Welcome home. There’ll be a working RSS eventually, but for now follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and help spread the word by sharing articles and posts you enjoy. We need your support to make this space thrive.

Since a lot of people have asked: We are a small colony to start. For the moment there are no open submissions and we do not have any jobs to offer; rather we’ll be reaching out to commission individual contributors on specific topics, and hopefully working with more and more people as we grow. While we are curating quite closely now, we’re listening to everyone who’s interested in participating and are excited that there’s more interest than we can manage! If you’ve already emailed me and not heard a reply, I’m doing my best!

As we’ve explicitly said, Offworld gives priority to voices we hear from less often. We want to be a source of balance in the games space,  and to show the industry’s more diverse side, so at least initially we’ll be prioritizing accordingly. Surprisingly I’ve gotten an outpouring of messages from women asking to work for free just so they can be included, and lots of the women I most want to work with (and pay) had to be asked first. Dudes, on the other hand, send me resumes and rates confidently and unsolicited. It’s always fascinating to notice who feels qualified to put themselves forward and to ask for money, and always important to remember that sometimes what it takes to diversify spaces goes beyond a shrugged shoulder and a ‘well, we invited everyone, but no women or people of color applied.’

I don’t intend to sound self-congratulatory whatsoever. I know a lot of people are very hopeful about the site and we will do our best to meet those hopes. But I also think an essential part of progress is to accept I — or anyone in a position to contribute to change, really — am going to screw up sometimes. Maybe immediately! Thanks for your patience and kindness, even if at the end of the day it’s just a little video game blog we’re talking about here.

I’m still recovering from GDC, of course; if you read my book Clipping Through you’ll know how mad and wild and wonderful and intense a week the conference can be.  Oh hey, speaking of my self-published stuff: By popular demand I created an itch.io page for both editions of my new short story, MONA, for people who prefer to buy things with PayPal.

Highlights from GDC: Raph Koster, Gordon Walton and Rich Vogel share learnings from their extensive experience with online game communities — a lot of them help explain the internet climate we find ourselves in. 11bit Studios’ Pawel Miechowski talks about the deliberate design decisions that led to This War of Mine‘s conflicting, impactful experience. Fantasy narrative design veteran Christy Marx (she worked on Jem and the Holograms!) talks about storytelling techniques for mobile games (yes, even Zynga games).

Here’s the inimitable SWERY65 with tips on how to shake up boring old design conventions, get inside the player’s head, and offer distinctly weird experiences.

For the third year I helped Brenda Romero chair the #1ReasontoBe panel, a celebration of women in the industry and their diverse contributions (we’re hoping to include more non-binary industry folks in future, too). It was an incredible experience. I think all of us doing the panel, as well as everyone who attended, deeply needed a positive, defiant space like that, needed the seven or so standing ovations for our great speakers, and the tears lots of us shed together.

Recently I was also a guest on the new Unjustly Maligned podcast with Antony Johnston. It’s a neat concept — guests come on to talk about the things they love that everyone else things are awful, and in my case I got to finally lay down all my favorite pro-Twilight pub rants in one convenient recording. Yeah! You heard me! Twilight! (Bonus that I forgot to mention on the show: Also read ‘Fredward Bound‘, this brilliant, funny, complete “new translation” of the first book).

I’ll be investing in Offworld with all my heart in the days to come, so please come and visit us. We hope you’ll be happy there.

In my last post I talked a little bit about the travels and conferences I’ve been up to. Since I’ve gotten back to my little underground home annals here in the city I’ve mostly been recharging, but there’s still some news for you!

Excitingly, MONA, my newest self-published work, is now out. It’s a short story with illustrations by the award-winning, amazing Emily Carroll, and you can check it out on Gumroad — I’ve also set up an Itch.io page for those of you that like to pay with PayPal. Mona is part urban “moral horror” story, part game criticism, and I’m super grateful to all of you who are interested in and support my experimental work.

I’m also proud to have contributed to the launch of Hopes&Fears, a sweet new culture publication, with a piece on that Law & Order episode about us. 

I also wrote a piece for Medium’s ReForm channel about Ringly, the glamorous piece of wearable tech that solves the wrong problem. It’s called “Let’s Ignore Each Other Together“, and I think you might like it.

In just about a week I head out to SF for GDC. That means it’s the one-year anniversary of the experiences that led to last year’s little book, Clipping Through. I’ll keep you posted.

Taking it a bit easy this week after travel, talks, workshops and things last week. First I was in Helsinki — you may have seen video of the talk I gave on games and “pop alternative” culture. Failing that, you might have seen some transcription of the Q&A, which has circulated widely because of the men who attempted to ‘challenge’ me with disgruntled questions.

It wasn’t their best moment.

I also went to Malta to kick off the Global Game Jam there and to give a workshop to the students on getting their work out there onto the world stage a bit more. I fell in love with the cross-disciplinary, close-knit game development community there — on a small island, having to get along and work together is the default, and people come up with unique combinations for unexpected skills.

The game that won the jury prize was a solo board game about reaching your peak in life, and how you go on after that. It’s called The Mountain and you can download the basic files to try print-and-play, or at least see how it works. I hope they go forward with it.

It was weird traveling among speaking engagements knowing there was some creepy thread about my every engagement. As a child I thought flying around the world as a “notorious criminal” would be elegant. I recorded the newest Lo-Fi Let’s Play — Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego — in the Helsinki airport, and as flight calls and rolling luggage sound went by in the background, I talked about some of these feelings.  There’ve definitely been some more Lo-Fi Let’s Plays since last we talked, including Emmanuelle: A Game of Eroticism (if you can call it that), and you can catch up on my channel whenever you like.

I heard about  a weird new ring that can tell you when “he” is going to text, among other superhero powers. I wrote about our close relationship to our smartphones and what happens when wearables solve the wrong problem for Medium’s Re:Form channel.

Finally, you may have already seen the announcement, but my next digital project, Mona, will release on Valentine’s Day. It’s a short story inspired by Silent Hill 2 with illustrations by the inimitable Emily Carroll. Like Clipping Through it’ll be released on Gumroad. Stay tuned.

Next week I’m in Belgium at the Screenshake festival, and then I’m finally coming home to New York City for IndieCade, where I play host to the Great Global Design Debate, where Mattie Brice, Nick Fortugno, Mohini Freya Dutta and Naomi Clark will debate games and cultural imperalism and more.

It’s about six thousand words of prose, starring illustrations by Emily Carroll, one of my favorite artists. You may know her wonderful recent horror anthology Through the Woods, or perhaps you remember her work from the Yawhg.  I’m thrilled and honored to get to work with her, and her visual imagination brings the undercurrent of the story to vivid life.

Mona releases digitally on Gumroad on Valentine’s day starting at $2 or pay what you want. There’ll also be a $5+ option that includes a quality audio recording of the full text by me. All proceeds go directly to me with revenue share for Emily, with a view toward helping build sustainability and an ecosystem in which I can also pay other people. Strong sales mean we’ll consider printing and selling a physical version in future. Look for the live link on the day of love.

Mark your calendars. Mona wants to meet you.

Thanks to Clipping Through sales I have been able to pay royalties to Liz Ryerson, as I hoped I would be able to, each month. This makes me happy about the possibilities of self-publishing and sustainability.

I started a column at VICE UK; one of my best pieces of the year is there, on why Desert Golfing has encapsulated 2014 for me. I also tried yet again to explain my love for Metal Gear Solid 3, and didn’t catch it all.

I launched a video series exploring and playing with vintage adventure games, called Lo-Fi Let’s Play, syndicated at Rock Paper Shotgun (I’ll resume regular weekly episodes in the new year). And I started guest-hosting the Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast, where I’ve interviewed folks like Biella Coleman, Steven Johnson and Jamie Bartlett.

I wrote an article about how a tight group of traditionalists with mainstream appetites and negative attitudes was becoming irrelevant and worth ignoring. The “gamers are dead” piece then went on to prove how absolutely correct I was — especially as the word “dead” does not appear anywhere in the headline nor in the article. Then my book sales spiked, I went in TIME magazine and on MSNBC and in the New York Times and on NPR (again).

From now on, anyone who wants to talk to me about the above events or to ask whether I am “okay” should buy me a glass of champagne first. Because of course I fucking am.

Many are still not okay and might never be okay. I hope my guide to supporting women online during harassment episodes keeps helping you help them.

I butted heads with my own nature to forcibly teach myself Netrunner this year, and documented my personal journey (with illustrations!). It’s not really a piece about Netrunner as it is about the nature of play and the self, and games and learning. Earlier this month I came in 8th out of 46 in a London Netrunner tournament.

One of my best pieces this year was about bodies, violence, presence and consent in games, led by a study of one of Merritt Kopas’ works. Speaking of masochism, the piece I wrote about Sonic the Hedgehog’s weird, undying legacy was very nearly as controversial as the “gamers are ‘dead’” piece.

I did some journalism — I like this set of interviews about the Threes issue, and also this reflection I did on the failures of game journalism in the wake of Irrational’s closure. The stuff we all knew and didn’t report. I felt “over” the “damaged but strong female character” thing.

I gave talks in Nottingham, Antwerp, Zurich, Portland OR, New York, San Francisco, Malmo and Cologne this year. I launched a game design consultancy called Agency with a colleague and we’ve been helping indies’ dreams come true.

I played a lot of really good video games. Here are my top 5. If I were making a top 10, the other 5 would be Jazzpunk, Threes!, Game of Thrones: Iron from Ice, Curious Expedition and The Sailor’s Dream.

These are just my favorites of 2014, for me. As always, links to anything I do, things I think and feel, etc, get posted on this website eventually, so if for some reason this isn’t enough articles, you can read back through [UPDATE: Critical Distance’s Year in Video Game Blogging is out now, so there’s even more games criticism from other writers available for you.]

In spite of everything I had an exceptional year, and 2015 is shaping up to be even better. Thanks to everyone who got me through the hard times. Our community of the compassionate, the curious, the playful and the proud is stronger than the extinction bursts of a thousand little aberrant nerves.

MERRY EFFING CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE xoxoxo

I’m going to tell you about the worst thing I ever did.

“Doesn’t it make your eyes all nougaty,” said Kaye. It was 1995, and we were walking around the Natick Mall. It was late. Maybe even Christmastime, peak consumer fever, and all of the decorative lights and the walls of stores and deals had begun to melt warmly together.

I felt a little weird, mostly tired, but my eyes did not feel nougat-y. Still, I said yes, because I wanted it to be true.

Fifteen minutes earlier we had been on the roof of the multi-story parking garage, in the dark. Kaye had driven a lattice of tiny holes into the crushed belly of a candy apple-red Coke can and sprinkled weed on top. There was only a little, but she lit it on fire and taught me to suck the smoke from the mouth of the can. I couldn’t tell if I got anything.

I mean, I probably didn’t.

“You don’t feel anything your first time,” Kaye told me confidently.

Kaye and I became friends in sophomore year of high school. The year before, this girl called Laura had beat me up in a graveyard, and then I had to go and get depression treatment or something, and when I got out I was a pariah to everyone but the weirdos.

I guess Kaye was a weirdo. I mean, she kind of seemed like one. Wore tight red and black plaid trousers. I didn’t understand her thing about the English flag or about willfully getting her shirts at the Salvation Army even though she wasn’t, like, in need or anything. She took shirts out of the free clothes box that they put out front. Sometimes I stuffed fake hostage letters in her locker from fictional homeless men who were angry to be left naked.

Sometimes the letters were from Prince, who was “the artist formerly known as” at the time, and whose appearance nude in the center of a flower on the cover of Lovesexy was nothing but embarrassing and hilarious to us. We made fun of Prince.

I remember her occasionally whispering: “TV Party Tonight. TV Party Tonight,” lyrically and insistently. Some punk song I didn’t know. Or “why can’t I get just one –” vulgar-type thing or another. I was pretty sheltered, so I nodded along.

Everyone was pretty sheltered where I grew up. Tiny town, tiny school. Soccer team, cows. There were well-off people, arrogant parents with custom Acuras, and they were real-estate agents. That’s the kind of town it was. My dad was black and I had thick thighs and I went to go get depression treatment, and I had a hard time making friends. Until Kaye. We just were friends.

We were matter-of-fact about the sort of bleak constraints we lived in, I think. After school we used to go to her house and and watch Oprah. Like, ironically? In the 1990s? I think I’d describe our posture as one of horrified fascination, One time when Prince was on Oprah — our two most alienating figureheads in one bizarre, sentimental, smarmy 1990s soft-focus conversation — we lost it. We videotaped it. “What do I call you,” Oprah asked The Artist gently. “Friend, I hope,” replied Prince, softly. Hysterics. Oh my god.

We would raid her parents’ freezer to see if there was any grocery-store frozen pizza, the brick-like rectangular kind that screamed American Supermarket and said “pizza for one” on the box like a doom knell.

“Pizza for ooooooone,” Kaye and I would slur, choking on laughter, sitting down to Oprah after school in her empty house. “Prinnnccccee likes pizza for oooooooone.”

Sometimes we’d read the school yearbook and supply our own sharpie captions for every other kid in our class. Girls with puffy 1980s-hangover bangs and vacant looks were deemed “technical school”. There was this younger girl who used to follow us into the wooded trenches out back of school where we’d sneak cigarettes, and she’d always ask us for cigarettes with the same prim, anxious request: “do you have one?”

DO YOU HAVE ONE, we wrote on her face.

I don’t remember anything about her parents or even seeing much of them, except that she would sometimes get her dad, whom she treated with grim disdain, to drive us places while he talked to himself.

Once we went to Wal-Mart with no intention to purchase anything. In suburbia this is radical in and of itself: Just drop us off at Wal-Mart. We pried children’s bikes off the racks and rode around the toy department in circles, shouting into Yak Bak voice recorders that Kaye had dared to pry from their blister packs. Riding in aimless circles through these wax-colored, incandescent, meaningless displays, making fun of other kids. Laughing.

In between scribbling on the yearbooks and terrorizing the mall, we dreamed of getting to cross the state line so we could shop at this massive warehouse of 1970s clothes and find the biggest, pointiest collars ever.

Once we found a polyester 70s shirt, a men’s shirt with a pointy collar, somewhere nearby. It had paisleys on it, Prince’s favorite. It was just hilarious. And we also thought it was kind of awesome and that I should wear it to school, where people mostly wore Jansport backpacks and North Face jackets and whatever soccer shorts for school sports. I was anxious about the polyester shirt, but Kaye encouraged me.

I had these awful giant tits that had defiantly erupted just a couple years before, this half-ethnic, awkwardly-pubescent body I didn’t know how to operate. I had cut off all my curly hair to try to look like Halle Berry and it didn’t suit me. The polyester shirt was tight across my breasts and pinched my soft arms, and my hair was looking ridiculously boyish that day, and everyone stared at me. Kaye said she liked the polyester shirt, but I changed halfway through the day. I didn’t make it. I gave the shirt to her and she wore it.

The status quo was everywhere, looming and whispering through the endless corridors of bruise-blue lockers. We fought it with shoplifting and trendy sodas.

We didn’t care about boys. All the boys in our school were short and had mushroom haircuts and liked Guns N Roses. Skinny little figures of hilarity, jogging around the soccer field in circles. Kaye gave me cassette tapes of punk music and we’d change the words to be about all these boys we didn’t like.

But this one boy — a tall, ruddy but pleasant-faced, nice, handsome, smart boy — he liked Kaye. I think his name was Chris, something utterly forgettable like that. He was offensively normal, effortlessly conforming. Kaye seemed truly mortified by his attention. I had never really seen her uncomfortable like that, frowning, hands dug in the pockets of her weird, tight, studded punk pants. Reciprocating, or even “giving him a chance”, seemed like a profoundly upsetting idea for her. If she saw Chris approaching, she would hide.

No one really crushed on me like that at the time. Kaye was quietly weird and interesting, and I was loudly weird and alienating, and I privately didn’t understand why you wouldn’t want some like, regular normal boy to really, really like you, and to want to go to the Ring Dance with you.

Like, why wouldn’t you go to the Ring Dance, if you could? You get your class ring made up, from one of those awful BALFOUR catalogs, and when you get your rings, you ask someone and you go to a dance. Unless you’re a weirdo and no one asks you, but — like, this nice, normal boy was asking her, and she didn’t want to go.

Why would you choose to be a weirdo, if you could help it?

I wanted to go.

At first, my going with Chris was some kind of a joke. Kaye might have even been the one to suggest it, like it might get him out of her dyed green and black hair, or something. Are you sure, I asked her. Are you sure-sure. You could go with him. He wants to go with you. I mean, I will ask him, if you’re sure-sure-sure.

I asked Chris to the Ring Dance, and he said he would go with me. His sister’s friends, who were all in my class and hated me, whispered incessantly about it, but I didn’t care. I was going to go to the mall and buy a floor-length gown, and crystal jewelry. A rhinestone barrette for my hair that cost way more than a barrette ought. I was going to get a corsage and have my picture taken.

Every weird girl who watches Ghost World thinks she is the Enid Coleslaw, but a lot of times, she’s just the Becky.

Suddenly some kind of raging crush on this normal boy erupted under my skin like a sore.

Here is when Kaye starts saying, every so often, “maybe I’ll go to the dance, too,” and I just go, “yeah, if you want. Lots of people go by themselves.”

I mean. Not lots. Just weirdos.

“I guess I won’t,” Kaye starts saying. “I don’t have anything to wear. I don’t like dresses. I don’t have a skirt.” And I just go, “yeah, I guess you have to have a dress or a skirt.”

I remember her asking me “can you help me pick a skirt” and me, what, not answering? She brought a long, ragged-hemmed jersey skirt to school, scavenged from her older sister’s abandoned closet, and she was so uncomfortable as she held it up against herself and said to me, “maybe this one will be okay,” hoping for my approval.

“I don’t think it’s fancy enough,” I told her. She said yeah, and she didn’t want to go to the dance anyway. I knew she didn’t want to go, and I couldn’t understand why she kept asking about skirts all month.

Two days before the dance I had everything laid out in my room, my long black glittery dress and my jewelry still pinned to its cardstock, and she called me. Maybe she could go together with me and Chris. It would be the three of us. Would that be okay, and could I ask him.

I told her I’d think about asking him, and I hung up the phone and cried, bodily sobs.

My mom told me she thought it’d be fair of me to tell Kaye that I’d spent a long time preparing for the dance, and that it was a dance for couples and that I didn’t want to be part of a trio. I mean, I was the one that went to the mall and picked out everything and prepared everything and Kaye just kind of had that one skirt. I mean, she didn’t like that guy. She didn’t like wearing dresses. She didn’t like being normal.

I told her no.

I could have gotten anything I wanted engraved on my class ring, but I selected the school sports mascot and the school color.

My parents took a picture of me and Chris in front of the fireplace in our living room. Rhinestone barrette in my finger waves. Cluster of flowers pinned to my wrist. He had brought the corsage for me, in a little box. Picked it out for me (his mom had helped him pick it).

I don’t remember anything about the Ring Dance, except that Chris hung out with his friends and we didn’t talk.

After that, Kaye avoided me. She wouldn’t say she was mad, she wouldn’t say how she felt, but she wouldn’t speak to me again. She began spending all her time with this girl with limp hair who only ever wore Nine Inch Nails shirts.

I did the wrong thing. I did the worst thing. You don’t feel anything, your first time, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t in you.

Whenever you want to talk about being an outsider, about being a rebel, about girls in front, ask yourself are you sure. Are you sure-sure-sure.

I find little pieces of her online even today and they make my heart hurt, because she is still her (“Favorite music: Dokken; favorite book: Dworkin”). But what would I say? This was more than half of our lives ago.

Be sure, with each other. There are things you can’t take back.

[Double Dare Ya! is available through One Beat Zines.]

It’s a bit tough to explain: each author (Kieron Gillen, Chris Avellone, James Moran, Zoe Quinn, Ian Livingstone and I!) is one-on-one with a user, and we’re writing them the text game as they play it (ends up looking a bit like this!) Each of us writes a basically similar set of puzzles and circumstances, though they evolve in our own way, and there’s a room of people watching the games play out live. When someone’s turn ends with the game, the next player tries to get a little further.  I could have done it for hours.

It makes me sad how few of your average game players today have the vocabulary required for text adventures. I wrote about that in some more depth at the Guardian recently as I covered this year’s Interactive Fiction competition — learn about the medium and try some of the games!

You absolutely need to play through Creatures Such As We — it’s a space dating sim about space dating sims, the game industry and what players want from narrative games. Yes, it’s about all those things, and it’s very touching. If you like Mass Effect and things like that you mustn’t miss this!

One of the reasons I do my Lo-Fi Let’s Play video series is to try to keep the art and structure of adventures and verbal games alive. With a little help from Shut Up & Sit Down‘s Quintin Smith, I recorded a Halloween special, my first full-length playthrough! It’s The Colonel’s Bequest — readers enjoyed the episode about it so much I decided to show the whole game.

Here’s an interview I did about Curious Expedition, the wonderful exploring roguelike by some former Spec Ops: The Line creators. I’m so excited about this game.

I was on MSNBC talking about that thing and having my name pronounced wrong.

I’m going to be the host of the Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast for a little while, which is super exciting! In our latest episode, we talk about the ‘dark net,’ creepypasta, the future of AI (scary) and more!

I interviewed two creators of new social issue games that tackle the challenges of standardized education and the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical industry.

At Ravishly, Jetta interviewed me about games, my books and my work, and what cocktails I would design for specific video game situations.

Finally, as I sometimes do, I tried to write about my most-loved video game, Metal Gear Solid 3, at VICE for its anniversary. I still never manage to say it all.

I did a new Lo-Fi Let’s Play at Rock Paper Shotgun. The Colonel’s Bequest is one of my favorite adventure games, and it’s perfect for October, when — let’s be real — spooky manors are in. I’m seriously considering recording a full-length video of a scary old game as a Halloween present for you, and that game is one of the candidates!

As Twin Peaks is set to return in 2016, I wrote an article about the series at Boing Boing, in search of a modern context for it. Why did my generation suddenly turn around and get ‘into’ it? What’s its role in a television (and social) climate where we don’t so readily see small-town police as ‘good guys’ anymore?

Twine creator Chris Klimas never expected the revolution in game creation the tool would launch. Here, we talk about the beta of version 2.0 and what’s next — including ways to reach even more people and public computers.

Last year I got very into A Dark Room, and creator Doublespeak Games has a new puzzle sure to keep you nurturing a single browser tab. I did an interview with creator Michael Townsend about his work, and his fascination with the supply chain.

Buying Clipping Through, my book about the games industry, is currently the best way to support me and my colleague Liz Ryerson, who designed the cover and contributed an afterword. At a time when most women have to talk themselves into feeling like it’s worth it to do this work, I gotta be honest — money starts to become more compelling than ‘you’re doing the right thing!’ If you want to hear an audio chapter of Clipping Through before you buy, my colleague Ann Scantlebury helped me record one at RNIB Talking Book Studios.

However, I’m doing great, and I appreciate all the support. Here is some more exciting news — I’m going to be joining the Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast in the coming weeks, beginning as a contributor with a view toward hopefully becoming a presenter soon. So there’ll be yet another venue where we can find each other.

Over the past month or so I’ve been in TIME, on NPR, talked at two conferences, my criticism and my editorial stance reached the New York Times, The Week, and many others. Ultimately I think the episodes of the last several weeks will be viewed by history as an important turning point in conversations about games and tech culture — and that I and  the people and causes I care about will only have more opportunities as a result of all this in the end.

Video games are used to covertly advance the political agendas of arms manufacturers.

The aggressive marketing of capitalist war games is an inspiration to the U.S. military, which could take a page out of games marketing’s book in order to push unpopular ideas on the public.

Games like Littleloud’s Sweatshop or Molleindustria’s Phone Story are forbidden from Apple’s mobile storefronts, because they question (arguably deservedly) the ethics of manufacturing operations in impoverished areas.

This site and this one are just a couple of the sites game developers can pay for reviews that make unproven promises to improve games’ positioning on mobile storefronts.

Developers who invest in design and publishing on mobile storefronts can expect to have free, unsanctioned clones of their games steal their revenue and come ahead of the original on charts with no action taken from the companies that own those storefronts.

YouTubers have and continue to accept money to put games before their fervent consumer audiences and are not meaningfully obligated to disclose those relationships. They can then occupy leading curation spaces on a major storefront like Steam, Currently Steam curation’s discoverability algorithms mean the most powerful forces — many of whom, again, earn money from some game developers and not from others — only become more powerful.

The labor practices of the traditional game industry are exploitive and abhorrent. The industry’s historical production model involves staffing up, demanding extreme work weeks, and then letting go of the ‘excess’ talent after a product ships. Speaking out against these conditions is socially sanctioned, and developers who speak to the press at any time other than when marketing wants them to risk being fired.

An entire product and studio network — and by extension, a regional economy around games — can tank because of political posturing, and there is no accountability nor information provided to ameliorate the human collateral damage.

One of the U.S.’ most long-running and successful print game publications is owned by one of the world’s best-known game retailers, and few of the magazine’s consumers seem aware of what, if any impact that relationship might have.

In the name of objectivity, the consumer-facing games press largely releases material on a mutually-agreed upon set of terms and schedules dictated by game companies. It routinely accepts travel arrangements to tour studios and look at in-development games on financial obligation to those game companies and on those companies’ terms. Attempting to subvert this process by inserting personal opinion is viewed as ‘bias’.

In many of the above cases even when disclosure is obligated and made, disclosure does little to purify the overall effect on the climate and its perspectives.

Despite this, only the games press exists to question these ethical problems and attempt to inform the consumer. No one would care otherwise.

Women in games are routinely abused, bullied and harassed while their professional community, and the industry’s largest companies, tend to remain silent. Interrogating this culture or attempting to advance this conversation can result in censure or punishment.

Not currently ethical concerns: Women’s sex lives, independent game developers’ Patreons, the personal perspectives of game critics, people having contentious or controversial opinions, who knows who in a close-knit industry (as if one could name an industry where people don’t know each other or work together).

It’s been a very busy month — I gave a talk at XOXO in Portland,  then went directly to Zurich to talk at Ludicious and serve on the international competition jury.  I didn’t know much about the Swiss game development scene til now — it’s unique to see an indie culture that’s sort of sprung up fully formed, as Switzerland has no heritage of traditional game studios. I spoke to some journalists there and learned the main gripe people have about Swiss indies is they care too much about art and not enough about making money. Interesting!

Of course, I wrote this, and then I was in TIME, and on Grantland’s amazing Girls in Hoodies podcast, and on National Public Radio, and of course I’m all finished talking about that.

Lo-Fi Let’s Plays continue every week at Rock Paper Shotgun — the latest one is the crude but pure Man-Eng, Master of Evil, although I’m pretty pleased with how the Neuromancer one served.

My Vice column continues; newest one is about the ‘self’ in games, and the unique sensation of watching my boyfriend make himself a very lovely Destiny avatar.

At Gamasutra, I spoke to Bennett Foddy about his 16-player deathmatch Speed Chess. As usual, he is full of great ideas — especially when it comes to what game designers can learn from the Momofuku cookbook.

With all these long flights, I finally had the time to invest in teaching myself Crusader Kings 2. I finally became the King of Ireland, which is immensely satisfying I also played through most of the endings for Hatoful Boyfriend — Laura Hudson’s piece on it says basically what I would say.

Merritt Kopas’ new little game Dee’s Big Night is great, especially with YOUR ASSHOLE DAD’S CASTLE IS BACK AGAIN as companion reading. The Lion’s Song is also a cute, atmospheric little work.

If there really was such a thing as universal collusion among the games press, I would hope it conspires to make Justin Smith’s Desert Golfing the game of the year 2014. Wouldn’t that just be the best, under the circumstances. It could happen.