This Week in Video Game Criticism: Is Solitaire the first roguelike?

[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.

[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.

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.

Here's the worst part: I want [Activision] to make a good documentary about PMCs. You have the resources and connections to do it and it could be a great public education tool. The rise of military contractors is indeed an emerging trend, and brings many questions with it [...] I'm willing to bet that if you geared your documentary trailers toward information rather than exploitation, they'd prove just as popular force others to see you in a new light. You have the potential here to get lots of young people interested in global politics -- why not take it?

These games were not about pushing out a finished product ready to sell, which preoccupies a lot of indie dev culture at present. They were about playfulness, exploration, a breathless desire to just throw some assets together and make something real. These games were working on the frontier, going to strange, unexplored places and unlocking our ideas about games and our potential to make them in unexpected ways.

You see, most people would like to think that if they were alive in Paris in 1874, they would have been cheering on the Impressionists' effervescent break with tradition, been one of their champions, and slugged down wine in the courtyard bars as they argued the finer points of their work. But that is a fantasy. Most of us would have been just like everyone else in Paris and lined up to go see the grand history paintings and voluptuously rendered Venuses in the massively anticipated yearly art show at the Louvre. [...] What other people have a massive interest in pushing the edge on smoke and light effects in three dimensional spaces? What other group of producers strive to hide the made-ness of the object behind shine, polish, slickness, lens-flare and even literally has options you can check in the menu to turn on "full screen glow"? Who else holds suspension of disbelief and immersiveness as their highest goals?