But what even *is* a video game? I think more research is required to firmly answer.

The negativity spiral of YouTuber video essayists has combined with their obsession over isolating things to "deep dive" on in a frankly obnoxious way.

Are Games Journalists Biased? Are They Just Dumb? I answer at least one of those questions in my new blog post. tinyurl.com/4c7p8zfy

I want to believe

Can I just say that I appreciate just calling RPGs art as a matter of fact, and then extrapolating on it instead of getting bogged down in it.

This New Yorker piece about the Irish Famine has several paragraphs I found literally jaw-dropping (positive). This is a book review!! Good god!!!

Never been a better time to repopulate this term than now. Everyone has Dunning-Krugered themselves on, like, 30 different subjects nowadays. Self likely included.

in retrospect it's kind of funny that sci fi was like "imagine a world where robots gain sentience, but humanity refuses to grant them personhood" but in reality every loser techbro loser thinks chatgpt deserves more rights than like, actual people

a good way to write poorly is to convince yourself that your writing is poor, so it's important to incorporate praise for the writing you like in your writing. tell yourself that you are a good writer; couple that with attempts to create conditions where you can write at your best

Same as self-deprecating humor, if you constantly joke about how bad you are at something, yes, you'll end up being bad.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are such an underrated band

RFK's official white house portrait is in

Anyway someone tried to argue with me about how art is the most important thing in the world actually and 1. my comics are imagining and observing other people and rarely actually about my own beliefs in an extremely direct way. 2. nah actually i do believe this you should try to be a union salt

Since this is a constant topic of conversation: games are art, but we need to have more critics that treat them like it. The current state of game criticism is lopsided so in favor of commercial reviews that games struggle to progress as art. gravestates.com/essay/artist...

We live in a time where the walls separating different genres and mediums are crumbling more and more by the day. You are not abandoning anything, you are exploring new horizons, and combining everything you've learned into those endeavors to make something unique to your expertise and experience.

Yes, of course. I want to be able to remember where an idea srarted and how it came along.

My personal favorite author. Le Guin was simply one of the most compassionate, sharp, and thoughtful writers ever. And across multiple genres, with many different ways of thinking thematically.

These are some of the smoothest 10 seconds of gameplay I've seen in a long time.

Not to mention that all this boasting is for what amounts to a piece of extremely-overwritten navel-gazing with metaphors forced to the point of exhaustion. It's actually bad enough that I feel like I could prompt an AI to do better, and it would still suck (shocker).

hang on hang on I still haven't beaten depression one yet.

we have such a money-driven society that people just genuinely can't believe that they can do things for free sometimes. often easier than actually spending the money

*Terminator hands you a collection of Joan Didion's nonfiction writing* "We tell ourselves stories in order to live if you want to live."

It is abjectly tragic that there is not enough time to read books, watch movies, play games, exercise meaningfully, watch shows, make art, talk with friends, write stories, listen to music, do good work, go out, take walks, make homemade food, and be with the people you love all in the same day.

It is so hard to convince myself to start any game longer than, like, 10 hours nowadays, because I could play, like, half a dozen artsy indie games that say something in that time. And I'm at the point where I much more want to experience a breadth of odd/unusual art, than singular satisfying art.

Even if you really like lists: 20 ways X influenced you > 20 things that influenced you.

Y'know, I bought this game and have had it sitting in my library for a couple months now. Might be time to boot it up. I'm craving a "faces where their shouldn't be faces" kind of game.

Someone I work with at my outlet, told me they wrote all their Elden Ring guides using M+KB. They were of the opinion that the controls suck and they wouldn't play the game for fun. This person tormented themselves through PC Radahn just to act like M+KB worked and that the game was the problem.

If you aren't *at least* also playing games on Itch.io (not to mention other major services with exclusive titles), you're missing out on some of the best games, and you are absolutely missing the chance to support the most interesting rising devs.

the thing i find interesting with the art question here is that i'm coming from an extremely maximalist definition of art, so the examples given for a game that is not art still qualify as far as I'm concerned. Still, naming games a medium that can contain art scans for me, leaving a new question:

Gonna use this to post my own blog post where I argue that not only is every game art, but that we really need to act like it: gravestates.com/essay/games-...

🥳 It's my birthday today! 🥳 For my birthday, I'd like to ask you to: - Support indies by leaving a positive review on your favorite indie game. - Treat yourself to some good tea. - Reach out to that friend. - Check out Centum which we just launched! store.steampowered.com/app/2625550/... 🎂

I am now, more than ever, reminded how important art is, for so many things.

The only time I've recently heard my father critique Donald Trump was because he was "hucking those bullshit cars"

1. DnD 3.5e 2. Alien RPG 3. Dark Heresy or Pendragon? Could be either. 4. Legend of the Five Rings 5e 5. Pendragon. 6. Currently playing PF2e at this exact moment. 7. Triangle Agency (absolutely great game)

Absolutely best and most factually accurate review of Centum yet. store.steampowered.com/app/2625550/...

I like that the Norse had two different afterlives for warriors, Valhalla, which everyone knows, and Folkvangr, which is the chill Valhalla for people who aren't into fighting *all* the time.

The old Siskel & Ebert review recap screens looked like the loading menu for an Atari game

Wrote a review about @duskdev.bsky.social's Butcher's Creek today. I really wanted more out of it, since I always love David Szymanski's games, but there is still quite a bit to chew on. gravestates.com/review/butch...

No, normal people need to be given their auteur license first before they can do something as ridiculous as make things, which they can obtain only from the International Department of Intelligent, Original Talent. Otherwise, they just need to stick to one of those people. Duh.

thumbnail for the next video is going to be absolutely unhinged, get ready

Working on my next blog post. I'm still in the "manifesto" stage, I suppose. Should be a banger on Friday. Or everyone will disagree with me. I'm fine with either, such is the burden of being right all the time.

the swamp of despair (from 2018)

I'm going to be honest, and maybe a bit mean, but I really dislike this sentiment. I think that nearly everybody benefits from engaging with as many mediums as interest them as fully as possible, and that there is no such thing as any being "the best," even if there is one you like the most.

Just played through the little 20-minute "anti-game" The Dark Queen of Mortholme and absolutely adored it. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes FromSoft titles (or Hollow Knight, Blasphemous; anything with tough bosses). So much character development in 20 minutes. qwertyprophecy.itch.io/mortholme

👁️‍🗨️ CENTUM launching TOMORROW 👁️‍🗨️ They'll never know what hit them. WISHLIST: store.steampowered.com/app/2625550/...

You wonder if some of these people actually like video games after seeing the way they viciously pick them apart.

today marks the 10th year since hotline miami 2 first released! as its one of my favourite games of all time, if not the most favourite, i had to do SOMETHING, so i drew beard doing what he always wanted to. #hotlinemiami #hm2 #mubart

char is so awesome