Critical Game Analysis: The Strange Ox

Occasionally, I am asked about my work as a critical game scholar, and I have to come up with some kind of short-hand for explaining it. Usually my go-to is comparing game studies to film studies or literature, which usually helps get us to a perspective of analyzing games for social, artistic, or cultural significance rather than technical complexity or some other scientific or “objective” measurement (such as a rating score in game reviews). The next question to answer then is about how one can perform criticism in the spirit of literary or film studies, but of games with mechanics. How do you analyze the gameplay? The mechanics?

In the early days of (computer) game studies, this was the only question that certain game theorists wanted to pursue. The strongly ludological focus of folks like Espen Aarseth and Markku Eskelinen are famous for eschewing any “narrative” content in favor of the mechanical analysis. For me, this was always an artificial, analytical move that may be perfectly valid for certain purposes, but could never tell the full story of any videogame. So, then, the question remains: how do you analyze games while accounting for both the mechanics and representation?

Opening Baldur's Gate

This is something of a first-and-continued impressions of the phenomenally successful Baldur’s Gate 3, released by Larian Studios in 2023. I delayed writing anything on the game for several weeks because I was simply not having a very good time with it, but I was pretty sure the game wasn’t to blame. To put it bluntly: I sucked, and it made the game deeply unfun to play. After persevering for around 20 in-game hours (with probably 5-8 hours lost in reloading saves after various failures) I finally started to get it, and find the fun.

New Cycle: Humanity on the Brink

New Cycle entered early-access a few days ago and I was tempted enough to take a look at the latest in an ever-growing niche of mid-size city-builders. What I found was a startling, melancholy requiem for humanity, teetering on the brink of disaster, yet stoically carrying on, perhaps in vain. 

New Cycle fits into a genre of colony-management and/or city-building games that operate at the scale of individual citizens and buildings. At the far end of the city simulation genre you have, of course, SimCity and Cities: Skylines, which set as their target a mimesis of the North American urban-suburban sprawl configured around freeway interchanges and zoning laws. At the other end of the simulation genre is the Sims franchise, which simulates the daily lives of individual people, their ambitions and trials, along with the exact placement of dining tables and stairs inside each home.

Aloy’s Heroic Feminism in Horizon: Forbidden West

 

The image above represents two of the first results in Google when searching “Horizon Zero Dawn feminism” and clearly depicts how any art criticism works. On one hand we have an example touting Horizon: Zero Dawn (HZD) as a breakthrough, and on the other, as a disappointment. As it ever was, and probably always will be – but where does that leave us when looking at the sequel, Horizon: Forbidden West (HFW)?

The criticism of “Matt C.” from Digitally Downloaded noted above centers on the assessment of Aloy as the female equivalent of a space marine trope who doesn’t feel multifaceted and human. She is, he says “robbed her of any sort of sexual identity." 

In erasing the entire concept of sexuality, [from the game world] Horizon denies Aloy – and every other character in that game – any sense of sexual identity and agency. That’s fundamentally at odds with a pillar of feminist ideology. (Digitally Downloaded)

Matt C. is also critical of the Nora tribe’s matriarchal system of leadership, saying that the game does little or nothing with it, and certainly does not explore or interrogate the differences between the matriarchal Nora and other tribes in the game.

This criticism is misguided, and unfortunately narrows the concept of feminism in media to merely the task of an overt discussion of sexuality and sexism as plot points. This reminds me of the tendency in the games industry to reduce the speaking opportunities of women in the industry to panels about being a woman in the industry, rather than speaking to their technical, creative or professional expertise. This view suggests the ideal (perhaps only?) feminist action that a woman (real or fictional) can take is to talk about female sexuality or otherwise being female.

Horizon: Forbidden West - Kinesthetics of Combat

In Horizon: Forbidden West, Guerilla Games have created the most satisfying combat experience that I’ve had in a game—maybe ever. I will try not to stray into hyperbole in this piece, but clearly, HFW hit almost every note right for me, and I will have more to say about the rest of the game in the coming weeks. For now, though, we will concentrate on the kinesthetics of Aloy, her combat abilities, and the enemies she faces.

Years ago, I questioned the common wisdom that first-person games are more immersive and ‘visceral’ than third-person games. Supposedly, the camera-through-the-eyes experience places the player more squarely in the shoes of the player-character, and creates a deeper sense of immersion. For me, however, I find myself distracted by the way the incorporeality of the character affects movement and vision, and the extremely strange way that one’s hands are almost always visible. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim in particular suffers from this, in that the player-character can be sprinting across an open field, not even carrying a weapon, and still their hands are held out in front like a cartoon mummy’s.

Far Cry New Dawn: All in the Family

Far Cry New Dawn was released in 2019 as a spin off of Far Cry 5. The game was initially priced at about $40 which reflects its limited scope. Speaking broadly, I am strongly in favor of developers making further use of already-developed assets such as the world of Hope County, the dialog and weapon systems, and whatever else they can repurpose. Developing new open world games is a massive undertaking, and supposing that each one can hold only one story, only one game experience, is absurd. 

That said, the Hope County presented by New Dawn is in fact fairly reworked, both to reflect time’s passage after the apocalyptic end of FC5, and to, I suspect, give the game an aesthetic recognizably distinct in single screen shots. That aesthetic can be summed up in a single word: pink. Everything is pink! From the rolling fields of blossoms to the many train carriages, storage containers, cars both derelict and running, and even the game’s interface, everything glows with a hot neon pink. I was immediately reminded of the similar spin-off-expansion: inFAMOUS First Light, which bears a similar style.

New Dawn barrels right into the contradictions in tone that Far Cry is famous for. On one hand we have an overarching narrative theme of “family” – everyone is related to someone in this game. Our main quest-giving guide is none other than Kim Rye, whose daughter Carmina was born during the events of Far Cry 5 (with the player’s help of course). We will rescue the pilot and father Nick Rye early on as well. Our main antagonists are twin sisters: Mickey and Lou, who constantly refer to their Old Man. Hurk Drubman Jr. has a child, who is apparently under the care of his cousin Sharky Boshaw. Joseph Seed, it turns out, also has had a son who has taken up leadership of New Eden, remnants of the Project at Eden’s Gate cult.

Far Cry 5: An Illustrative Mess

When performing criticism of a videogame, I feel that playing it some time after its release presents certain advantages: firstly, we are removed from the marketing hype that has built up some expectations in the player, which may or may not be delivered by the game itself. Next, the game is in a more ‘complete’ state after additions, game of the year editions, and various patches are applied. Lastly, in some cases, there is a removal from the particular social moment of the game’s release which can provide a new lens through which to view the game. This three-part defamiliarization adds up to provide an interesting, and I think, beneficial perspective from which to review a game. This is not to say that this five-years-late review is the proper way to consider a game, certainly I wouldn’t preference one method above the other in absolute terms. However, in my overall pursuit to use criticism to add meaning to games rather than to provide a buyer’s guide, then I feel this approach is just as valid as any other.

Playing Ubisoft's Far Cry 5 (FC5) in 2023 is certainly an experience unlike any other. The game follows the now well-established structure of the Far Cry series which involves a discrete chunk of territory being gradually 'liberated’ from a hostile force through individual, guerilla-style tactics. The silent player-character arrives as an outsider who works with locals to unite a resistance and turn the tide on the enemy forces. In this case the “Project at Eden’s Gate” is a Christian doomsday cult whose charismatic, hipster-styled leader Joseph Seed is bent on preparing his flock for the great collapse of society. He and his three siblings (Jacob, Faith, and John) have taken violent control of the fictitious “Hope County” set in the American state of Montana. 

Before moving any farther, we must reiterate the point here: FC5 positions a group of Christian Americans, led by a quartet of white champions as the enemy. The innumerable members of the cult are not exclusively white (indeed they are perhaps a more diverse racial group than one might expect to find in a real Montana), but these enemies are definitely not presented as a brown-skinned ‘other’ with exotic characteristics and religion. Many, many games are criticized for the facile dehumanization of the enemy through that kind of race-based othering, not least of all the Far Cry series. Whatever else follows, Ubisoft published a game where a group of American Christians are the bad guys. This should not be lost.