Death to Realism! 019
Death to Realism! 019
Greetings again! January seemed to fly by. If you need a refresher on the origin & nature of these bi-weekly updates, check out the first issue before reading on.
What's New?
I always find the first month of the year (at least!) to be a slow on-ramp to deciding what I'm even going to try to do in the forthcoming year. I've honestly just been keeping my head down at the day job and hoping to gradually decide and/or stumble upon the stuff I want to work on next. This makes the weeks go weirdly fast! So apologies if this update is not super lively!
Coming Soon
This is still much the same stuff as I mentioned last time, I'm working on revising my novel and also revising/expanding on some old writing for a critical piece that will be published somewhere not my blog sometime this year (sorry for vagueness LOL). Hopefully by the next time one of these updates rolls around I will also have a concrete theme and dates for the traditional Mid-February Writing Jam!! so beloved by all, now in its SIXTH year.
The Rec Room
Congratulations to Phil Salvador for joining the Video Game History Foundation as their Library Director! Library, archives and curatorial staff are so important to the management of any cultural collection and yet so many games oriented orgs seriously lack them, so I hope this represents a sea change. Phil is also just a very cool guy and recommended a place with great cannolis after pinch hitting as the witness to my town hall wedding, so naturally I'm just glad for him in general!
Wordle-likes have also been springing up since last week, I particularly like this one, which tries to evade giving you any letters as long as possible. I've only gotten it down to seven guesses, and so haven't "won" by standard Wordle rules... yet.
I also love the work featured as well as the detailed and sweet setting the Game Boy Camera Gallery is contained in.
The new Cate Le Bon album is coming soon too.
I've Been Reading
Over the past week I finished up Gaming the Iron Curtain, which I highly reccomend. It's a really inspiring example of what historical writing and research on videogames can look like, and one of the most important things about it is that it takes a completely non-commercial area as its norm. In the process, it illustrates how much gaming history, as it's done in other contexts, is beholden to major corporations and financially successful series overall, and what kind of histories and practices are totally missed by such a focus. It makes me wish I still had access to more research collections and resources... maybe someday.
Some fun articles this time: testing a edutainment chemistry kit software by using it to try and make a bomb, to impressive results, some pertinent thoughts on Wordle min-maxing versus playing (anything, twitter, the internet, etc) for the joy of it, another review driving me closer and closer to the wicked embrace of a Benedetta camrip, and conflict of interest disclosure: I think my husband is really good at writing about games. These are all pretty short and fragmentary, but like the best sentences or paragraphs of a theory text, give me just enough to take out one part of my thinking and snap it back in the other way around.
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! And I hope you all had a nice holiday and are doing well in the new year.
Thank you again for your support,
Emilie