(The Cartridge Lit blog.)
Do you remember LiveJournal? If you’re of a certain age, you probably do. It was one of the social media platforms popular before terms like “social media” became widely circulated—a kind of haven for kids who often felt more comfortable expressing themselves through writing than spoken conversation, or at least who were interested in publishing their adolescent musings for a small audience of friends.
What is left when the chips are truly down? When half of the country is on fire? Is it wishful thinking to rely on the presence of a “something” that shines in our fists or our hearts?
The mid-section of Stellaris isn’t fun, and that’s why I love it. Beyond the sci-fi trappings and Civilization-esque feedback loop waits an embedded critique of late capitalism, of the long and painful transition from a flawed democracy into a resource-obsessed, neoliberal culture overwhelmed by the interests of splinter groups like the Tea Party.
I think video games like pieces of art can find the Waldos that society sometimes cannot, and also, I think maybe the developers want us to think about why they do certain things in video games. I think a way to dismantle these kinds of racial stigmas in games would just be, for starters, to have a main character that is a person of color.
I think Roberta Williams and her team probably did a great job at the time of including so many different representations of women. It just gets back to that issue of representation vs. agency, like in some of the conversations about what’s coming out of Hollywood.
We think video games are literature, and so why shouldn't there be literature about video games? That's the question we're hoping to answer here. Read more.
