#games studies
Text
Are Game Blogs Uniquely Lost?
All this started with my looking for the old devlog of Storyteller. I know at some point it was linked from the blogroll on the Braid devlog. Then I tried to look at on old devlog of another game that is still available. The domain for Storyteller is still active. The devblog is gone.
I tried an old bookmark from an old PC (5 PCs ago, I think). It was a web site linked to pixel art and programming tutorials. Instead of linking to the pages directly, some links link led to a twitter threads by authors that collected their work posted on different sites. Some twitter threads are gone because the users were were suspended, or had deleted their accounts voluntarily. Others had deleted old tweets. There was no archive. I have often seen links accompanied by "Here's a thread where $AUTHOR lists all his writing on $TOPIC". I wonder if the sites are still there, and only the tweets are gone.
A lot of "games studies" around 2010 happened on blogs, not in journals. Games studies was online-first, HTML-first, with trackbacks, tags, RSS and comment sections. The work that was published in PDF form in journals and conference proceedings is still there. The blogs are gone. The comment sections are gone. Kill screen daily is gone.
I followed a link from critical-distance.com to a blog post. That blog is gone. The domain is for sale. In the Wayback Machine, I found the link. It pointed to the comment section of another blog. The other blog has removed its comment sections and excluded itself from the Wayback Machine.
I wonder if games stuff is uniquely lost. Many links to game reviews at big sites lead to "page not found", but when I search the game's name, I can find the review from back in 2004. The content is still there, the content management systems have been changed multiple times.
At least my favourite tumblr about game design has been saved in the Wayback Machine: Game Design Tips.
To make my point I could list more sites, more links, 404 but archived, or completely lost, but when I look at small sites, personal sites, blogs, or even forums, I wonder if this is just confirmation bias. There must be all this other content, all these other blogs and personal sites. I don't know about tutorials for knitting, travel blogs, stamp collecting, or recipe blogs. I usually save a print version of recipes to my Download folder.
Another big community is fan fiction. They are like modding, but for books, I think. I don't know if a lot of fan fiction is lost to bit rot and link rot either. What is on AO3 will probably endure, but a lot might have gone missing when communities fandom moved from livejournal to tumblr to twitter, or when blogs moved from Wordpress to Medium to Substack.
I have identified some risk factors:
Personal home pages made from static HTML can stay up for while if the owner meticulously catalogues and links to all their writing on other sites, and if the site covers a variety of interests and topics.
Personal blogs or content management systems are likely to lose content in a software upgrade or migration to a different host.
Writing is more likely to me lost when it's for-pay writing for a smaller for-profit outlet.
A cause for sudden "mass extinction" of content is the move between social networks, or the death of a whole platform. Links to MySpace, Google+, Diaspora, and LiveJournal give me mostly or entirely 404 pages.
In the gaming space, career changes or business closures often mean old content gets deleted. If an indie game is wildly successful, the intellectual property might ge acquired. If it flops, the domain will lapse. When development is finished, maybe the devlog is deleted. When somebody reviews games at first on Steam, then on a blog, and then for a big gaming mag, the Steam reviews might stay up, but the personal site is much more likely to get cleaned up. The same goes for blogging in general, and academia. The most stable kind of content is after hours hobbyist writing by somebody who has a stable and high-paying job outside of media, academia, or journalism.
The biggest risk factor for targeted deletion is controversy. Controversial, highly-discussed and disseminated posts are more likely to be deleted than purely informative ones, and their deletion is more likely to be noticed. If somebody starts a discussion, and then later there are hundreds of links all pointing back to the start, the deletion will hurt more and be more noticeable. The most at-risk posts are those that are supposed to be controversial within a small group, but go viral outside it, or the posts that are controversial within a small group, but then the author says something about politics that draws the attention of the Internet at large to their other writings.
The second biggest risk factor for deletion is probably usefulness combined with hosting costs. This could also be the streetlight effect at work, like in the paragraph above, but the more traffic something gets, the higher the hosting costs. Certain types of content are either hard to monetise, and cost a lot of money, or they can be monetised, so the free version is deliberately deleted.
The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to link between different sites, abandon a blogging platform or social network for the next thing, try to consolidate their writings by deleting their old stuff and setting up their own site, only to let the domain lapse. The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to mess with the HTML of their templates or try out different blogging software.
If content is spread between multiple sites, or if links link to social network posts that link to blog post with a comment that links to a reddit comment that links to a geocities page, any link could break. If content is consolidated in a forum, maybe Archive team could save all of it with some advance notice.
All this could mean that indie games/game design theory/pixel art resources are uniquely lost, and games studies/theory of games criticism/literary criticism applied to games are especially affected by link rot. The semi-professional, semi-hobbyist indie dev, the writer straddling the line between academic and reviewer, they seem the most affected. Artists who start out just doodling and posting their work, who then get hired to work on a game, their posts are deleted. GameFAQs stay online, Steam reviews stay online, but dev logs, forums and blog comment sections are lost.
Or maybe it's only confirmation bias. If I was into restoring old cars, or knitting, or collecting stamps, or any other thing I'd think that particular community is uniquely affected by link rot, and I'd have the bookmarks to prove it.
Figuring this out is important if we want to make predictions about the future of the small web, and about the viability of different efforts to get more people to contribute. We can't figure it out now, because we can't measure the ground truth of web sites that are already gone. Right now, the small web is mostly about the small web, not about stamp collecting or knitting. If we really manage to revitalise the small web, will it be like the small web of today except bigger, the web-1.0 of old, or will certain topics and communities be lost again?
55 notes
·
View notes
Text
Jonah Maiava and Polynesian Representation in Tomb Raider
We have gone from mutated, spear-wielding cannibals on a dinosaur-ridden island to named NPCs with iwi affiliations and backstories. The change in Polynesian representation within the Tomb Raider series is encouraging, but also highlights the central narrative basis of the Tomb Raider games.
*This is a section from an ongoing work that I had to edit out for the sake of word count. I still often think about it though, and perhaps I will flesh it out into its own work soon*
View On WordPress
13 notes
·
View notes
Text
The best thing about the new stardew update is you can tell concerned ape got comfortable just being fucking weird. Which is understandable considering most indie devs have to be some level of insane
#stardew valley#sdv#video games#gaming#i do admire concerned ape's commitment and how involved he is in the community#honestly i just like that indie devs actually... Like What They Are Makinh#need to study him like a petrie dish
9K notes
·
View notes
Text
📸📸📸 (screenshot redraws :D)
#dddaily4sherin#day 271 IT COUNTS#hermitcraft#hermitblr#solidarity gaming#jimmy solidarity#goodtimeswithscar#grian#pearlescentmoon#geminitay#falsesymmetry#isdoodles#screenshot credits from twt replies#someday i should ask you guys on tumblr about these too tbh. shouldn't be all on twt HAJWJJSKA#these turned more into photo studies but i had fun o7#AAAAAA THOSE STREAMS WERE AMAZING#oh god i just remembered i forgot to tag grian fanart on twt rip LOL
8K notes
·
View notes
Text
"Sam is probably my only friend in this town..."
emergency sleepover time in the mountains after local small town emo and skater boy played too much solarion chronicles and lost track of time
#stardew valley#stardew#sdv#stardew sebastian#stardew sam#sdv sebastian#sdv sam#stardew valley sam#stardew valley sebastian#sambastian#this tagging system is atrocious#give them last names man#bought this game during thanksgiving break and have not known peace since#the chokehold this pair has got on me rn#they're in a band and only hang out with each other and abigail#can i make it any more obvious#my art id#also i got lazy lazy with this lighting#i should be studying for an exam i have tomorrow lol
8K notes
·
View notes
Text
---
#dnd#dungeons and dragons#artists on tumblr#art#ocs#marsilio#pettirossi#if you need me i'll be over there projecting#studies of things that will happen in game in about 15000 light years#or in two weeks#doesn't matter since i have a final next one so two weeks are kinda like 150000 light years for me#blorbos save me save me blorbos
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
enraptured by the shape of this beast 🐣
get stickers etc -> here
#bg3#baldur's gate 3#owlbear#owlbear cub#dnd#dungeons and dragons#chicken scribbles#sorry for catfishing with bg3 art i still havent played the game kjasdjkads#i love his expression it reminds me of the face my dog pulls when she gets her picture taken 😭😭#doing a run cycle for his animation and these were some studies :^)
6K notes
·
View notes
Text
which way to the nearest library?
#a blorbo and a leyendecker study? name a more iconic duo#baldur's gate 3#bg3#bg3 gale#gale dekarios#gale of waterdeep#stuff and things#userpharawee#have I been drawing instead of fiiiinally finishing the game? mayhaps.#😩
6K notes
·
View notes
Text
obsessed with jean’s colorful insults/descriptions so here’s a compiled list of them in order
you arrogant fool (abby)
you imbecile (kevin)
your ball-battered brain (kevin)
you feckless child (kevin)
those clowns (trojans)
pet goalkeeper (andrew)
the tiny bastard (neil) [LMFAO]
kevin’s pet monster (andrew)
the sunshine court [derogatory]
wholesome in an unsettling, unhealthy way (the trojans)
unhinged optimist (renee)
some plump shrink (bee)
that creepy little goalkeeper andrew minyard [PLEASE i was fucking DEAD he has no idea how funny he is]
you tedious malcontent (neil) [probably my favorite one]
an abominable cockroach (neil)
the wayward child (neil) [jesus christ he is not taking it easy on neil]
andrew’s twin
worthless trash bags (foxes, past tense)
a rabid little fox (neil) [hey. remember when neil described andrew as a ‘rabid goalkeeper’ ???]
annoyingly easy to look at (jeremy)
strange and misguided (the trojans)
the cruelty of these nonstop temptations (kevin, renee, jeremy)
the sunshine court [less derogatory]
“I was hoping he would bite his tongue off in the fall and save us both some grief in the long run.” (lucas)
wretched beast (gr****n)
your ignorant mouth (lucas)
“Your apologies are as useful as perfume on a frog.” (lucas)
neil, being the person he was,
you ignorant child (neil)
miserable wretch (neil) [giving his everything to neil’s insults]
ok that’s all. unless i missed some. and if i did you have to add them it’s just law
#yea english is his third language#but my baby was studying nouns and adjectives like nobody’s business#jean yves moreau#jean moreau#tsc spoilers#tsc#the sunshine court#aftg#all for the game#the foxhole court#tfc#trk#tkm
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
“It’s the things we love the most, that destroy us”
#the ballad of songbirds and snakes#the hunger games#i wanted 2 do a color study on this scene because it was so good#coriolanus snow#lucy gray baird#tbh#tbosas#bosas#president snow#a quick doodle pls don’t judge#fanart#snowbaird
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
So I got the funniest hate comment today
#bad news guys#I must go take a sabbatical to go study game design#all because I drew sonic and Kirby standing next to each other#i speak occasionally#obvious bait but wow some people just really have nothing better to do huh?#there’s one other comment but I’ll leave it at this lol
5K notes
·
View notes
Text
“so I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do”
#i finished the game last night and i was left a sobbing mess#reallyy love the message behind it#quote from night in the woods#stray#stray fanart#stray game#heavypaint app#heavypaint#background study
36K notes
·
View notes
Text
rough style study inspired by alphonse mucha ft. finnick!
#drawing him for the first time ever omg..#miss him#feeling so nostalgic#my art#fanart#thg#the hunger games#hunger games#hunger games fanart#thg fanart#finnick odair#style study#digital portrait
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
Alright so after having looked through hypnos’ new design I have something to say. The poppies.
So I’ve already seen someone post about this ( @blamethecows-draws ) and yes!! Poppies do symbolize his son, but they are also closely related to Hypnos himself. Now I’m not sure how they were in terms of Ancient Greece (unfortunately my Ancient Greece knowledge is shaky at best), but I am aware of this particular painting from 1874: Sleep and his Half-Brother Death
In this painting, Hypnos (depicted closest to the audience) holds a few poppies in his hand. Poppies, to my knowledge, were flowers that symbolized not only him as a god, but also death (hence why Thanatos is there too)
What’s interesting, though, is that poppies also symbolize a hope for a more peaceful/calm future. I think that this potentially could tie into the whole PLOT of the game, which is trying to take down the calamity that Kronos has caused
So tldr: poppies symbolize death, the God Hypnos, and hope for a calm future, which is kinda the whole plot of Hades II
#hades supergiant#hades game#supergiant games#hypnos hades#hades video game#hades#hades ii#hades two#hades 2#character study#flower symbolism
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
i just think that andrew, as a criminology major, must occasionally look at neil and think 'wow, I'm dating one hell of a thesis paper'
#neils gotta be quite the case study for this boy i do think#aftg#andreil#the foxhole court#tfc#all for the game#nora sakavic#andrew minyard#neil josten
5K notes
·
View notes
Text
trackpad painting of this man that took [redacted] hours
#back in the painting game finally as I submitted my research portfolio and case studies#now i can finally be creative and homosexual on the internet#will graham#hannibal#hugh dancy#queer artists#my art#fanart#digital artist#maleri
2K notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
roguebirds
tyler
eiffel-tower-exquisite
Eiffel Tower
eiffel-tower-exquisite
Eiffel Tower
eiffel-tower-exquisite
Eiffel Tower
jellybeanmoose
My Fandom Sugar Mommas And Daddies