Our final day of awards presentations kicks off with one of our two most competitive categories.

CRITICISM

This category embodies any work that applies a critical lens towards gaming. Essays, reviews, thinkpieces, and more are covered here. Our definition of crit is broad and varied.

Dia Lacina’s essay on how the original Animal Crossing starts you off as an outsider in a world that exists independent of the player, and how subsequent games change that with increased player agency, is certainly criticism.

So, too, is Haru Nicol’s application of film techniques paired with a broader discussion of the context of the political messaging in Ghost of Tsushima and its muse Akira Kurosawa.

Ewan Wilson argues we don’t need need videogames to show us visions of an apocalyptic future: It’s already around us. The notion of “ruin lust”, the process of documenting the decay of modern architecture and urban decay, is explored through references to photographers covering the scene and games like Night in the Woods that lean into a “contemporary Gothic” motif.

At Vice, Austin Walker tackles Watch Dogs: Legion, its approach to constructing a crew (“Play As Anyone”!), and its stumbles in landing a coherent message that fits either within Ubisoft’s own past of saying games aren’t political or in the context of 2020 writ large:

How does one break a neighborhood free from “oppression”? Deface a few billboards. Sabotage a weapons factory. Knock out a really bad person. Complete three tasks like these in a district and you’ll unlock a special liberation mission, which are empty-calorie fun that somehow result in city-wide fireworks and celebration claiming that the neighborhood is now “defiant,” despite the fact that nothing has changed.

Fascism comes in many forms. Yussef Cole’s exploration of the changing face of fascism in Star Wars Squadrons challenges readers to consider the “recent departure and diversification for a previously homogeneously white Imperial military” while applying it to modern cases ranging from the backlash of there being a “black Stormtrooper” in The Force Awakens to Kamala Harris’ debate performance against Mike Pence, to say nothing of Harris’ own political legacy.

While the problematic nature of Black and brown folks proudly participating in an organization steeped in bold-faced fascism may be superficially self-evident, Squadrons also finds compelling ways to highlight and address it. Squadrons spends much of the Imperial side of the plot unraveling the warring ideologies duking it out within the remains of the Empire. At several points throughout the game, Kerrill’s group runs up against the calcified holdovers of the Empire’s past glory; old white men who look directly transplanted out of the late-’70s casting calls the original trilogy’s olive-suited bureaucrats were staffed from, down to their posh accents and thinning blond coifs.

At Can I Play That?, Courtney Craven’s PS5 review caught our attention for the detail in which it dives into the menus, controller, and system features. Elise Favis’ review of Spiritfarer zeroes in on the narrative focus around death and the game’s strong characterization.

Monti Velez, meanwhile, interrogates the JRPG tropes and mechanics that can be off-putting to some, though the nominated piece hits its stride when it considers Velez’s own story of coming to America as an immigrant and the lingering question of “is it going to happen today?”. In other words, is today the day I get deported? The comparison is deftly woven between the United States and the story of Hamako found in the game.

At RPS, Natalie Flores highlights the ways in which Latinas are depicted in media broadly and the FPS genre more specifically: Hypersexualized, crime-oriented, and with accents that don’t match the diversity of Latin America and the Caribbean.

‘Nuance’ is the word that comes to mind when our team consider Gita Jackson’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales review.

It’s nuanced in how it approaches the game’s mechanics:

On the whole, I found the combat to be almost perfectly balanced, a rare feat for any game. Every time I lost a fight, I knew it was because I hadn’t exploited the weaknesses I could have, didn’t dodge that bullet at the exact right moment

The review is nuanced in its understanding of New York as written by a resident:

The game is so devoted to it’s picture perfect material recreation of New York City that it neglects the emotional reality of the city. 

Above all, though, Jackson’s nuance is most evident in the analysis of the world and where it disconnects from reality. Those disconnects exist everywhere from the gentrification of Harlem (in game) to the view of the NYPD to the game’s willingness to lay blame on supervillains while ignoring the malicious intent of city hall.; and yet, there is much to be celebrated, from the way the bodega is situated, to the inclusion of a deaf character, to being a story about grief. There’s far too much for us to lay out in one graf, so suffice to say Jackson’s lived experience permeates every aspect of the criticism, and the review is stronger for it at every turn.

We’ll leave you with this powerful bit of writing:

Miles Morales is a black man, and an avatar of black New York, but he hasn’t experienced the same New York that so many black people have. As fun as it is to be Miles, to be the geeky black superhero I have always wanted to exist, the game cannot reconcile the differences between its New York and the one I see outside my window. That failure would be understandable, but what is unforgivable is that it does not even make the attempt.

It’s the second-last day of #TheGoodies2020 and we’re dropping two(ish) new awards!

ACCESSIBILITY & INCLUSION

This award represents works that make gaming a space for everyone.

It’s for pieces like Ben Sledge’s that highlight a visually impaired streamer’s approach to hunting shiny Pokémon.

Tony is partially sighted, so while he can see some shapes, he struggles to read the game’s text and make out colours – especially when a shiny Pokémon doesn’t look that different from its regular counterpart. […] So, he shiny hunts by sound. When a shiny Pokémon appears, it sparkles and glows. However, most players won’t notice that these sparkles also let out a unique noise. That’s what Tony is listening for, and that’s how he knows if he’s found a shiny Pokémon or not.

It’s for videos that call out publishers who hide their accessibility settings behind NPCs and progressions and for articles that celebrate the ways in which games–in this case Hades—bake accessibility into their design:

Think of how we see people play video games on TV: furiously mashing buttons on a tightly clenched controller for a few tense moments before YOU DIED appears on screen. By comparison, I can’t safely button mash (or hold a controller that tightly). But Hades has added weapons like Exagryph, the Adamant Rail, a rifle style weapon that satisfyingly rat-tat-tatts out shells with one long press of a button, or fires rockets with another. Unlocking it made a major difference to my ability to stay in the game.

Liana Ruppert’s “Epileptic PSA” on Cyberpunk 2077 was so influential the developers responded by releasing an update to address the issue. It’s unfortunate Ruppert had to suffer a major seizure to make such a difference but she did before the devs responded: She kept playing and turned her PSA into a mini-guide on what to watch out for and when.

At Can I Play That?, Courtney Craven’s PS5 review caught our attention for the detail in which it dives into the menus, controller, and system features.

At The Washington Post, Grant Stoner tackles accessibility consultants and their oft unseen work, especially focusing on the techniques that are intentionally invisible: turning on subtitles by default, reducing/removing button mashing sequences, and single-stick aiming are but a few examples.

Ben Bayliss builds on Stoner’s work, taking a deep dive into the accessibility work done in The Last of Us Part II, through interviews with the consulting team. It’s an article that does two things we appreciate: It highlights the specific people behind the work–people whose names we might otherwise think to ask about–and through their voices it reveals the systems and processes inherent in the game’s accessibility.

“I think the bar now has been raised for other development studios to follow the same example,“ Lane said. “Gaming should always be a challenging experience. However, it should never be a frustrating experience.“ He mentioned that there’s always a mutual determining factor whenever he has discussions with other disabled gamers. “That is that we never fully get to enjoy the gaming experience because of the anxiety of making sure that we are able to use every function of the controller, hear different cues, see everything on the screen, read descriptions, control characters or experiences. This list can go on for days. It shows the need to make sure the gaming is inclusive for all.

Over at Vice, Gita Jackson reports on The Sims 4’s black players and their campaign to see themselves in the game. Those players have had to heavily mod the game to get features that resemble their appearance including darker skin tones, improving the “ashy” appearance of the ones that exist as a result of a lack of undertones, and a limited selection of afro-textured hair.

Black Simmers have been asking for more and better skin tones since the game’s launch. The on and off campaign really took off when protests against police brutality in the United States took off in May. At the time, many corporations, including video game companies, made statements committing to better serve their black customers. Electronic Arts, the company that currently owns the Sims franchise, made such a statement, and so did the Sims development team. “The Sims is committed to creating the world as it should be, one that is kinder, more connected and built on representation and inclusion,” the The Sims‘s development team’s statement said.

ORIGINAL REPORTING

The award for Original Reporting is always competitive and always manages to exclude more people than we care to: There is a glut of great reporting out there that deserves recognition. A number of those pieces have been nominated in other categories and we hope you’ve engaged with them.

At Uppercut, Cian Maher traces the rise of the Polish indie scene in the wake of the runaway success of The Witcher 3. It’s a 40 year history that includes games like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, This War of Mine, and, of course, Cyberpunk 2077 and now potentially hundreds of development studios in the small country.

Khee Hoon Chan also looks at a group of indies though this time it’s the challenges present for Chinese developers under the microscope. China in many ways feels late to the party surrounding video games–explained by Chan as a combination between the tumult of the ’70s and a cultural focus on studying in the teenage years. The intricacies of applying for a license to sell a game in China are detailed here in extraordinary detail and the need for Chinese studios to market to an international audience is laid bare.

Over at USGamer, Jeffrey Rousseau asks “Where Are Our Black Gaming Journalists?” The answer isn’t clear cut but the blend of analysis and use of interview subjects is illuminating. While unpacking the factors that lead to the absence of black journalists (both at large and in gaming generally) Rousseau points out there are many more black creators on places like Twitch.

“It’s no surprise that black talent is deciding that journalism is not for them or feel they won’t be welcome or the workplace will be difficult,” says Ramanan. “The talent is there, it just needs an opportunity. Editors have that power and so do staff writers who can bend the ear of the people hiring or taking pitches.”

Rousseau ends on what he describes as a somewhat pessimistic note, saying that the burden continues to be on black creators and journalists to make spaces. It shouldn’t be. Consider this a call to action.

The games industry more broadly has issues with opening itself up to more people: Jason Coles looks specifically at the obstacles working class people facing breaking into the industry while providing (via interview subjects) some ideas on how to overcome those roadblocks.

It is the Temtem player community that pushed Crema Games to be more inclusive in its language, reports Astrid Johnson at Gayming Mag. The challenge Crema Games faced was in creating more than the standard he/him and she/her pronouns in languages such as French which rely heavily on masculine/feminine constructs. The community responded in kind with ideas and suggestions.

Ash Parrish’s profile of Cynthia Harrell, the voice of the song “Snake Eater” from the Metal Gear game with the same subtitle, is both fascinating and touching. The relative obscurity of the performer, how she got her start singing, her relationship to Konami, and the games she plays are all tidbits we can’t get out of our minds.

Nicole Carpenter’s blistering reporting on the accusations of racism and sexism being commonplace at Cards Against Humanity involves interviews with nearly 30 former staffers, contractors, and people with knowledge of the operation. The piece plainly describes the game, the allegations, the working conditions in the writers’ room, and more. Updates are appended throughout–the story was evolving and interview subjects clarifying the information they provided–in a clear manner. It’s fantastic reporting. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Employees and friends who described having challenged Temkin on ideas — even minor ones — said they felt they were risking retaliation from the Cards Against Humanity co-founder, and in some cases, believed that they had been retaliated against. Oftentimes, these sources said, the retaliation was subtle. Four former employees and two colleagues said Temkin might stop speaking to the person who’d challenged him for days or weeks, or leave them out of decision-making meetings. Three former employees said he would yell at other employees, and that women on staff often spoke on Slack about the most private places to cry after these encounters with Temkin. Three former employees told Polygon that at least one woman on staff had a “safe word” with Temkin for when he got too hostile.

It’s unfortunate that our winner is also about allegations of abuse and misconduct, this time at Ubisoft, as Gamasutra reporter Chris Kerr outlines the numerous and significant allegations against high-ranking members of the company. The reporting cites more than a dozen sources detailing rampant [h]arassment, homophobia, sexism, racism, bullying, and manipulation”.

The allegations name creative director Jonathan Dumont, quest director Hugo Giard, associate producer Stephane Mehay, executive producer Marc-Alexis Cote, and others at the Canadian studios. Ubisoft’s other global locations aren’t spared from the allegations.

Another suggested there was “a complete and utter lack of support from HR, to say nothing of broken trust,” and claimed those working in HR would actively spread gossip and rumor. “There was no proper infrastructure for reporting, let alone dealing with cases of sexual assault, harassment, misconduct, or other abuse in the office,” they continued. “When critiqued about the lack of official support, they went as far as saying they didn’t have anything in place because that would ‘imply we needed it,’ and that it would reflect badly on them.” 

Ubisoft’s denials, claims about “making tough decisions”, five point plan, and more are put in the line of fire by Kerr, who continues to press Ubisoft at every juncture.

Dumont’s behavior was an open secret, according to our sources. People complained about his combustive style, but management never offered a concrete solution beyond forcing him to apologize or telling him not to interact with the writing staff directly. Dumont might’ve been the perpetrator, but Ubisoft management were complicit.

The “mafia-like” culture of “fear and oppression” at Ubisoft is a black-mark on the developer, its management, and its releases. One can hope Kerr’s reporting has made a difference.

#TheGoodies2020 nears its conclusion with the second last day of reveals.

eSPORTS

When it comes to the eSports and competitive scene we continue to see an evolution of in depth reporting and analysis that aligns the space closer to a traditional sports package.

We saw this as the Overwatch League expanded its own coverage to mirror what we’d expect on a site like nhl.com. Aron Garst’s interview with Nero of the Guangzhou Charge touches on the impact of COVID-19 on the OWL and the unique position Nero has as the only American playing for one of the Chinese teams.

Critical analysis of plays and personnel moves are common in traditional sports and 2020 assured us that same level can be expected in eSports. When the Vancouver Titans parted ways with their roster we turned to Emily Rand to understand what went down and how. Rand is, in our estimation, the best in the game with this type of analysis, and we continue to follow that analysis to the realm of League of Legends.

Clash Royale and other Supercell games have their own competitive scene, writes Elizabeth Henges, who pulls back the curtain on the scene. That mobile games could translate to competitive gaming is fascinating, especially given the nature of game-changing microtransactions, though the change of direction is largely driven by fans. It’s a cool look at a segment that’s easy to overlook.

At theScore eSports, a CS:GO event that creates “shockwaves” throughout the scene in India, with useful context about the rush to corner the market in the country, is placed in the spotlight. If you’ve ever seen reference to word.exe and not understood it, this video will explain the meme, and the implications for cheaters everywhere.

Competitive metagames emerge across all eSports and certain team compositions or combos effectively become the norm: Fox only, Final Destination, yadda yadda yadda. Luke Winkie profiles the players who intentionally play outside the meta:

Captain Falcon demands the ability to line up and execute combos with subatomic precision; to see the very lines of code on Final Destination. As far as Miller is concerned, there is no sensation more rewarding in Smash Bros. than winning with Captain Falcon. He refuses to ever deviate from the middle of the tier list, no matter how overtuned the next DLC character may be

The discussion isn’t just about Super Smash Bros., either, so if you’re looking for off-meta play in LoL or Hearthstone you can find that as well.

Eric Van Allen, meanwhile, takes us for a trip down memory lane as he talks all things Marvel vs. Capcom 2, from jamming quarters down the slot to unlock characters to fighting-games serving as the lifeline that kept the last vestiges of the arcade heyday alive.

Over at Kotaku, Nathan Grayson’s reporting on an eSports team that signed an 8-year-old had us raising our eyebrows throughout. Is it even legal? If there’s a loophole there’s a way.

Deen’s contract, Gallagher said, is “confidential,” but in short, it does not specifically require him to do anything. If he doesn’t show up to weekend practice with other, still-unannounced members of Team 33, he will apparently face no consequences. If he is spending too much time gaming and not enough time on his schoolwork, there’s an option for his mother to break the contract entirely.

Ok then.

The reality of eSports is that it’s work. Whether it’s the dubious nature of offering minors contracts or forcing relocation to shared accommodation, as a business and as an employer, eSports requires careful observation to ensure people aren’t being taken advantage of, and that workers’ rights continue to improve.

eSports related injuries are only starting to be understood in the medical field, Chris Baraniuk reports, starting with the story of a competitive gamer whose wrist pain and walnut-sized lump has effectively retired her from competition.

The potential for injury–whether it’s Fortnite or Rocket League, Overwatch or Starcraft–is high. Teams should be equipped with people dedicated to managing injuries as they are in sports leagues; medicine should continue to evolve around the potential for injury; and mental health, in particular, requires immediate attention.

There are steps in the right direction: Baraniuk interviews Fabian Broich who, as Head of Performance for a team, imposes activity breaks, controlled nutrition plans, and monitors sleep. These are steps in the right direction.

It’s a piece that embodies both the challenges and opportunities inherent in eSports.

ONGOING

The ongoing coverage award is new to us: It represents coverage of commerce writing, games-as-service news, in depth of coverage of certain games and beats, guides writing, and more. It’s an imperfect and inelegant award category for the type of work that drives site traffic.

On the guides front, we appreciated the breeziness of Fanbyte‘s Yakuza: Like A Dragon guides, jumping right in to tell us what we want to know, providing useful tips in a straightforward manner:

There’s no way to know which bugs you’re going to obtain when you pick them up, but there’s a silver lining. Hamakita Park is the best place for bug catching, as there’s picking spots throughout all of the grasslands and on trees there. You can even set yourself in a specific area and just run in circles to see them spawn in real time once you mark some distance.

That’s the type of no-nonsense info we need!

At USGamer, it was Paper Mario guides that helped us through the year, and we especially appreciated the copious amount of screenshots available to help us find Toad.

We also want to highlight SuperParent’s Pokémon Sword and Shield coverage for being accessible to the youngest gamers in our households, whose guides answer any and every question a young Pokémon master may have, both with clear written instructions and helpful arrows on images. Video guides are often included as well!

When it came to playing Fortnite, the only site we trusted without question was PC Gamer, whose coverage is so comprehensive we had to hit the LOAD MORE button three times just to get back to 2020 territory. (Disclaimer: Joseph Knoop is a key part of this coverage and he is a former team member of Good Games Writing.) The range of content is stunning–there’s location guides, explainers on game modes, challenge guides, and just general news. We haven’t left December, yet, if you were wondering.

Focusing on specific games, Kenneth Shepard’s frequent essays on The Last of Us Part II are regularly among the most thought-provoking works we read each month, serving as touchstone pieces our curators discuss at our weekly meetings, with this section of a paragraph standing as one fight about months later:

In establishing what its characters believe to be forgivable, The Last of Us Part II rescinds its invitation for us as players to assert our vision of its characters that the original’s ending gave us. After years of applying our own scruples onto these characters, they finally have definitive, in-text opinions on that matter. It’s pretty characteristic of the series to present its story and views without much of an interest in what the player thinks. But just because it’s unapologetic doesn’t mean that it’s going to comfortably sit with everyone.

Patricia Hernandez dominated Fallout 76 coverage through much of 2019 and while she contributed somewhat on the topic in 2020, she largely passes the torch to Cass Marshall, though Polygon‘s combined body of work on the game is astounding.

The “Game Changers” series at GamesIndustry.biz caught our eyes and introduced us to many people and organizations worth knowing about. It’s an essential read, in our estimation, for anyone that wants to be fully immersed in the future of this industry.

Ultimately, our panel landed on Can I Play That‘s accessibility reviews, themselves able to be subdivided into categories like reviews for Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Mobility, Visually Impaired, and general accessibility.

Here’s what a section for a visually impaired review might look like:

And here’s one on the captions of a game:

While the captions generally felt comfortable to read the majority of the time, there was a rare occasion where they exceeded two lines and felt a little overwhelming. Thankfully this was, as stated, a rare occasion, and the game mostly relies on sentences that only take two lines in story dialogue, and one line for pretty much everything else.

Can I Play That? covered many of the biggest games of 2020 along with the console launches. Their reviews are clear, their audience intentionally laid out in every piece, and they are setting the standard for what coverage of games can and should look like going forward. Now to get them multiple copies of major releases so each of the aforementioned categories can be covered on one site!

Part two of our Friday night awards includes an epic pair-up.

A/V Content – Individual

“Welcome to Midgar, home to a thousand SOLDIERs, a million X-points, and a billion tonnes of steel” says Jacob Geller, in just the beginning of his introduction to his favourite video game setting in years. “Opening the door on the vista”, Geller’s tribute to the setting of FFVIIR is one the videos that stood out in 2020, a love letter to the city and its omnipresence.

GameSpot’s Audio Logs interviews are true gems but “The Feature That Almost Sank Disco Elysium” stands as one of the best we’ve seen — it’s also one of the pieces across The Goodies to drop pre-COVID lockdown in North America, so that’s something. Insights into the text system/dialogue engine and its orientation, lessons learned from tabletop gaming, the need for experimentation, and more.

Access Ability digs into the games that tuck accessibility settings behind game progression. Optional extras these are not; these are settings that make games more playable, not rewards. Examples come from Nintendo games and beyond.

Spawn on Me with Kahlief Adams creates a space for discussions on blackness and the failures of the games industry (and beyond) in supporting Black creators. This episode came in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and holds space, tackles issues head on, and doesn’t hold back, particularly in this powerful segment.

Fodlan FM involves in depth conversations around specific Fire Emblem: Three Houses characters, a game overflowing with characters and storylines that change and evolve, and the take on Ingrid is one of the more nuanced discussions. If you’re a Blue Lions loyalist this is the episode for you.

“Is a life system still relevant game design or just an antiquated relic of the arcade era?” begins Mark Brown in his award-winning video. The explanation of lives–described as permanent and temporary checkpoints–and the balanced discussion on the mechanics is top notch. While the video is ostensibly about Crash Bandicoot 4, it’s about Mario, and Mega Man, and so many games who embraced the lives mechanic just as it’s about the indies like Super Meat Boy that rejected the notion later on. There’s the middle grounds, too, which Crash Bandicoot embodies, as evidenced in games like Kero Blaster or Ori and the Blind Forest.

The production quality on the video–from the voiceover to the seamless transitions–should also be noted here.

BEST SERIES

This award is divided into A/V and strictly written components.

It should come as no surprise that in the A/V category the works that were nominated consistently create their own micro-communities both for the content and the particular niche.

Retronauts is, well, retro, and it’s consistently good at creating a sense of nostalgia for bygone eras. This episode spotlighting merch maker Numskull made us miss the ’80s. We, uh, weren’t alive then.

The Party of One podcast is an actual play podcast oriented around two-player RPGs (TTRPGs). The format lends itself to revealing more about games and their mechanics, the inspirations of developers, and potential sample runs for players. This episode is the one that first turned us on to the ‘cast.

Archipel Caravan’s orientation towards Japanese games lends itself naturally to a particular niche but we find it transcends the intended audience to tell compelling stories. This profile/interview of/with Takenobu Mitsuyoshi (and his voice) stands as one of their best but is also emblematic of what the channel creates on the regular, despite its relatively short episode order. You can catch up on everything in an afternoon.

Game Maker’s Toolkit reliably asks compelling questions, challenges our thinking, and stitches it all together in a compelling package that’s generally under 20 minutes long. Punishments/rewards and stealth mechanics were regularly featured throughout the 2020 run, and the tradition of discussing accessibility in gaming was continued.

~

On the written front, Colin Campbell’s fantastic newsletter “How Games Change The World” is a dose of positivity in a world that can use it. Positivity doesn’t capture all of what the newsletter is about, though, as stories that are simply stellar are included, and Campbell is a masterful curator whose expertise in this space we don’t take for granted. Here’s Campbell on a good day in games media.

There’s Ed Smith’s Restless Dreams compilation, which we detailed earlier in the awards, fascinates us with his longform and oft experimental dives into Silent Hill 2.

A relatively new monthly column, “Killing Our Gods” caught our attention quickly with it being described as a column “about Christianity, religion, and role-playing through a queer, Marxist, and lapsed Mormon lens.” We’ve never shied away from looking at things from a religious lens nor have we ignored criticism based on these grounds.

That Benfell doesn’t shy away from difficult subject matter works in her favour. But above all, it’s her choice in the games she applies her various lenses to, peeling back layers we hadn’t considered. Her analysis of Disco Elysium pairs that communist lens (as in, the works of Marx + Engels) with small nods to existentialism in the face of crisis and restitution:

By emphasizing that effort, especially in the face of the existential powers of the Pale and your addicted bloodstream, Disco Elysium gives voice to a quiet human hope. By the end, Harry can be at least somewhat put together, restoring what he can, and making restitution for what he cannot. It is, thankfully, not a clean redemption. There are people who Harry has hurt, who he can never reconcile with. The world remains the world. Your past remains your past. There is still good to be done.

The notion of darkness and dark hearts and an implicit battle against the light in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is used as an analogy to the treatment of queer members of religious communities:

Shedding only a single tear, Eraqus attempts to murder his children because of the evil he imagines they might become, because they are broken. It is one of the darkest moments in Kingdom Hearts, one that echoes the way queer lives are treated by many families. 

While not eligible for these awards, Benfell’s most recent installment continues to build on the series and it made our latest Weekly round-up: You can read that piece here and check out the other pieces we featured here.

Congrats to the nominees and winners in these categories!

CORRECTIONS: An earlier version of this post mistakenly referenced ‘homosexuals’, wrongly used out of context from the material we were quoting, when in fact this goes against our own style guide and best practices. We regret this error.

We’re here for the first of your Friday night awards with two fantastic works worthy of your attention.

EXPERIMENTAL FORM

This award is for works that don’t quite fit the mold of traditional games media; we don’t really know how to describe them except to acknowledge their impact on us as readers.

100 Word Gaming has been somewhat experimental in its very nature, reviving in its own way the art of magazine reviews, where a word limit was imposed by the amount of space on a given page. There’s generally no functional reason for short reviews but there are plenty of good reasons for doing so — a case of less is more. Check them out!

Our favourite piece of theirs from the past year is Waverly’s review of New Jersey Transit which takes the form of a poem. It’s a wonderful piece but watch out for the dog…

Ed Smith’s Restless Dreams project has been a font of introspection and analysis on Silent Hill 2. The ninth chapter is a doozy, tackling the dream-like world of the town, with the setup coming in the form of Smith’s own haunting nightmares. It pulls something of a bait-and-switch in that it’s the most blog-like piece of the collection thus far, and yet, the much smaller analysis hits all the harder for it.

It’s hard to put into words just how enjoyable flashgamehistory.com is as it is a visualization first and foremost with a few facts and a collection of personal stories tossed in for good measure. The central graphic highlights “the 2000 most popular Flash games on Newgrounds in chronological order” with each bubble representing a popular game whose size matches the number of times the game was played on the portal. While Newgrounds wasn’t the only game in town, it was the most prominent, and watching the number of games balloon (or bloon) upward, growing ever larger in size, evokes a certain nostalgia.

Then the crash happens. By 2017 the visual is a barren wasteland. Flash is dead — but its final blow wouldn’t come until this past December. This is one project that will keep its memory alive and, we suspect, be a source of information for future researchers.

GAMEDEV

This award is given to a piece that captures the process of game development; uniquely, it’s an award where actual developer blogs and the like are actively considered alongside reporting.

In this case, those works include:

• Arseny Kapoulkine’s review of his own body of work across eight years working at Roblox
• Robert Yang’s examines his own game–one based on a 2015 viral video–through the lens of the uncanny valley
• Environment artist Ryan Benno takes us to Disney Land to learn his tradecraft through a whole other lens

Each of those pieces is instructive in different ways and each taught us something new about game development.

At Nintendo Life, Damien McFerran looks back at Star Fox Command with a trio of the development team from Q-Games, providing a glimpse of what it’s like to work with Nintendo as a partner.

The final pieces listed here have all been nominated in other categories including Eric Van Allen’s inside blaseball (we’re not apologizing) at Blaseball in the Sports Category and Matt Leone’s oral history of Street Fighter 3, nominated in the Extended Form category. Both are formidable pieces with no shortage of nuggets worth your time.

The final work nominated in another category–Original Reporting–is Jason Coles’ industry analysis of what it takes to “break into” the games industry. Going to events, accessing entry-level jobs, and weaving your way through the application process is the standard fare on offer that we expect from pretty much any industry. Coles digs in, though, and through well-placed interviews makes the case that there’s a high barrier to entry, though not so high that steps can’t taken:

As Nida Ahmad, UX designer at Netspeak, puts it: “Getting in the industry is expensive. Playing lots of games, keeping up to date with events and attending, going to conferences… Many don’t understand how expensive it is trying to get into the industry, expensive in terms of money, effort and mental health. When you don’t have access to resources to start with, it can be tough.” […]

The UKIE census showed that 62% of people in the industry have come from a background with a parent in a managerial job, which shows that many of those without that kind of safety net simply can’t afford to risk it. It could also just be that those who are working-class or underclass simply don’t realise they could get a job in the games industry. Without exposure to it or savvy parents, it’s hard to know what you’d even be doing, though hopefully, things like tutorials on YouTube and more open threads on Twitter can help with that issue.

Congratulations to the winners!

It’s a new day for #TheGoodies2020 and a new batch of awards. This is a celebration and we’re here to have fun, share some amazing works, and revisit great pieces from the past year. Here goes…

TABLETOP

A discussion on good games writing isn’t complete without considering tabletop writing. The worlds found in these games, along with their sundry mechanics, leave an indelible mark on gaming at large. We don’t read as much tabletop writing as we’d like but we are happy to see it becoming a topic covered by various sites, in gaming and beyond, and these nominees reflect that placement.

At Vox, we see this in their Halloween/Witch event coverage, as Emily VanDerWerff tackles Great American Witch RPG. It’s a strong piece that’s accessible to tabletop aficionados and newcomers alike; it tackles topics like appropriation and crafting your own personal narratives. It’s the rare niche piece on a site that is known for its political coverage but whose entertainment section is led by authors with strong voices and unique perspectives.

Its sister site has one of the best tabletop reporters around in Charlie Hall. His definitive history of MTG‘s Commander format, a sprawling long read chock full of great reporting and authentic interview responses, deserves a serious look by any fans of TCGs and CCGs.

Our panel took a different approach in nominating Shelly Jones and Tanya Pobuda’s analysis of gender-inclusive language in various rulebooks, buoyed by the expertise of the authors and their life experiences, rich in critical analysis and fodder for future work:

How does representation, linguistic and otherwise impact board gaming? Game rulebooks can determine how players experience a game. Rulebooks can even determine whether a player ever plays a game at all. These guides can instead act as a kind of gatekeeping mechanism; poorly written, confusing and vague rulebooks can break immersion and impede the enjoyment of a gaming experience. Badly written rulebooks can necessitate a need for players to take matters into their own hands, constructing errata, additional frequently asked questions (FAQs) and house-rule variants to solve issues in the rulebooks. These issues can literally exclude players from engaging with the game at all.

It is not surprising that a tabletop focused publication scored two nominations in this category. Jamie Taylor’s playthrough of Pandemic sets the stage for an interview with an epidemiologist. Such a piece is timely given, well, all this, and it represents a trend we’ve seen this year in games media with podcasts like Hey, Lesson and pieces like this one.

It’s Matt Thrower’s reporting on the struggle for game stores to survive during the pandemic that takes the honours this year. Stories like this need to be captured and patrons and governments alike need to take note of the impacts the coronavirus has had across sectors.

The two UK businesses two had very different experiences of trying to get government support. Switching to mail-order helped Berry avoid needing the furlough scheme for his staff, and he was able to get a grant to cover lost revenue. Jordan contrasts her experience as “an uphill battle carrying a bag of rocks on our shoulders”. The problems stemmed from the change of ownership. “We were not eligible as we were counted as a new business, despite being run by me for four years,” she explains. “Eventually we were able to furlough our small team, which was a massive relief.”

These are the stories that made a difference in 2020 and we hope they stay largely relegated to last year and don’t bleed over too far into 2021.

SPECIAL AWARD: GLOBAL PANDEMIC WRITING

Indeed, so much of games media was consumed by the pandemic, as so much of the world was, that it felt fitting to add a special award recognizing the writing on the pandemic.

Matt Thrower’s piece wasn’t nominated in this category though it would have fit the bill. Mathew Olson steps in here, focusing on the impact of the pandemic on local arcade scenes, an industry that has only recently been revived, often paired with alcohol sales and a party-like atmosphere. Razor-thin margins jeopardize the industry.

Paying the bills is a concern throughout the pandemic: Near where our team works, a number of businesses are relying on government support to pay their rent, a program that will continue until at least June, though its future past then is uncertain. Individuals face similar hurdles, though Alexis Ong reports on how Animal Crossing is helping some players pay those bills.

On the topic of Animal Crossing, this essay from Video Dame embodies so many of the feelings we experienced throughout the pandemic, and our desire for connection through whatever means necessary.

Weddings were victims of the pandemic, as were countless other celebrations like graduations and birthdays, and Aron Garst’s reporting on an in-game marriage and subsequent after-party is both personal and universal.

Dean Takahashi takes a more industry-oriented approach to his pandemic writing, updating us on statistics of player bases for popular online games, investment and VC news, length of play sessions, and more. One small nugget we enjoyed:

On top of that, the percentage of players who became “serious gamers” rose from 63% to 82% during the lockdowns. That is expected to settle at 74% after the lockdowns. That’s a permanent shift of the gaming population to those higher gaming segments.

Sam Greszes has already won an award for his reflection on Ring Fit Adventure’s impact on his wellness. It’s a piece that we believe embodies the sport genre but was uniquely suited for COVID-19, as well, given the shutdown of gyms, and the changing nature of fitness routines around the world.

Our winner in this category serves as an on-the-ground view of the pandemic’s effects in South America while bending in personal narratives from a group just trying to get through the pandemic with Mario Kart. The blending of essay and interview serves the piece well and encapsulates our shrunken world that is held together through forces of globalization. Here’s the setup:

Most of the Corona Cup members are in our mid-to-late 30s, and there simply isn’t much time for gaming in our regular day-to-day lives. For many of us, that’s now changed. (I know I’ve logged more gaming hours these past few weeks than I did during the Christmas break of ‘93, when I got a Super Nintendo and Final Fantasy VI.) Almost every day, at least four or five of us will get together for a grand prix or two. Call it one of the small silver linings of a global pandemic.

CURATOR’S CHOICE: MOBILE COVERAGE

Our second Curator’s Choice award–that is, an award chosen exclusively by the team of curators at Good Games Writing–focuses only on mobile gaming and its coverage. So much of mobile coverage is what we’d call service writing, notifying us of in-game updates, and general ongoing coverage. We’re watching service and ongoing coverage attentively throughout 2021 but it was an area we didn’t give as much attention to in 2020.

While most of us game on mobile devices, we don’t see much mainstream coverage of mobile games outside, say, Pokémon Go or (increasingly) Genshin Impact. This is an oversight.

Our curator’s choice piece reflects and reveres the audience for mobile games, weaves in the corona feel of tonight’s awards, and represents mainstream attention that is overdue.

Of course, stickiness isn’t without its concerns. Stickiness is what gets you a Facebook algorithm fine-tuned to deliver outrage. Stickiness is what gets you an Instagram feed that learns what you’re most curious about—and most likely to spend money on—and tickles your consumer G-spot every time you scroll. And for developers, stickiness is a diabolical blend of scarcity and surplus that time and time again pushes you to the Sophie’s choice of free-to-play games: If I want to progress faster, do I part with my money or my time?

So what game could be at the centre of such an article? It’s Marvel Puzzle Quest, a game first released in 2013, and one that receives near-constant updates from the developers. It has a dedicated sub-reddit, a complex language that only the players know, and a daily grind that never feels obnoxious.

It is, like so many other mobile games, seemingly perfectly designed for life in a global pandemic.

Our ongoing announcements for #TheGoodies2020 continue with our only game-centred award, an award for fan creation, and one for indie coverage.

It’s all here.

IMPACT

The IMPACT Award is our equivalent of Game of the Year. It’s not for a game we necessarily loved the most. Instead, it’s for the game that inspired the pieces we appreciated the most, those pieces that we just couldn’t get out of our head. It is, in every way, an award celebrating games media: This game serves as a muse.

Several games did exactly that in 2020. Cyberpunk unleashed a torrent of pieces, from reporting on the game’s crunch to critical examinations of its marketing. Blaseball fascinated us to the point we read more on it in a short window of time than pretty much anything else – thanks Eric Van Allen!

There was The Last of Us Part II, of course, with writers like Natalie Flores and Kenneth Shepard surprising us regularly with nuanced takes, though they certainly weren’t alone. Ghost of Tsushima and Miles Morales each generated works that were masterful–see here and here for instance–locking up Sony’s domination over this category.

In the midst of a global pandemic, however, it was Animal Crossing: New Horizons that ruled the roost, with a mix of pieces, criticism and otherwise, that constantly captured our attention. There was a piece on stock trading in the literal sense; our Evan McIntosh wrote many words arguing Tom Nook is something of a socialist while Astrid Johnson at Polygon seemingly disagreed on every count with a communist critique of the game; commentary on abandoning our islands hit us; accessibility continued to be a mainstream conversation and Animal Crossing got in on it; connections were sought and made vis a vis the game; our list is getting out of hand at this point and we have another dozen or so pieces we featured through the year.

Animal Crossing was in many ways inescapable escapism. It drove discussions–particularly around gaming in the pandemic, particularly on publications that don’t generally consider gaming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is our IMPACT Game of the Year.

CURATOR’S CHOICE: FAN CONTENT

Throughout the course of researching and engaging with the best games writing we come across a ton of fan made content. We’re talking things like fan art, in-game creations, custom plush, game re-creations, comics, and so much more.

The one thing we kept coming back to, again and again, was a series of videos blending Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s Harv Island with Hamilton. Both were undoubtedly major creative forces for creatives in the summertime–seeing the blend of the two materialize, again and again, song by song, was a treat.

We specifically want to honour “Right Hand Man” for the little nods it gives. When Washington (Phil) sings of there being an elephant in the room there’s literally an elephant. The moods and expressions, varied as they are in the song, are delivered masterfully. “Satisfied” is, in our opinion, the best piece in all of Hamilton, and while it’s done well in Animal Crossing, it doesn’t carry quite the same weight as the original. Not so for one of Washington’s big moments as the game so readily lends itself to telling the story.

INDIE GAME COVERAGE

You voted on the award that should be featured here and you chose indie game coverage. This is one of those beats that doesn’t get enough respect and we want to recognize two websites we trust on the beat: BigBossBattle and The Indie Game Website. Both were shut out of the shortlists by our panel but our curators regularly visit each site to find the latest and greatest indies. Check them out.

The panel had a difficult task, however, as the quality of coverage out there continued to rise, with pieces from sites big and small tackling indie games, and YouTubers leaving an indelible mark on the category.

People Make Games is always quality but its take on Hades’ dialogue was fascinating — the timing of its release paired with more information being released from Supergiant.

Only two of our other nominees focused on individual games. Kaile Hultner’s essay on The Convience Store dovetails with his own experience in the service industry while critiquing the psychological horror elements.

More shocking than any of the creepy goings-on at this convenience store in Japan, at least for me, was how quickly I fell back into this mode of thinking and working. It wasn’t instantaneous, the switch flipped and then there was a delay, but it wasn’t much of one. And then I was back in my smock and stained khakis, rubbing spilled soda out of the floor mats. I went about familiar tasks, restocking missing items, killing rats and, at one point, getting a guy five cans of light beer and a pack of cigarettes (muttering “get them yourself” under my breath as my playable character did).

There’s also Nicole Carpenter’s review of If Found… — a game that piqued our interest a few times throughout the year — in which Carpenter makes erasing central to her interpretation of the game, both a mechanic to cover and an allegory to extend.

We should mention, here, Jack Yarwood’s piece on Soon, Only the Ocean, as it is remarkably novel, both the game and the writing. The game itself still exists, we suppose, but it’s not the experience you’d get had you played it in its first days (for more on that, read the article). Yarwood’s writing, then, feels like something of a dispatch, a take on a limited series that won’t be seen again, and it reminded us immediately of Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube?, a game that also had a defined end period.

The rest of the nominated pieces tackled multiple games to weave together a broader narrative arc. We enjoyed Corrupted Save’s video on service jobs (a wonderful complement to Hultner’s piece above) and were challenged by Molly C. Beer’s reporting on efforts to reinvigorate Indigenous languages and cultures.

Ultimately, our panel was torn, with votes coming for each nominated piece: a testament to the quality of work in this category.

That the winner was a piece that asks a provocative question–“Where Are All The Fat Queer Video Game Characters?“–doesn’t surprise us, as many of the above pieces, and the games they’re attached to, do just that. This is a piece that forces us to confront our expectations on games in an unexpected way, while building off other works with generous references to those pieces. It asks us to consider a major release in Hades while contemplating The Waylanders.

The LGBT+ community in video games has grown over time – just look at the inclusion of Dina in The Last of Us Part 2, and the various characters in The Waylanders – but the fact is that attractiveness is only considered that when the characters are thin. It’s a problem that’s rife in real-life queer spaces, so it’s certainly isolating to see progressive game studios stating that they are doing well in regards to representation when every queer character shown may not look like you at all.

We hope to see more pieces that push forward conversations such as this throughout 2021. This is the start we needed.

As #TheGoodies2020 roll on to their second day the number of awards ticks up. We’re recognizing Best Sports Coverage, Family Gaming Coverage, and by reader choice, naming the Extended Form winner.

Sports

Covering sports games and their derivatives is no easy task. Consider the case of reviewing a juggernaut franchise like FIFA or NHL: it is as important to know something about the sport being played as it is to intimately know the franchise, its quirks, its failures, and its iterations. Both Wesley Yin-Poole and Kat Bailey are experts in this regard. From Yin-Poole’s FIFA review:

Alas, while EA continues to make bank out of FIFA as it is, I can’t see much changing, even with the next-gen opportunity over the horizon. So, for now, we have another FIFA, as it has been this generation, and how, I fear, it will be on the next.

Then there’s the even more niche games in the genre covering sports like snowboarding and skateboarding. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remastered was the pre-eminent release in 2020 and, as a remaster, understanding the culture of skating, the context of the original release, and the implications today are all important. Michael Higham and Cole Henry both proved they could handle such a hefty task.

Then there’s Blaseball. It’s hard to describe what, exactly, it is, but both Sam Greszes and Eric Van Allen contributed to our understanding of the surrealist game.

Writing for Polygon, Sam Greszes’ essay/review of Ring Fit Adventure immediately stakes a claim for its audience, situating it for those fixated on their body’s flaws, dissecting just how Ring Fit subverts our expectations on fitness plans and our own ideals. The game’s antagonistic forces are perfect foes:

Later on, Dragaux betrays and alienates even the people he has brainwashed into joining his quest for world domination, absorbing their powers and casting them aside in an effort to get even stronger. Yet despite the fact that the dark influence is supposed to mask his weaknesses and make him stronger, Dragaux still spirals into self-hatred whenever he’s beaten, berating himself for being too weak to win. His accomplishments are never enough.

Like the above pieces, this one relies on knowing a sport (personal fitness) and numerous iterations (other fitness plans), despite not being a review on a mega-franchise. Congratulations!

Family Gaming

Another award that requires an awareness of factors we often overlook, in this case, an awareness of audience. Family Gaming coverage is difficult to define, though, as covering a family friendly game can simply be enough if done well, as is the case with these pieces on Paper Mario, Pokémon Sword & Shield, and Clubhouse Games.

Good pieces can stake out their audience appropriately, as cnet‘s Mark Serrels does, listing the best family friendly games around.

Family gaming can be about bridging the gap between generations, as Lavinia Liang manages while examining her relationship with several horse-themed MMORPGs, a launching-off point for rich conversations on the games we play, and the games we played.

Like Liang’s piece, Kaity Kline manages to create an intergenerational discussion, reminiscing about her first experiences with the Animal Crossing franchise, while successfully reviewing Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

After a particularly tough day in the land of self isolation, I opened the game for the first time. The stress immediately melted away from my chest as I was greeted by Tom Nook’s twin nephews, the big eyed Timmy and Tommy, perched behind a travel counter. They were there to help me jet off to a new life on Nook’s dime, and part of my goal on top of paying my debt was to develop a deserted island into a thriving community.

The pairing of reminiscing with useful information–a careful explanation of being locked to one island per console, no matter the number of games purchased–is the type of context that’s needed for average consumers who may not be following the daily grind of news coverage. The notes about reconnecting with old friends are the type of info even jaded gamers can buy into. It’s a wonderful piece.

Extended Form

The extended form category is a difficult one to distill into only a few short words: After all, we aren’t praising brevity, but we are ensuring every word counts.

Matt Leone’s oral history of Street Fighter 3 feels absolutely essential for members of the fighting game community, Capcom-obsessed fans, arcade lovers, and so many more. He allows his subjects to speak, as the authorities they are, and the piece is better for it.

Also at Polygon, Kazuma Hashimoto’s sprawling analysis of Ghost of Tsushima invokes modern Japanese politics, claims raised by the dev team during the promotional cycle, and, of course, the influence we heard about again and again, venerated filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Masterfully weaving these themes together, Hashimoto asserts:

The samurai as a concept, versus who the samurai actually were, has become so deeply intertwined with Japanese imperialist beliefs that it has become difficult to separate the two. This is where cultural and historical understanding are important when approaching the mythology of the samurai as replicated in the West. Kurosawa’s later body of work — like the color-saturated Ran, which was a Japanese adaptation of King Lear, and Kagemusha, the story of a lower-class criminal impersonating a feudal lord — deeply criticized the samurai and the class system they enforced. While some films were inspired by Western plays, specifically Shakespeare, these works were critical of the samurai and their role in the Sengoku Period. They dismantled the notion of samurai by showing that they were a group of people capable of the same failings as the lower class, and were not bound to arbitrary notions of honor and chivalry.

Over on Wireframe, Alexander Chatziioannou examines the trend of elderly protagonists at last getting their due, detailing the origins and evolution of the trend, bringing us up to modern takes and their influences. The breadth and depth of the games covered made us wonder if we’re about to enter an, ahem, golden age of these types of games, as smaller narratives are championed just as these figures are prominent across short stories. One can hope.

Cian Maher similarly looks at a collection of games tackling a shared theme: climate change. Beyond Blue feels like it gets the lion’s share of the treatment–it’s a strong interview–but both Temtem and Bee Simulator are given their due, highlighting an issue we expect will continue to emerge across the entertainment landscape.

That it’s a profile that wins this award is in some ways surprising–we don’t do enough of these in games media–but in other ways very fitting. Much of gaming is based on personalities, now more than ever, and the figures that loom overhead are worth examining, both critically and with reverence, as Annie Vainshtein does with Jerry Lawson for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lawson’s contributions, like creating the prototype for the first digital joystick on consoles and being able to pause a game, are ones that we may well take for granted. Celebrating his work, and the work of our industry’s pioneers, is important:

Jerry Lawson, on the other hand, was mostly lost to history. […] “If you were to make a Mount Rushmore of games, he would absolutely have to be on that monument,” said Kahlief Adams, host of the podcast “Spawn on Me,” which spotlights people of color in the gaming industry. […] As society reconsiders its past, there’s an effort to ensure that Lawson, and his contributions to a massive industry, don’t stay invisible.

In creating such a profile, one that is immediately engaging and filled with sweet remembrances, Vainshtein manages to help ensure his place in history, telling a story that hasn’t been told often enough.

Congratulations!