The Bound-Like

Occasionally, we discuss genre, and largely this is limited to film and literature, but there’s a particular problem with looking at the use of genre in a ludic context. In short: video games handle genre in a decidedly weird fashion, and it’s worth commenting upon.

Analysis, Gaming, Written by: CameronCameron SummersNovember 10, 2021Hylics, Earthbound, Persona 5, video games, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, Lisa: The Painful, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, She Dreams Elsewhere, Off!, Get in the Car Loser!, Yume Nikki, Citizens of Earth, GenreComment

On the Hate-Consumption of Media (Odd Columns #12)

Now, I could get all political here, and talk about how people secretly long for what they hate, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. While hating this media is part of the experience, I don’t think that we enjoy this experience because it’s what we hate — at least, not usually, — I think we do so in spite of the fact that it’s what we hate.

Analysis, Odd Columns, Written by: CameronCameron SummersMay 2, 2021television, video games, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, Hate-Consumption, Virgil, Hannibal, American Horror Story, Jean-Francois LyotardComment

This Loser is You: On Ackk Studio’s YIIK (The Nostalgia Trap, part 6)

YIIK very much wanted to be a new version of Earthbound, the seminal 16-bit RPG that was essentially John Carpenter’s Peanuts, mixed with Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. It has the same quality of self-consciously blasé psychedelia, but can’t seem to match the thematic weight of its source material.