So in the interests of furthering the agenda of artsy, feely, totally non-objective weirdo games writing in the wake The Hashtag That Shall Not Be Named, I decided that I was going to make a virtual mixtape. Are virtual mixtapes a thing? Whatever, I’m making it a thing. It’s different than a playlist because this assortment of songs is hand-collected and hand-pasted into a single WordPress page with love. We’re talking artisanal, cave-aged, free-range music compilations, not those music compilations you get out of a can from a factory.
So I made this video. Then a day later this happened. I don’t mean Sterling’s video in particular, I just mean yet another in a series of outcries bemoaning the quality of games on Steam and calling for tighter standards on what gets published. And it’s sometimes frustrating to pose the counter-argument on this issue - the opposition has megaphones on major game websites and the support of armies of self-righteous game players, while the side of open platforms is largely the side of developers and a few critics that want to see barriers to entry lowered. And while I wanted to respond I’ve got more important things to make videos about than rehashing these same arguments forever, so I figured a blog post would do. More after the jump.
Two things I’ve been mulling over in the wake of the most recent episode that I felt I wanted to share:
It was pointed out to me that I hadn’t yet posted the Patreon announcement on my own website! I think at one point I was saving this post for a long explanation about why I’m doing this as well as how exciting and scary this has turned out to be. However, that piece has yet to materialize - it’s likely still coming, but I’ve been too busy scrambling to make sure I have both a good episode and a good short lined up for this month. I’ve also been toying with the idea of waiting until I’ve completed a full cycle before doing it too, from posting the original campaign to making a month’s worth of content to receiving Patreon donations. That way whatever piece I finally make isn’t “first day jitters: the blog post,” but instead represents the full process of launching, producing content for, and seeing the results of a campaign like this.
Regardless, if the video isn’t clear:
- Lana Polansky
- Mattie Brice
- Aevee Bee
- Merritt Kopas
- Elizabeth Simins
- And many more!
In my last video I ended up attacking a viewpoint I’ve often seen espoused by what I referred to as “gamer culture.” This caused a lot of people to cry foul - people who identified as gamers knew they had never said this, so clearly I was making a strawman argument. At first I was tempted to throw the complaint aside - after all, finding a fallacy with an argument that games are inherently political doesn’t do anything to disprove that games are inherently political. But after ruminating on the concept for a few days I think there’s more going on here that’s worth talking about.
More after the break.
