Tag: Undertale

“Animal Crossing” and Undertale” Lead the Way for New Book Series About Games at University of Chicago Press

Boss Fight Books might have some competition thanks to the recent launch of a similar, though more academically-inclined, series from University of Chicago Press. Books from the publisher’s Replay series will attempt to connect the personal experiences of the author with “gameplay with insights into a game’s development, reception, and implications for contemporary social life.”

Replay is a series of short general interest books, each about a single game. Accessible and engaging, the books connect authors’ personal experiences of gameplay with insights into a game’s development, reception, and implications for contemporary social life. A book about Animal Crossing: New Horizons might explore how the game offered safety and social connection during the COVID-19 pandemic; another, about the location-based Pokémon GO, might investigate urban gentrification; yet another, about Windows Solitaire, might probe the relationship between preinstalled desktop software and computer literacy. We invite any author who has a deep connection to a game and can express both relatable and surprising observations to a wide audience. Our first proposals have come from journalists and scholars with expertise in queer and feminist game criticism, Black studies, and Native American studies.

Replay launched this month with two books, Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Can a Game Take Care of Us? and Undertale – Can a Game Give Hope?. Future volumes are expected to focus on Pokemon Go, Windows Solitaire, and other games.

You can learn more about both books after the break.

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GQ Looks Backs at the 2010s in “The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade”

Just before the end of the year, the editors at GQ got together and published a look back at some of the “most important and best games” of the last decade. Here’s how they decided on which games to include:

Some of the best games we’ve ever seen came out in the past decade, but the 2010s were also the most turbulent, transformative, and revealing years for video games. Game development costs skyrocketed to new, unsustainable heights. Some games became never-ending, always online, services that you pay for in subscriptions. As advancements were made in public health care, indie game development flourished, and then regressed accordingly as it was dismantled. Games also reached beyond what was previously thought possible, delivering beautifully detailed worlds, touching and intimate narratives, and shared cultural experiences unlike any others. Here, according to the GQ staff, are the most important and best games of the decade.

“The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade” zigzagged it’s way through many of the titles that reshaped the game industry over the last ten years, as well as two that originally launched in Early Access in the previous decade (Derek Yu’s Spelunky and Mojang’s Minecraft). But which other games made the cut?

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