Gaming Under The Influence

Mike & Alex return to a style of video game they have no small measure of conflicted feelings about: open-world action-rpgs. Alex returns to Ghosts of Tsushima & Mike to Maneater to check out the DLC for both titles. Concludes with an explanation of the particular appeal of open-world progression styles: without the punctuation & demands of other games like Souls (with taxing combat) or JRPGs (with complex systems to manipulate), they convey grand gestures of worldbuilding.

Mike & Alex discuss the last great western video game genre: classical or western rpgs. If, as we have previously discussed, the rpg genre definitionally represents the conduct of intelligent life in fiction, the western rpg (in contradistiction to the deterministic jrpg) does so in-deterministically, affording the player political and social agency over the course of the game world

Mike & Alex discuss potential games to pursue amidst the great summer game drought of 2021. Touching on Final Fantasy X, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Biomutant etc.

We have come to this year’s ‘great summer game drought’. In the absence of any new releases captivating us, Mike & Alex delve back into their backlogs. Discussions range from the necessity of ‘sense of place’ in worldbuilding; the capacity of difficult games to transpose the player into the alterity of his ritual identity; the weird & wonderful world/art of Grime; Far Cry Primal as a masterful gesture of worldbuilding & the best Far Cry.

Mike & Alex discuss the vast discrepancy between Western journalistic reactions to recent scandals at Activision and the Chinese government’s reported disdain for the predatory style of games peddled by Tencent. While the West demands superficial “change” that would leave brutal fundamental structures in tact, the CPC appears to target the very economic bases of exploitative game design.

Alex also explains the over-gameyness of Skyward Sword: how the insertion of burdensome, arbitrary mechanics impedes player attunement with the concept of the game.

Lastly a few words on Grime, a fantastic and beautiful new Soulslike.

This week Mike & Alex return to the most basic element of a game - it's [self-justifying or autotelic] world, hopefully expressed in a gameplay loop that facilitates instead of inhibiting its clarity. Last week Subnautica was a refreshing escape from the overbearing psychological motivations we are required to empathize with in many third-person story games; this week, the single-player campaign of Stacraft the first does the same. Also featuring a discussion of the special merits of the survivial genre & our enthisuaism for Evil Genius II.

After being dragged by the nape through the meandering and uninteresting personal/psychological motivations of most protagonists in most games born in the West the past generation, Mike & Alex delve into two games unburdened by the trappings of western AAA. Subnautica BZ: in search of her lost sister, an ex-corpo becomes infested by an alien consciousness, proceeds to research the inner logic of an aquatic ecosystem & evade death at the maw of leviathans 900m deep.Starcraft I Single Player Campaign: A galactic empire beset by a dictatorship is further afflicted by the emergence of a spy-become-alien queen. Does the multiplayer justify this or the inverse?

What do space Bezos, the easy mode debate, “professionalism” and game pass have in common? In all these we witness the celebration of the instrument-in-itself. What was once [at least purportedly] a means to an end becomes the goal, purpose, satisfaction; money and gratuitous expenditure for its own sake, the raw physical act of gaming in violation of its formal causes, cheap games, whatever they are. A party line coheres to protect the immanent eschaton, the functioning and discharge of the “every day” in and for itself.

Mike & Alex back at it featuring a discussion about the "new Sony" and their uninspiring first party offerings as of late + the general state of the medium in summer 2021. What no one wants to hear: Sony kinda sucks now,

GUI Live & Unleashed | July 6, 2021: Featuring a discussion of the souls genre and souls like games.  A common favorite around these parts. Cheers.