This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics ranging from the Tomodachi Life backlash to whether Solitaire can be considered the original roguelike. In the Creases On his personal blog, Ridiculous Fishing and Luftrausers developer Rami Ismail breaks down by numbers just how very biased toward English computer technology and the Internet actually is, and the implications this has on everything from communications to inclusivity in game development. On Kill Screen, David Wolinsky wonders why there has been so little discussion of Letters from Incarcerated Gamers, a zine produced by Alejandro Quan-Madrid and Mare Odomo containing the unanswered letters of prison inmates to game magazine. More broadly, Wolinsky explores why incarcerated players are not something we tend to talk about. At PCGamer, Emanuel Maiberg ventures into the sneaky, sordid, lucrative arms race of game cheats. And at Electro Bureau, Tony Sarkees gives us this stellar analysis of Square's Legend of Mana, in particular one subplot of the game which Sarkees saw as mirroring his own experience as a gay youth:
[The Jumi people] are whispered of in dark corners, and some claim to even have seen them, but these reports are viewed with a skeptical eye. Many of the worlds' citizens derogatorily refer to them as "dirt" due to their more mineral qualities. [...] It is revealed that not only are the Jumi living among us, but they are actively searching for each other to reassemble their fallen race. The Jumi have been searching the world in pairs for many years, balancing their need to blend in with their need to connect with others like them. I could drag the comparison out, but it's clear: the Jumi are closeted. But what drives a need for such furtiveness? In Legend of Mana, genocide.
Tomodachi Waifu On the subject of queer themes, Nintendo's North American PR touched a raw nerve this week when it told the Associated Press it would not be including same-sex marriage into its upcoming life sim/toy Tomodachi Life, implying that to do so would be a "form of social commentary." In an opinion piece at Polygon, Samantha Allen blasted Nintendo's remarks as "hatred, pure and simple." Chuck Jordan of Spectre Collie feels differently, saying:
[F]rankly, I think calling it "hatred" is lazy. [...] Nintendo's initial statement comes from a place of more subtle and systematic prejudice. It's like the aunt who insists on calling your boyfriend your "friend," and who keeps trying to set you up with a nice girl.
At Gamasutra, my former colleague Christian Nutt shares his hands-on impressions of the game, obtained via his husband. He notes that to treat the game as a 'sim' is a mistake:
Tomodachi Life just isn't intended the same way [as Animal Crossing]. It does not have that possibility space. You can't even exert much control over it. To see it in action it is to immediately understand that. At the same time, no matter how shallow, we expect our pop culture to reflect reality as it is, not as its producers envision it. Demanding that it does has long been a tool for social change. [...] Funnily enough, what bothered me was not so much is the omission of same sex marriage, but the enforcement of heterosexual marriage: The idea that whether I wanted it to or not, my Mii -- an image that has represented me since the Wii launched eight years ago -- would marry a woman. That, in some way, seemed to vacate my identity. Not just that: For a second, it almost seemed like it would eradicate my marriage, much more thoroughly than the impossibility of getting married to a male character would.
Halls of Learning At Play the Past, Angela R Cox wraps up her four-part series on teaching games as classroom texts. And at Quarter to Three, the one and only Tom Chick lauds Imperialism II as a critical comment on empire and exploitation. At The Escapist, Robert Rath breaks apart Vice and Activision's new Call of Duty "documentary" on private military contractors (PMCs), which he argues distorts political and economic facts to suit the upcoming game's fiction:
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