On Sundays, I have to roll my old gaming chair to the curb before plopping back into my new ergonomic office chair with the same terrible posture and whining, “Why doesn’t this work?! Who knew furniture called Titan, Pro and Conquer weren’t the best for lumbar support?” Before I go, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah” so loud I’m giving the local cats tiny heart attacks, let’s read this week’s best articles about games (and things related to games!)
For Polygon, Ana Diaz wrote about the beginning of one of the oldest ship wars in gaming and how Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth took the fandom back 20 years. Anyway, it’s a thread, but I took it more as an article about how weird both fandoms and social media can be. All the more surprising because he didn’t recognize that Cloud’s real life partner is Barrett.
The difference now? In a world where these disparate fan communities have been smashed together on sites like Reddit, X and TikTok, the focus of anger has shifted even further towards personal attacks on the posters themselves. If you’re a Tifa fan, it’s not enough to hate Aerith anymore, you also have to hate everyone who ships Aerith. A Tifa fan can easily search and find an Aerith fan profile and reply to their messages. Fan accounts can quote-tweet claims, which in turn serve as a place to pile on specific claims or arguments.
Here’s a nice Barrett meme that I’d like to share if possible.
For The Journal, Carl Kinsella took a good look at the infamous Dublin/New York portal. You may remember that there was another game called Portal, so it belongs here. It’s quiet.
“That’s why we can’t have nice things” – such a phrase is often heard at such moments. The phrase predates the Internet, but in recent years it has taken on a memetic meaning and is often used whenever someone has messed up something good. Taylor Swift even has a song named after the phrase. Of course, however, there is a less puritanical solution to our ungodly use of the portal than simply closing it. You can’t tell this already scandalous public that you never had a contingency plan. You are not in Vilnius anymore, my friend. It’s not our fault you didn’t do your market research.
RPS member Jeremy Peele wrote a self-described “somewhat emotional analysis” of the Microsoft/Arkane Austin situation. The only analysis I’d like to read, honestly.
Between them, the two Arkanes – one in Austin and the still-existing office in Lyon – invented four new game universes in just over a decade. Dishonored, Prey and Deathloop are famous for their originality and depth. And while not all of these games broke sales records, they point to a future in which the Xbox could one day get another Fallout — a weird alternate world that will casually resonate for decades. This is how franchises are born: not in boardrooms, but between the folds of brilliant creative minds.
However, I fall into a trap: justifying the existence of Arkane Austin through a financial strategy, when great art needs no justification. The studio understood, perhaps better than anyone else, that the meaning of games is interaction. That if you can’t wiggle your finger in the virtual world and see the ripples caused by your presence, you might as well be there at all. This philosophy colored their games at every level, from grand plots that you can control your actions to NPCs that watched your every move, ready to come at you with blades or conversation depending on your behavior.
The good video essayist In Praise Of Shadows reviewed some movies that blatantly ignore any safety measures. Their video on Nic Cage is still one of my favorite essays in recent memory. Elsewhere, YouTuber Any Austin strolls through a river basin in Skyrim, following every fork in the stream to find its source. The answer is usually “a hole in the mountain”, but he is a very calm and cheerful guide.
Post 45 recently released a collection of detailed and thoughtful essays on Disco Elysium.
This week’s music is Bending Corners by RAP Ferreira and Fumitake Tamura, because sometimes I like some words with my usual diet of lo-fi. Thank you, beat and wordsmiths, and thank you, readers! Double thanks because many of you downloaded the TTRPG I mentioned I wrote about last week. And now I will never remember it again. Have a good weekend!