While in recent years many European businesses have taken steps to alter their previously racist product designs, some games, especially board games like the popular Finnish Afrikan tähti (Star of Africa Kuvataide, 1951), resist this trend. Outside the Racist Nostalgia Box: Rethinking Afrikan tähti’s Cultural Depictions Where are the Black people in Red Dead Redemption 2’s portrayal of the American West, and what might we learn about American media from their absence? We revisit moments, design moves, and questions, sharing how themes of immigration, global capitalism, and culture were navigated through game making.Ĭan ‘Red Dead’ be Redeemed?: Race and Gameworld Contexts Telltale’s The Walking Dead is known for making players and protagonists suffer, but that suffering is racialized in ways you may not expect.Ī reflective account of the creation of Cook Your Way, an alternative controller game about a fictional visa application system. Taking the concept of procedurality as a theoretical starting point, this essay offers a framing of whiteness-in-gaming as a proceduralized ideology: a way of knowing/doing/being in the world that is embedded in and circulated through computational technologies like videogames.Ĭolonized Morality Mechanics: The Struggle to Be Good in Telltale’s The Walking Dead Theorizing Whiteness as a Proceduralized Ideology in Videogames Chee, Amani Naseem, Katta Spiel, Cale Passmore, Kishonna L. It’s definitely worth two hours of your time.VOLUME 5, SPECIAL ISSUE A (SEPTEMBER, 2023) SURVIVING WHITENESS IN GAMESīonus issue editors: Sabine Harrer, Mahli-Ann Butt, Rilla Khaled, Florence M. All in all, it was fun in more than the ways a game is normally fun, but also for how it actually “got” me a couple times. Once I got deeper into it, some of the puzzles were legitimately satisfying, too. Most of Pony Island’s charm comes from its computer-breaking, rule-smashing, and fourth wall-shattering tricks and surprises. Pony Island: screenshot courtesy of Steam Devilishly Good You can come back later after playing the game to thank me for not spoiling some of these moments. The only thing I’ll say is that when a friend of mine was playing it, at some point he randomly messaged me over Steam apologizing to me. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and has a few unexpected twists and surprises, which again I feel is saying too much, but it must be called attention to just to give proper notice and praise to it. This package it’s in now – and I already feel that what little I’ve said is too much – is perfect. Even more, I can see bits of the actual developer saying to himself, “I like this puzzle idea I have, but it needs something more to make it zing.” Even later, when it dramatically changes, it still feels like the same game. While it looks like a C64 or Atari 2600 game, it fits well with both its presentation and theme. Pony Island: screenshot courtesy of Steam To the Victor Go the Spoilers To make any progress requires the player to poke around broken menus, find hidden passwords, and force their way into an otherwise unplayable – for story reasons – mess of a game. While the game is only about two hours long, the difficulty for these puzzles ramps very smoothly and becomes the most interesting when you are fighting to complete it while an AI keeps messing with your command placements. The object to get the key to the exit while avoiding getting it reset one way or another on its path through the page of code. The Devil U Nixīefore you can even begin the “game” of Pony Island, you must solve a couple of code path puzzles – generally, a set of three columns with spaces to place blocks that represent commands for a key that passes through the code. You’re not just at the mercy of the game Pony Island, though, but also the rest of the computer system that the “game” resides on. Pony Island takes you on a quest to save your soul and those of others trapped by Satan himself from a horribly made and buggy game about ponies. It’s mainly a puzzle game with a few hand-eye coordination tests in between (which start off incredibly easy, but get quite a bit more challenging near the end). Pony Island: screenshot courtesy of Steam Pony Island! Run free, jump over hurdles and be the most amazingliest adorable pony evah! Right? …Technically, maybe yeah, but what we have here is a short and sweet puzzle game with an interesting set of puzzles and a computer hacking theme between the more puzzle-y puzzles.
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