Let’s talk, for a minute, about journalistic ethics. They’ve been evoked a lot this week, mostly in order to justify a lot of bloviating, misogynistic nonsense. But I’d like to seriously talk about ethics for a minute, how they’re being used and what they can mean for both games reporting and criticism. I want to talk about Kotaku’s latest policy.
The internet, we’ve all been told, is this mass democratizing conversation within a big virtual park. Anyone is allowed to participate (sort of)!
We are told it’s an intangible space where people can safely share their opinions, innermost thoughts, and pornography (again, sort of). The internet is a place where people can congregate, form communities, escape the burdens of everyday life, and most of all, be heard. Continue reading
[TW: This piece contains discussion of sexual abuse, trauma, misogyny, transphobia and racism]
“A day in the FBI was never like this before! You are Special Agent Dale Cooper and you’ve found yourself trapped inside the Black Lodge, a surreal and dangerous place between worlds. Try as you might, you can’t seem to find anything but the same room and hallway no matter which way you turn. Worse yet, your doppleganger is in hot pursuit! You have no choice but to keep running through the room and hallway (or is it more than one?) and above all else, don’t let your doppleganger touch you!”
I finally adopted the cat in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. It took twenty Kim coins—one of three purchasable in-game currencies that I can use to buy clothing, accessories, furniture or goodwill from NPCs.
I didn’t actually pay real money for these coins, the primary reason being that I’m broke, and the game’s alternate coin-gathering method of downloading sponsored apps wasn’t being very responsive. So I worked for those coins. I tapped my way through photoshoots and mastered the catwalk. Whenever I ran out of energy—a blue lightning bolt constituting probably the most important in-game currency, since without it you can’t do much—I would fly coast to coast scrounging for energy in bushes, behind fire hydrants, et cetera. All the while I’m on the A-list, mired in a celebrity feud, and jetsetting around completing modeling contracts. Continue reading
In this episode, Zolani Stewart and I discuss the hyperaccelerated culture of games writing, the preoccupation with “newness” or immediacy in videogames as a capitalist myth, the importance of historical and cross-comparative study, and how to talk about games like Mountain in that context. “Context” must be an important concept here because I’m pretty sure I say it like 900 times.
I’ve found that lately, when I’m bored or stoned or anxious, I end up pouring a lot of my energy into Patatap. It’s a music creation tool that works in-browser and mixes clean, geometric visuals with sound samples that are each mapped to keys on your keyboard for you to play around with. (I’ve heard it works well on a tablet but I don’t own one). You can make a clever, aurally and visually interesting beat. Or you can hit all the keys at once like hammering down on a piano, just to see the shapes and colours converge in cacophony. Continue reading
Black Square on Whitespace is a Twine piece inspired by Kazimir Malevich’s painting, “Black Square,” featured in my previous post. There are no links, but hovering your cursor over the text will make it disappear.
Many thanks to Leon Arnott for providing the macros I used and for his superhero-like willingness to answer my annoying questions.
(TW: Discussion of sexual harassment, domestic abuse) Continue reading
This is not Phil Fish giving the finger next to CliffyB;
This is not the tale of a man hunting the white whale.
This is not your Indie Success Story.
He stands in front of the Hype Machine as it pulses and whirs. He cracks open his energy drink, the can clammy from condensation. The sweat from his fingers glides across the aluminum lip. If it weren’t for the whirring, gurgling buzz of the Machine, the transfixed crowd would hear him gulping between sighs of refreshed “Ah!’s”.
The Machine would open soon. Continue reading
Nicholas and Jerrod Galanin form the contemporary art duo, Leonard Getinthecar. From Sitka, Alaska, the two produce works meditating on indigenous identity in the modern world and the narrative construction of history from their perspectives as part ethnically Tlingit, part Aleut, but also “American.”