This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Zolani Stewart and Cameron Kunzelman on topics including intersections of race and games and the recent "Left Behind" chapter of The Last of Us. Black Games Criticism Last month, Isaiah Taylor interviewed voice actress Amanda Strawn for her role as Letitia in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This is amazing! Why did this piece get no traction? Next up, TJ Thomas spoke at IndieCade East about creating a diverse and flourishing indie game scene. As a critic, I have much respect for TJ's work, but I'm also deeply appreciative of how he challenges the white capitalist hegemonies of indie culture. Listen to him:
really, “indie” has turned into nothing more than a buzzword, and it’s the way we perceive videogames and our community and shun truly interesting works that have turned our identities into something that needs to be marketable and agreeable, which, as you can imagine, naturally excludes minorities 95% of the time. we stifle our own creativity, we stifle the creativity of our peers, and we stifle the development of our culture as a whole. we cultivate a culture where the established continue to reign above all, and the smaller continue to be shunned and silenced.
I now want to point to streamer and Voiceover actress Tunesha Davis, who has been streaming to raise money for her friend Albert's kidney surgery. Davis' streams are great, they're super energetic and fun to watch, and it’s a good example of critical engagement with games that goes beyond writing. Meanwhile, Nathan Blades on OnePixel makes a sound argument for a queer escapism, an exploration of agency that diverges from white hetero-patriarchal dispositions. Jordan Minor tells us his experience tutoring a camp of mostly young black girls to make videogames. And earlier this month, Austin Walker discussed the nature of permanence in EVE Online, arguing against the game's decision to mark a ship graveyard on one of its largest battles. Now, let us now go to SheAttack.com. SheAttack is a games site completely written by women, with a large collection of black writers. This should be enough to warrant your attention, but I want to point to two pieces from here. One is a piece by Emerald who goes over her thoughts on the Nintendo Girls Club, and the second is Krystal Carr, who took the time to highlight 12 black videogame characters and explain her interest in them. And lastly, Dr. Kishonna L Gray has written extensively on the experience of being a minority gamer on Xbox Live. You can download her paper on the racism and stigmatization faced by minority gamers here. Games Are History Play the Past recently ran a week on the Assassin's Creed franchise, which I encourage you to check out, but I want to highlight this post on the women of the franchise by David R. Hussey. By the same author at the same website, there's a very readable "Microhistory of Eve Online." Tracey Lien writes a much more comprehensive and lengthy article on the same game, taking us for an oral and systemic historical analysis of EVE in "The Most Thrilling and Boring Game in the Universe." Switching into a different mode of history, Jeremy Parish gives us "7 Reasons Super Metroid Was A SNES Masterpiece," which doesn't win any awards in the article title category, but manages to pay off anyway. Emma Vossen does a bit of personal history, thinking through how her modes of interaction with female characters as a child has formed her. She writes:
I think it took me a lot longer to catch on that games were not “for me” because I lived in an incredibly small town that was relatively cut off from the world. When I was young we had very few television channels and the ones we did have wouldn’t have had video game advertisements or anything like that. Furthermore we didn’t have a Walmart until I was older, and we didn’t have a games store ever. My parents bought all our games for my brother and I, so we had an idea of what we wanted, but didn’t really understand what the “market” itself was like. I don’t think we really realized we had options, and we didn’t always know what was out there until we got the internet. I think the main reason I didn’t realize that games weren’t really for me was because I had the benefit of living with a male sibling who liked both sharing, and more importantly, playing games together.
Podcasts! You Listen To Them! GI Janes recorded an inaugural podcast where they talk about Gone Home. Moving Pixels Podcast discussed the endings of Grand Theft Auto V. Thinking About Specific Games in Detail, or T.A.S.G.I.D. Paul Haine writes about strange envy, or "aspirational living" in Animal Crossing. Patrick Lindsey wonders about the modes of death living in Far Cry 2. A sample:
The game had already long since established its yawningly casual acceptan
