This Week in Video Game Criticism: Of villains, wrestling games, and Billy Mitchell

My point here is that this development team had the groundwork laid out for them from a previous game, a comic series and a novel to make Lara Croft a character that brings to light the fact that we can suffer from these disorders yet still come out on top, still be powerful, humanistic characters with depth and agency. [...] Ignoring that Lara Croft suffers from such a condition in Rise of the Tomb Raider is something that I think is only being done due to a reluctance to tackle such a delicate issue.

So we should back off from aggressive critique of something, because [it's from] Japan? No. If they're gonna sell this in the US, it's an issue, and frankly discussing it now, while the game is still being localized for its 2016 release, is the time to bring it up. Localization is the time when this stuff could change for US audiences, when Nintendo could be truly global in scope and recognize that the morality of their audiences abroad might not be the same, and might require a different approach. I say this because if the situation were reversed, there'd be every expectation that a US content creator would change their content for the global market. Why is Japan immune somehow?

The problem isn't that this feature mirrors Western Conversion Therapy. It's that Western Conversion Therapy has shown us how wretched and abusive the idea [is] that gay is something that is broken, and needs to be fixed. This is a dangerous idea that feeds directly into the epidemic of suicide that plagues LGBT youth. [...] [I]t behooves game developers who actually claim to give a shit about the issue to be much more careful about the stories they tell.

Ordinarily, creating an avatar and dressing it as you wish is a pretty cool aspect of video games for transgender people. You say you're a woman or a man and the game treats you accordingly with no qualms or qualifications. Many trans authors like Katherine Cross and Jessica Janiuk have written extensively about how powerful video games have been in helping them become comfortable with their genders. However, the eerie similarity of the comments Animal Crossing characters make about gender to real-life daily dismissals of trans identities cheapens this. These comments force the idea that gender is a rigidly structured concept, and this is harmful for all kinds of people, especially people who, like me, don't necessarily identify as one binary gender or another.

We already feel like the world wasn't built for us. Video games offer the promise of a world that is built for you, no matter who you are, and Animal Crossing puts special emphasis on this. But it fails to deliver on that promise.

[Life is Strange] portrays sexism as a reality of navigating the world as a woman without ever shying away from the terrible emotional damage that that reality creates. [...] Max, as the protagonist, finds herself the lone woman in an office full of powerful men who are demanding that she tell the truth about what happened, while also clearly conveying the subtext that doing so is clearly against Max's own best interests. Which is some powerful shit, right there.

So what truth did I see in all this? I think: the social mutability of self, which is something that everyone inevitably experiences. It has been especially present in my life the past few years. I travel more and have increasingly non-overlapping social circles [...] [I]t's really really hard not to feel like there's some way that I am different. As though I turn into someone else in the moment that I'm recognized, and both the before and the after person are uncomfortable and not me.

Professional wrestling isn't about showing who the stronger competitor is. Fundamentally speaking, it's about putting on a good show for an audience through a wrestler's specific skill set [and to] document drama, put on a spectacle for the audience and develop a character within the ring.

[...] What makes other sports simulators work is that, like the actual sport they are based on, results aren't pre-determined in order to progress stories or characters, and the major moments within a match -- the ones that get an audience really fired up -- aren't planned in advance in order to get spectators to react the way they want. [...] Wrestlers, on the other hand, absolutely need to engage with the audience, because it feeds into their characters and into their overall psychologies.

The game's four ghosts, charged with tracking down and "killing" Ms. Pac-Man, are hopelessly overmatched. Mitchell taunts and teases his pursuers, leading them into harmless circles, grouping them together and pulling them apart with such exact command that it almost seems that some flaw in the wiring has given his joystick direct control of the bad guys.

Golfing legend Bobby Jones famously said of the young Jack Nicklaus, "He plays a game with which I am not familiar." Ms. Pac-Man is my favorite video game. I am a well-above-average player, I have at certain times in my life obsessively devoted so many hours to it that I played out scenarios in my sleep, and I have observed hundreds of people play the game. I have never seen anyone play like this.

"See?" Mitchell says, fluidly guiding Ms. Pac-Man through the maze. "Absolute control. I've eliminated the mad (sic), scattering chase. That's probably how they intended the game to be played, running around out of control. But that's not how I play."