KRITIQAL: selected essays, volume 2

A collection of 9 critical essays originally published on Kritiqal. All essays remain free to read, but purchasing this zine will help keep the site going. Includes epub, mobi, and pdf formats.

Contents

Photos of future ruins

Dear Future is an asynchronous massively-multiplayer photography game about exploring an abandoned city. I have been trying to write about it for several weeks and have found myself incapable of doing with any organization or distance. What follow, instead, are orchestrated recollections and half-formed conclusions of my time with the game. A half-step towards the understanding I'm searching for.

The world you wished for

Umurangi Generation is the shitty future we occupy, the compromises and pain and small moments of joy all combusting at once. There are no good choices left, they’ve all been stolen from us. What do you do when the world’s on fire but you’re hungry and the landlord’s demanding rent? At what point does the dark comedy of capitalism finally break? Umurangi knows we’ve passed the point of no return but have to keep living like we still have time. It acknowledges our anger but refuses to give up on the people left behind.

Serve me through the wall

What's so powerful about Lofi Ping Pong is how it understands its subject. It is a sad and challenging game wrapped in soft textures; less ping pong sim than twitchy rhythm game. Unlike its inspiration, here we can’t be wholly insulated. Our ironic detachment breaks every time we miss a beat, thrust back into consciousness and the glow of our monitor.

Food from the torpedo chambers

SUPERLUNARY triumphs in the moments between pain and reconciliation, characters reaching out to one another as the only thing keeping them from falling inwards. It is not a sad game, not exactly, but its stability comes at a premium. Every pocket of intimacy exists inside a ship built for war, and even with the torpedoes removed that fact is hard to ignore.

We’re all* connected

Is this nirvana? What intimacy can 4K matchmaking systems create more meaningful than sharing a GameBoy in the backseat of a car? Capitalism won’t allow that experience to be enough. It can’t monetize a memory, a yellowed cartridge, the worm lights illuminating unlit and unconnected screens.

The cross you gave to me

Video games are built on violence. Violence towards their creators at the hands of industry overlords. Violence towards their fans through the cultivation of toxic communities. Violence to the planet by the manufacturing of useless hardware and the ballooning footprint of server farms. Violence as the primary verb through which we understand our interactions in these digital worlds. The argument of whether games should be violent is over, violence has won.

Remember donuts

Each time I visit The Alabaster Donut Farm, I wonder who might come after me. Who will touch down in Ohio, visit Plaza Donuts, and attempt to parse why it was there. While not quite hope, the idea that there could be someone else enraptured by something as useless as a donut gives me some kind of peace.