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2018 will go down as the Year of the Bad Employer | – Brendan Sinclairīrendan Sinclair’s title pretty much says it all in this survey piece cataloging most of (not even all of) the companies abusing their positions over their workers and how it will probably, finally lead to unionization.Richard Moss explains how the crediting of workers is inconsistent at best, arguing that the “flawed record of authorship” has a massive historical precedent, but also hurts our understanding of the medium’s history. How bad crediting hurts the game industry and muddles history | Gamasutra – Richard Moss.Michael Thomsen does some in-depth reporting on the unseen labor done on nearly every AAA game nowadays, done by supporting developers that are effectively doing the same type of work as the credited creative studio. The Universe Has Been Outsourced | The Outline – Michael Thomsen.Highlighting a pervasive issue when teaching game design, Brendan Keogh brings up the fact that many of his students don’t know the actual kind of labour that goes into work at a development studio and how universities (and culture at large) do a poor job of advertising that. Student expectations, course marketing, and the invisible labour of game development.Tauriq Moosa highlights the effects of the firings of Jessica Price and Peter Fries from ArenaNet on all developers in the industry, from lack of workplace protections to the handing over of power to internet loudmouths and harassers. The labour of games | I Need Diverse Games – Tauriq.In the wake of Telltale’s closure and the reaction that the developers should finish their games for free, Wesley Yin-Poole asks a question that should have been asked long ago. When did we forget people – not brands – make games? | Eurogamer – Wesley Yin-Poole.Yet, beyond just the people they affect, the working conditions cannot help but set the tone for the wider medium both in and out of the games themselves. They are difficult to produce, but do not need to break those that produce them. Videogames are reflective of the means and conditions by which they were produced. For the 2018 edition of This Year in Videogame Blogging, let all assumptions be challenged and no myth given the credence of reality.
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It was a year of no longer accepting facts without support, nor truth without wisdom. The things we take for granted, so much so that we don’t even think about them anymore, were reappraised and often found wanting. In going through the criticism of 2018, it wasn’t so much about 2018 as much as it was about how we got to 2018. To say these things out loud, both statements feel obvious, yet old beliefs remain. They are played by real people, not demographics. Videogames have always been connected to the real world. Right? But like the phrase “age-old battle between good and evil” that too is just another unsupported myth. They are meant to be a refuge from the real world. Often it feels like videogames exist in their own tiny bubble completely at odds with the rest of the world. This is how it is, how it always was, and how it has to be. We believe there are bad guys who must be opposed by good guys, nothing more, nothing less. And yet such a phrase is emblematic of the thinking that colors our entire view of the world. Reading Catherine Nichols’ piece reminded me of the saying, “the age-old battle between good and evil.” I was reminded because, as Nichols explains, the concept is quite new and has little basis in our founding myths, in the classics so revered as the bedrock of the western canon. The good guy/bad guy myth | Aeon – Catherine Nichols.Instead, I saw all the previous years and decades leading up to 2018 reexamined. And from this particular portrait I was surprised to see very little of 2018 itself take shape. For Critical Distance that means crafting our mega roundup, with links curated from all the year’s weekly roundups and bolstered by recommendations from the community, into a representative portrait of the year. Another year has passed and now is the time to look back and take stock of the year that was.
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