One of the greatest achievements of the emergence of indie gaming is the sheer diversity of themes, genres, stories and characters that have come with it – and this diversity is slowly spreading to the AAA space. Where games for a long time catered to the power fantasies of gamers and problems were both created and solved with big guns and other deadly weapons, these days there’s much more of a wide range of games that let you run restaurants with a friend, experience giddy romances with a whole bevy of dream daddies, overcome anxiety and impostor syndrome, escape dystopias, or try not to lose your soul working as an immigration officer or the editor in charge of a news network. It is exciting to see developers trying to find ways in which games can say something about topics other than “What happens when you shoot a big monster in the head until it dies?”
hellblade
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #16: 22 July by Paul Greengrass
In the November episode of the podcast, Mege and Matt are returning to the island of Utøya to take a look at Paul Greengrass’ filmic take on the massacre. How does Greengrass’ film compare to Erik Poppe’s interpretation (which we discussed last month)? What does it bring to the table? And can it do justice to the events that happened on Utøya on 22 July 2011? We also hear of a near-mythical face-to-face encounter in the Virtual Reality version of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and of the German documentary The Cleaners, which tells of the content moderators scouring social media for inappropriate content and the price their work exacts.
Further travels with my skull
I remember the sun piercing the clouds, the sound of waves lapping my boat. I remember the feel of Dillion’s skull hanging from my belt. I remember the staked and flayed bodies and the shapes, half-monstrous, half-familiar, lurking in the fog.
Most of all I remember the voices.
What is new, though, is that the world isn’t contained by a rectangle of light in front of me. No, Helheim surrounds me, it envelops me. Hell is wherever I turn.
They create worlds: Hellblade – Senua’s Sacrifice
One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.
In the past, They Create Worlds has mostly featured games that create striking worlds for us to traverse and explore, worlds for the players to inhabit. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice does this too, but it is more concerned with interior worlds, and it brings them to life with an intensity that I’ve not yet seen in games.