Gaming Under The Influence

So we've established[i] that games coverage (and the rote “gamer”) tends to reduce its object to subject-or-market immanent metrics: desire, pleasure, value, profit. Further proof this week shit-blazed across the internet as kojima fans petitioned for a new game to be canceled for its Microsoft affiliation (an affront to their market-immanent substitute for "games", a channel for their desire: brand identity).

What is the alternative to these loci of criticism entirely extrinsic to the work? We can start by establishing the taxonomy of the work to be analyzed. Taxonomical approaches, which are oriented to the game in-itself and attempt to classify its parts[ii], purse the [interrelated] essential components of form & matter, concept & mechanics[iii]; what is the game world and how is it mechanically & symbolically expressed? Today on GUI 84 we offer just these kinds of thoughts on our staple genre: the soulslike (which we have defined here in a mechanical sense[iv]), with the intentions of establishing the loose outlines of a genre canon.

We will divide the genre into 2D & 3D subcategories; this week we talk about the latter.

Green Dragon CVR Presents: The Scarlet Nexus Review Part 1

Why do we treat all ideas expressed in the video game medium as equivalent just because they are "playable"? We are [culturally] willing to admit a difference between commercials and movies, novels and textbooks and roadsigns, but not different kinds of video games. This week Mike & Alex discuss why an approach to games based on what they expressed [and not their shared medium of expression] would be preferable. See greendragoncvr.com/gui-82 for full description. Cheers.

This week, we return to our long-standing fixation on the superiority of Japanese games with a comparison of Mass Effect and Kingdom Hearts. See https://greendragoncvr.com/gui-81 for full episode description!

Sometimes, says Zizek, the “first gesture to provoke a change in the system is to withdraw, to do nothing”[i]; some times, “doing nothing”, making no change at all, can be the most violent or [counter-] revolutionary thing to do[ii].

In an age where journalists think describing something as proper to “two generations ago” or “off the pace of other games” is a slight[iii]; where an incessant desire to inflate the reach of the medium and provide a force to “change the world”[iv] has precipitated some of the worst, subscription-based, live-service, hollywood-chundering empty husk games history has seen; in such an age, perhaps the best thing to do is NOTHING [new] AT ALL: to return to the old, to the games that informed our very conception of what the medium was capable of to this point [which we have since failed and departed from].

2019 signified a general revival of autotelic game design, with major publishers like EA and Activision leaving live service behind in favor of traditional, novel-style experiences like Sekiro & Jedi Fallen Order. Control, Death Stranding & the Outer Worlds, along with Final Fantasy VIIIR, Nioh 2, Ghosts & Cyberpunk in 2020, further demonstrated against the “professionals” that AAA single-player games are very much alive, Now in 2021, after a bevy of remakes and aggressively referential works like Bravely Default II, we are in a position to understand that the counter-revolution that began in 2019 has consisted in one episode after another of developers doing NOTHING [new] AT ALL. Our cultural taste for spectacle and novelty is displaced while culture surrounding games is plunged into the the game, not as a marketing event but a transhistorical form that persists through time. Inactivity in terms of addition or superficial progress is warranted by the persistent ontological texture and value of the [form of the] game itself outside the cycle of hype and economic preponderance that tends to accompany major game releases.

A clear lack of extramental [objective] standard motivates most contemporary “professional” video game criticism (for more on this and our proposed solution. This is clear from contents of reviews themselves, which rely heavily on subjective states of affairs and relative measures of quality; from a general approach that posits the experience of the player as the absolute measure of a game’s worth; from disparity between reception of similarly-structured products by the same people.

This lack of objective critical standard reduces “professionals” to victims of consumer culture, who appear to judge the value of a work on its capacity to titilate with superficial “polish”, the presence of humanist cinematic stories and well-recognized mascots/brands.

Alex & Mike talk Biomutant, a game from Experiment 101/THQ Nordiq you likely have not heard of. While the AAA side of the industry tends to homogenization and imitative, cinematic presentation, “AA” games remain creative and innovative in 2021. Drawing on inspirations as varied as Dark Souls, third person shooters & kung fu cinema, Biomutant is Ratchet & Clank on acid, developed by a team of 20 people.

This week, the boys assess the bounty of fine games we have enjoyed in the past month (and one we are thrilled to experience anew); Returnal, Resident Evil Village and [the] Mass Effect Trilogy. Alex updates us on his slog toward the end of Returnal, with but a single biome standing between him and the credits. Mike explains the novel hub-world progression structure Capcom has implemented in Resident Evil Village, as well as how Moreau and house Beneviento corroborate the symptom-real/potency-act relation elaborated in our recent article. Lastly, we provide an introductory note to the Mass Effect Trilogy for new players: which game to start with? Which is best? What impact do narrative consequences from the original title have on the rest of the trilogy?

 

Thank you for listening!

Our discussion this week veers from the endgame of Returnal to Resident Evil Village and its series precedents in recent years. The franchise has undergone substantial mutations since 2017 yet retains an unmistakable genetic code that appears to have translated well into Village. We will draw comparisons to the Resident Evil 2 & 3 remakes and to 7.

Mike & Alex discuss the mechanics, universe, loop & philosophy of Returnal.