you've got to do better
January 10, 2025
image description: screenshot from compassionate reminders on tumblr that reads Your best is what you can do without harming your mental and physical health, not what you can accomplish when you disregard it.
1. I spent yesterday and today watching Hippolyte's video essay, The blood on our Controllers - The Complicity of the Video Games Industry in the Palestinian Genocide, it's incredibly disheartening and important to watch.
I encountered some domestic abuse earlier last week and didn't know what to do with my body. Before, I used COD mobile to get through work frustration, lack of accessibility in both work and school, and . I played for two hours straight and I knew I would play until something from that experience moved from my body to outside of it. Even though (I've told myself) that COD mobile looks different from console, two of the maps look exactly like the videos I've been seeing since October 7, 2023. When you are able to not get killed after a certain period, they give you drones and then they give you a nuclear bomb. I didn't use the nuclear bomb but that doesn't mean anything because I was playing the game. I think some people have tried to explain away playing this game for me because I'd been using it to deal with things that neither I, nor the people I've talked to, know what to do with. But I think that just gives me an easy way out. I can find other games, I can figure out other ways to deal with this.
I'm hoping to check out Assassin's Creed: Mirage and looking into this list by Game Rant (though I've heard Borderlands can be pretty anti-black so not so sure yet) but I'm more focused on trying out indie games and smaller game experiences. Before that, I want to finish my playthrough of Bury Me, My Love (I thought playing on my phone would be better, but I think since notifications stress me out on my phone it just made it harder to play), watch the documentary about it, and play Liyla and the Shadow of War. If you're wondering what's in bundles you may have purchased try looking on this site!
2. Dreams On A Pillow was fully funded!
I just want to share that because it's made me happy this week and it's good to share those things too. You can watch a dev interview through Game Devs of Color with Rasheed Abueideh (creator of Liyla and the Shadows of War) here.
3. Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology by Aaron Trammell
I'm still reading but I wanted to make a little bookmark for it in this post especially since this post is so game-heavy. I really like this:
"Recognizing how play is often experienced as torture might also help us better understand how the application of the term has been historically used to exclude BIPOC, women, trans people, and nonbinary folk from historically White and masculine spaces of play.° When play is only theorized as pleasure, minoritized’ people are made to act as “killjoys” when they describe their play experiences as torturous. The concept this book puts forth—repairing play—is meant to open the concept of play up in a way that is more inclusive. It means contending both with how play includes (through pleasure) and how play excludes (through torture). Repairing play is simultaneously a form of intellectual reparations that amends the commonsense notion that play is pleasurable and a form of play that focuses on exploring the deep, painful, and sometimes traumatic depths of life. [...] "This play that is rooted in a fundamental and toxic lie of equity, morality, education, and leisure has long excluded BIPOC people—but we know how to repair it. And we shall dance, sing, chant, and celebrate as we do."
I love this because of the idea that repair can be a joyous, necessary, and whole-making experience. I think--especially with planned obsolescence--repair isn't always seen as a worthy endeavor. I like that this text believes otherwise and sets out to prove it.
"But experiencing play and civilization as pleasures is a privilege that is at odds with the lived experiences of BIPOC people. “Civilization” has disciplined BIPOC people for centuries, it is the colonial force that put a boot to our necks, stole our land, and enslaved us. If play is productive of civilization, then by extension play must have had a hand in the evils of colonization. To read play as mere leisure is a privilege, a privilege afforded to White people. This is why stereotypes of Black people goofing off, having fun, and hanging out are read so negatively--leisure is part of White privilege."
This is especially important to me because as a multiply marginalized person, it can be hard not to internalize beliefs that you are defective because you do not respond the same way to things that the majority enjoys and praises. There is more to it, of course, but hearing someone name that play can possibly be harmful, dangerous, threatening makes room for people like me to find different definitions of play instead of chopping ourselves into little pieces to fit into a definition never meant for us.
4. Eliza by Zachtronics
I hadn't planned on it but I've spent pretty much all day playing Eliza. I had been wanting to play for a long time and was able to get it a while ago, but didn't expect it to kind of grip me immediately. In the game, you're a proxy for an AI client that's basically a therapist. You have to go through and help clients basically by being Siri's mouthpiece (I'm still playing so this summary is subject to change) and I really love it. I have a deep rooted fear of surveillance and a lot of what AI does, especially as of late, reminds me that my fear is well-founded. Well, it's not just fear--there's anger in there too. But this is all to say, I'm really enjoying the game and you might like it if you like visual novels and the plot interests you! It has me wanting to go back to another game I had been enjoying: Solace State: Emotional Cyberpunk Stories and I've been thinking about Citizen Sleeper and 1000xResist while playing as well.
Image description: screenshot from video game Eliza (2019) of two people in a coffee shop talking to each other and the main character, Evelyn, says "The moment we say things are "just data" is the moment we enable all kinds of violence."
5. My eyes are starting to cross because I may have spent a certain amount of hours on this
but I need to end it on a five and we're just gonna ignore that sudden need on this good Friday, thanks
Odds & Ends
Something that keeps me from writing/posting these is that I'll have something I want to share but not paragraphs of reflection on it yet. So I'm just gonna add these here and we can vibe (you can also choose not to vibe):
- Just letting you know that I've got a [[Reference and Recommendations]] page up! It'll be updated as I find new things but if you know me I love me a resource list so I'm having a grand old time with this thing
Destroy the systems that seek to destroy you! We're all we got!
A parting piece of media: