#forefront research

I think sometimes that we don’t talk enough about good-faith game critics. A lot of the conversations anyone has about games journalism is just holdovers from the GamerGate “Ethics in Games Journalism (We All Hate Feminism)” era, but I want to highlight someone whose work in the field is consistently more celebratory of games and media, that often discusses the interplay between pieces of media and their power to make people Feel things.

Jacob Geller is a (mostly gaming-based) YouTuber and sometimes games critic for Kotaku, Polygon and Game Informer. His pieces often discuss the emotionality of the texts he presents; instead of focusing on barebones things like core gameplay loops and clunky dialogue, he likes to hone in on the feeling of games, and a lot of his more recent work dissects the emotional understanding of games - how games affect us on the inside.

He is also extremely Jewish and I connect with that. 

A lot of his work focuses on empathy - how we can learn about people through the games they write and make, like his video on KittyHorrorshow’s Haunted Cities Vol 4 (dropped Halloween 2020) or what haunted houses mean in our ever shifting cultural landscape as seen through Anatomy and Control. His videos are emotionally adept, and his editing is impeccable.

For my first forefront spotlight (which I have to do five of, I think), I chose Hades. It’s an amazing game that uses the features of the roguelike genre to compliment and work with its story instead of around it, like most games do. 

It represents the kind of great work a studio is capable of when it respects its creative team. Supergiant Games has always been upfront about its mandatory paid break and anti-crunch policies and its public build playtests and patch notes for Hades made it the award-winning game it ended up becoming.

While we’re on the topic of awards, it swept the game awards season. It’s truly a shining example of everything I personally want to work towards in my own practice - independently made, respectful to its team, upfront about issues with its community, and a gorgeously playable piece of media to cap it off. 

Coffee Talk is a visual novel by Indonesian studio Toge Productions about having heart-to-heart conversations and making people coffee. 

It’s a visual novel, so most of the experience consists of learning things about the characters through their dialogue. A lot of the characters have a lot of pain and emotional issues, and they briefly discuss their feelings with you as you make them coffee and talk to them. 

Spiritfarer is a very chill 2D indie title by Thunder Lotus games about death, loss and resource management.

The gorgeous art style and serene vibes reported by reviewers drew my interest initially, and the surprisingly insightful writing really hit me where I lived. We live in a world of performative social action, so to have a game call out the motives of the player (through the character) was really impactful and clever. 

It’s emotionally impactful without exploitation of suffering or torture porn, which it achieves through the strength of its writing and compelling mechanics. Also it’s a pretty solid resource management sim. 

Even I am not immune to the charms of the co-op early access game.

Something I played a little bit during the less stressfilled weeks leading up my own game’s submission was Phasmophobia. Little known fact about me, I’m a big fan of ghost hunting/paranormal type content, so when I saw a game that actually went into the specifics of what thing works in which way to determing the type of spectre, I was immediately here for it.

One thing I really enjoyed with speech input as an aspect of the game - I think yelling at ghosts is hilarious so I often got very aggressive when it came to ghost investigations with my friends. They always prompt you to call out its name, so I ended up yelling “(ghost name)!! COME FUCK ME UP!!!” a lot, it was really fun.

Developed by Beautiful Glitch, Monster Camp is the sequel to the popular indie hit Monster Prom from 2018. 

I was inspired pretty chiefly by the concept of a multiplayer competetive dating sim - I thought that was an extremely novel idea that nobody had done before, and I really love Arthur Tien’s character art. 

I’ve never actually seen this discussed but I do have an opinion on this issue. I think including memes into game text can be rewarding in the moment, but because games take so long to code the memes will no longer be relevant by release, so the games studio will look like this ironically evergreen meme: 

Instead of how they want kids to see them, which is - y’know, not that. 

What makes sense in the zeitgeist might not make sense 3 years down the line when the game launches and your references to the memes that didn’t actually stick around very long just look passe and out of touch. 

Listen, I love me a good dating sim, and I also love me a good sword. So the concept of swords being the dateable characters? Mwah, chef’s kiss. 

I’m in the middle (STILL, SOMEHOW) of creating a visual novel game with smaller minigames in myself, and this feels relevant and interesting to me in the moment.