Hey y'all! Hope you're all well and ready for your first round of newsletter updates :)
New From Me
My latest games writing is out for everyone! Indie Games Are More Than Their (Supposed) Influences is an essay about the way we, collectively, talk about indie games; how they are almost always reduced to a sum of the influences we impose upon them, instead of works discussed on their own merit. Let's talk about why we do this, and why it hurts.
The latest episode of our k-pop podcast, K-YOS, is out as well, recapping all the June releases we care to talk about. Artists discussed: Stray Kids, fromis_9, The New Six, &Team, Ateez, SHINee, Treasure, and UKISS
Patrons, y'all also have early access to a new short video review, this time for The Spirit and the Mouse. You may recall the game winning third place in the Third itch Trailer Gauntlet earlier this year, and I played the majority of it on stream afterwards. The video will be publicly available in a week!
Song of the Newsletter
A song recommendation? Hey, why not. I've been listening to “One That Got Away” by MUNA on repeat lately. They're already my favorite band, owing to their alt-pop beats, incredible lead vocalist, and being very gay, dishing out sad, dramatic ballads and synthy bops in equal measure. One That Got Away splits the difference; it's a catchy post-breakup revenge tune that sings of heartbreak from the high horse of not being the one who fucked everything up. It came out a month and a half after a really rough breakup on my end, a week after my birthday, and all three members of MUNA look super hot in the music video. So clearly they made it just for me, but y'all can listen to it too if you want.
News & Recommendations
Humble Games worked with an independent analyst group to investigate the general habits of gamers with regards to indie games, and presented the findings of this investigation at GDC. These findings are, of course, aggregated survey responses that can't serve as a perfect representation of consumer data, and shouldn't be taken as concrete fact. That being said, a ~5,000 person sample size is nothing to sneeze at, and there's a lot of interesting data to sift through. GI.biz put together a great article collating the facts, sharing interesting tidbits about preferences of gameplay, story, playtime, pricing, and more. One of the most interesting data points is that a whopping 60% of gamers surveyed said they hadn't bought an indie game in the last year at all. The "casual" gamer is often left out of the conversation entirely among enthusiasts and armchair analysts, so the answers they gave are perhaps the most interesting of all.
As an environmentalist, I often find friction between myself and games, particular those of the wholesome/comfy/cozy variety. When we anthropomorphize nature, we risk sanding away reality, and depicting a world that exists both as a result of and in service to humans. “In Search of Undersea Wildness in My Octopus Teacher, Abzu, and In Other Waters” is an excellent video essay that explores this topic using a very popular Netflix film and two oceanic adventure games.
Do you remember being in school and learning the whole "men hunt while women gather and take care of the home" thing, and being told that that's been true since the beginning of civilization? Well, turns out it probably isn't.
Also, well-known LGBTQIA+ nonprofit organization The Trevor Project is most definitely unionbusting. The tired old tale of a charity unsustainably, ignorantly expanding and then cutting off the lowest rungs of the ladder plays out yet again. You can learn more and follow the situation as it develops by following the union, Friends of Trevor United, or their larger labor affiliate, the Communication Workers of America.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading, and I'll be seeing you again soon!