Death to Realism! 008
Death to Realism! 008
It is the eighth day of the eighth month of the year and I am sending this eighth issue of my email newsletter which feels highly synchronic and which I absolutely did not plan for. Anyways, if the midsummer torpor has made you forget what this newsletter is for, you can check out the first issue before reading on.
What’s New?
The shadowy and mysterious organization Domino Club has released a set of 13 games… This is another anonymous jam like the earlier 1jam I made the prototype of Flesh/Circuit for. No one’s identity is revealed yet so you’re free to play them and try to guess… he he he >:)
Otherwise, I put a brief life update on my other blog about how my day job’s been going, getting my second vaccination, sending something to a fiction journal for the first time in ages, and our household Halloween Movie Season officially starting. We watched One Cut of the Dead last week, and this week was From Beyond… both very fun but for probably different reasons.
Coming Soon
I always have my backlog list of running writing ideas, but I haven’t really worked on a new one yet. I still want to do a more in-depth article on engine “grain” or “texture” looking specifically at the feeling of RPGMaker projects, as well as some stuff about why I like copter games so much (companion to the car piece), and an extrapolation on some of the themes in The 25th Ward.
The Rec Room
- We’ve been getting very refreshing thunderstorms over the past week, at last the one thing summer is good for, and this minimalistic electronica album inspired by the long but waning summer evenings has been a perfect vibe for the past few days.
- The Misericorde demo is amazing. It’s currently only available to Patreons, but I recommend supporting it or at least keeping it on your radar for when the first chapter comes out this year.
- Marina Kittaka’s Talk on Zonelets as an open source web tool is great and also I get a shout out as apparently “the most prolific” zonelet… well, I challenge anyone to take my crown…
- In-browser Kid Pix!!!! Someone do Flying Colors next…
- We had a listening party for QUEENJAZZ’s fabulous new album BOPS in zone this week and the consensus was it’s well worth checking out.
- I’ve also been impressed to the point of jealousy with some of the work featured in the Cordite Poetry Reveiw’s issue on Games; it’s experimental in topic and approach, specific and delightful, all the qualities I get very bored and frustrated when I don’t encounter them in games writing for long periods…
I’ve Been Reading
Unknown Language is still my main read. Fictional Hildegarde’s experience of the inside of her flat primarily during a plague and then bureaucratic rapture is definitely interesting accompaniment to both Misericorde (nun media making a comeback?) but also to the situations I’ve been reading it in, namely while working from home or waiting on my vaccination.
This reflection on the first season of Chaoyang Trap offers some great thoughts on the process of writing online amidst common grifts and pitfalls, and why to do it in the first place. I found this article on getting a Dreamcast email application working to be really interesting. And you know what, I will not even say anything about the Indie Houses stuff except to link to this post that puts it better than I could and quotes Rosa Luxembourg.
I found a lot to relate to in this essay on finding hangout spaces in the neglected zones of capitalism, which is good because Roblox hype articles usually strike me as way too impressed by novelty and weirdness and overlooking how the platform itself works. Felan Parker and Matthew Perks have a new paper out that is doing valuable academic work in understanding the dynamics of indie game production. This project by Geeks for Social Change is incredibly useful and an great example of what tech focused on decentralized “rolling your own” can achieve. Finally, I enjoyed this article about the role photocopiers once held as expressive and communal arts hubs, and I think it gets at the value in practices that contribute to copying and distribution in general.
I think that’s all I have this bi-week! For new subscribers who have signed on since the last newsletter, you can check out the archive of past issues at any time!
Thank you again for your support,
Emilie