to keep myself "safe."
I think it's easy to think about "what we need to stand up to" as a clear, definable thing. I think it's even easier to think that there will be one moment when it's clear that we need to fight back. We forget that the horror lies in the mundanity of evil. We can be the perpetrators of great harm and hardship not because we believe in those things, but because of the boring, rote, and (again) mundane system that we find ourselves in.
VIDEO GAME CINEMATOGRAPHY
Why do first-person walking simulators lean so heavily into horror tropes, even when there's nothing scary about their story?
Excerpt:
Playing a video game in the first person is like looking at a flat screen that only displays what's immediately ahead of you. It completely removed the player's sense of peripheral vision. In our everyday lives, peripheral vision is integral for allowing us to figure out how we can interact with a space. We use our peripheral vision to be on the lookout for danger. There's even some theory that wide-eyed expressions of fear are ways that our body gets more peripheral visual information to better ascertain possible threats. Lacking this central aspect of how we explore the world, our brains go into a panic.
So, even though walking simulators use the first person to make the player better empathize with the main character, they are unable to transcend the limitations of the genre as it currently exists: to play a game in the first person cannot accurately capture the true first-person experience of the world, because it cannot cannot replicate our peripheral vision.
First-person games put us into a character who essentially has a sort of tunnel-vision. It doesn't help that we most commonly experience tunnel-vision when we're hyped up on adrenaline due to fear impulses. First-person in video games makes us on-edge on a deeper level.
Rather than push against this instinctive response, games like Gone Home, Firewatch, and What Remains of Edith Finch lean into that fear, either on purpose or completely by accident, using that deep feeling to elevate their stories. We expect something terrifying to happen and, when it doesn't, the game prods the player, asking, "C'mon. What did you think would happen?"
UN PUEBLO DE NADA
Using Kentucky Route Zero's interstitial game, Un Pueblo De Nada, as an example of "ghosts in the machine."
Excerpt:
I remember a book that I had on my bedroom shelf: The Way Things Work. In it, a cartoon mammoth explained the inner workings of objects in our modern life. It connected simple mechanics to items like televisions and washing machines in an effort to de-mystify the inner workings of these items. (The book has apparently since been updated for the digital era.) As a child, even with this book, the items it described still felt a little magical. Sure, The Way Things Work showed me what the insides of a television looked like, but it didn't describe everything. And so what it didn't describe must be a miracle.
It's no wonder that the American Spiritualist movement of the 19th century (which happened to coincide with the tail-end of the industrial revolution) utilized newer technology of the time to fill their stories with ghosts. Spirit photography and spirit trumpets (large horns, like that of a phonograph, said to magnify the voices of ghosts) were both utilized by mediums to convince others that ghosts were present. This trend continued as technology advanced: people look for ghosts in radio and television static; Ringu/The Ring played with the idea of haunted VHS tapes; and Twitter user Adam Ellis has been exploring what a ghost story via Twitter looks like with his Dear David thread.
Kentucky Route Zero examines our reverence and anxiety around items that increasingly fill our homes and lives. We're surrounded by little boxes that, no matter how many times we ask "Remind me how this works?" we still never completely seem to understand. We think of radio, television, and internet signals passing through the air (or through us) and it seems natural to wonder about what these signals pick up on their way from point A to point B. It's like being in elementary school again: overloaded with information and knowing that we're surrounded by so much that we don't understand.
And now, just a good old-fashioned list:
Games to play when you're sick in body and/or soul
I live with children (who are not related to me by blood, but who are the children of my housemates). This means that, as an adult, I am occasionally suddenly thrown back into the world of Kid Sickness. In fact, my whole block is full of children, and they all get sick, one by one. I can see the sickness careening down the block before it gets to me. Like fast zombies. But in slow motion?
All this is to say that I've been under the weather recently.
Maybe you, too, are feeling like you could use a little oasis of comfort or moment of self-care. Or, maybe you're too fever-addled to interact with the real world or construct actual human sentences, and it would be nice to spend time doing something more abstract. Or maybe you've just been lying in bed, refreshing the NYTimes homepage on a near-constant basis for the past 36 hours, and you just need a moment Away. From All That.
