This Week in Video Game Criticism: Is Leveling Up Capitalist?

This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Mark Filipowich on topics ranging from a Marxist discussion of RPG elements to a Leigh Alexander mediation on two Kanye West games. The Forest Patricia Hernandez expresses disappointment with Tomodachi Life's heteronormativity over at Kotaku and breaks down just how structurally invested the game is in straightness:

Zachery Oliver's second of a two-part breakdown of remastered classics cuts at the necessity and hypocrisy of modernizing the past. Speaking of preserving the past, Tomas Brown analyses how museums function in games for Play the Past. Chris Franklin discusses preservation and curation of games in a time when most of the process is digitized. Specifically, he touches on how important it is that critics distance themselves from the AAA Public-Relations Complex:

Finally, Gaines Hubbell of Higher Level Gamer encourages scepticism to any critical approach that leans heavily on auteur theory. Listen close and you can hear the thud from the mic dropping:

The Trees Aevee Bee applauds the way that Fire Emblem: Awakening adopts fantasy pulp writing tropes to videogame structure: "Fire Emblem isn't any more or less designed than any other narrative but it is designed with respect to the technology of a video game." As if I needed another reason to finally play that game. Conversely, Lindsey Joyce, the curator of last week's TWIVGB, finds that Child of Light fails to reconcile its writing tradition with the demands of immersion. At Tap-Repeatedly, Amanda Lange reads the disconnected episodes of Kentucky Route Zero as an endless, dreamless night:

Cameron Kunzelman examines how the change in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's use of space redirects the series while Anthony John Agnello continues his series on empty spaces for The A.V. Club; this time with a focus on Final Fantasy VI. Lana Polansky also looks at maps and space, but at their appropriating influence through the lens of Leonard Getinthecar's visual art piece based on Space Invaders. Writing for The Mary Sue, Becky Chambers, discusses how well Telltale's The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead focus on morality by removing choices from in-game stat modifiers. Jorge Albor focuses his own microscope on The Walking Dead episode, "In Harm's Way," specifically with how Carver, the episode’s antagonist, weaponizes traditional gender roles to dominate the player and their group of hapless survivors. Leigh Alexander on Gamasutra compares two games based Kanye West lyrics, the officially sanctioned I Won with the fan-made Kanye Zone. In her words, "[Kanye Zone is] the complete opposite of the I Won game: a game about literal achievement is cynical, but one that makes an abstract expression mechanical is funny." While we're laughing at some cynical stuff, Alex Hern takes a look at Class Struggle, a board game designed in 1978 by a New York professor to teach players about Marxism. More Like Cyber JUNK Word is out on the first major cross-platform title to hit the new console generation: Watch_Dogs is definitely a videogame. Nick Hanford pens a number of micro-essays teasing apart the game's problems. Meanwhile at Paste, Patrick Lindsey explains how big-budget games completely miss the point of the cyberpunk hero in general:

Robert Rath claims that in Wolfenstein: The New Order, surviving surviving totalitarian rule is the greatest form of defying it. Rath details a number of historical rebellions that, while mundane, were crucial to undermining Germany's authoritarian leaders. He goes on:

We Never Just Talk Anymore Leigh Alexander tilts the spotlight onto Rachel Simone Weil’s exhibit at The Visual Arts Center in Austin of what a girl's bedroom might look like if 1990's advertising had not been so weighted to boys. Zoya Street, meanwhile, summarizes a number of interviews with FibreTigre about their mobile space exploration/existential horror simulator, Out There. Street describes the game thusly:

At Eurogamer, Simon Parkin chats with Kirk Ewing about the controversy of his 2004 game, JFK: Reloaded. Nick Regos or IGN talks to writer and YouTuber personality, Robert Kingett about his experiences as gamer with cerebral palsy and a visual impairment. The review also covers Kingett's criteria as a reviewer and explains some technical aspects that improve or limit access. The Dire Wolf of Wall Street Stephen Beirne kicked off a conversation about the deeply capitalistic nature of in-game resource growth:

Austin Walker counters to Beirne's polemic, as he calls it, instead asking for a more complicated approach in understanding leveling up:

Daniel Joseph responds to both, insisting that focus should instead be placed on the causal, material outcomes videogames produce, not on what ideologies might be read into them. Zack Fair gets the last word for now in his definitions and distinctions between various game resources. Other Things People Said Krystian Majewski picks apart the developing meta-game of Netrunner. Rick Lane reminds us that graphics cannot be reduced to technical fidelity. Robert Yang reflects on GDC's illusion of prestige. Zoe Quinn wants sex and videogames to be less technical and more playful. And finally, for those sick of triple vowels and all related festivities, Joylancer developer TJ Thomas presents: IndiE3. Thank you for reading! Just a friendly reminder that we get all our submissions from readers like your from Twitter mention or our email submissions form And finally, Critical Distance is entirely funded by its readership, so if you like what we do and you want us to keep doing it, please consider lending us your (financial) support. See you all next week!