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Sundays are for smiling to yourself, because you know Love Island day is tomorrow. Before you ready the popcorn, let’s read this week’s best writing about games.
For Polygon, Ana Diaz wrote about hot tub streamer Amouranth, the constant harassment she faces, and what it’s like to be the face of the “hot tub meta”.
“Do I feel like I deserve [the harassment]?” she continued. “No, I don’t think anyone does. But I do feel it’s worth it to just keep grinding while I’m young and have the energy, and then when I’m older and have saved enough money, I can actually do what I want with it, you know? Something like — it’s just frontloading the work, rather than spreading it throughout my life. And I think that’s worth the harassment.”
Over on PC Gamer, Rick Lane tried to survive GTA 5’s campaign amid the absurdity of the Chaos Mod. It just gets better and better.
Vehicles acquired, we’re racing back to the car dealership when another event triggers—Spawn Deadly Agent. At first, nothing happens, and I wonder whether the mod is still working. But then several new ‘speed holes’ appear in the back of my car. I look around to see an Aston Martin DB5 hurtling toward me.
That’s right. I’m being attacked by James Bond.
For The Gamer, Eric Switzer wrote about how he hated a Sniper Ghost Warrior press event that made him pretend to shoot people dressed as Arabs. Developer CI Games issued an apology, but nope, that just isn’t going to cut it.
The Strategic Operations facility looks a lot like a set you might see in American Sniper, Lone Survivor, or any other military propaganda film. The streets are paved with dirt; the broken down, abandoned vehicles are covered in grime; and the short, featureless huts look like they’re made out of mud. It’s the Middle-East as we’re often shown it via Western media – a gross, twisted doppelganger that doesn’t actually represent life in that part of the world at all. A series of nondescript yellow circles hang in one window, demonstrating that art does not exist in this society. A pile of rotten meat sits on a nearby table next to a decaying pig head, because the people here eat filth, apparently. I think I’ve painted a clear enough picture.
Over on Medium, Carolyn Petit wrote about Lake and the alluring escapist fantasy of the readily available, decent job.
Doubtless my childhood notions of what being an assistant manager of a bookstore or video store might be like were grossly simplified, but so is Lake’s vision of being a mail carrier. It’s a fantasy, and not just in terms of what it involves, but in terms of good jobs like it being acquirable by most of us at all. It’s the myth of the readily available, decent, reasonably well-paying job, as something that is there for any American adult who might want it. (Lake doesn’t spell out how much Meredith’s dad makes, but he and his wife do own a lovely house in a lovely town, so it seems they’re doing all right. Meanwhile, for people in my generation, homeownership is becoming increasingly unattainable.)
Over on NHK World-Japan, I watched this documentary about Steve Jobs and his passion for Shin-Hanga art. I’m no Apple fanboy or Jobs idoliser, but I found it a surprisingly good watch. The voice-over person also sounds like the announcer from the Halo games, which is a bonus.
Music this week is Nick Mulvey’s “Fever To The Form”. A folky delight.
That’s me. Have a solid Sunday everyone!
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