Autobiographical Games

Well, in the time it took to get this one out, some real awful nonsense about this topic happened. Steam and itch are currently pulling NSFW games from search results (if not removing the ability to purchase them entirely) after pressure from payment processors, who themselves are being pressured by groups like Collective Shout.

Shit sucks. The complete censorship of anything that can be remotely considered pornographic is awful for a number of reasons, not limited to the ways it affects queer creatives. I could say more, but I don't want to just spew anger and I already had a whole post written here. Support marginalized people. Fight regressive politics. On with the post:

Not everything needs a rating. One of the reasons I rate the "games" I've played on Backloggd is because my thoughts feel unfinished without that detail. But even then, the exact rating isn't all that important. I can't tell you the exact line between 3.5 and 4 and sometimes 4.5 stars. I think I have a good idea of where those lines are, but at the end of the day it's just a choice I make often shortly after being "done" with a "game."

I'm using quotes a lot because I'm writing these words in response to having gone through Backwater Eulogy after seeing Virtual Moose talk about it and seeing I had already owned it. Bundles on itch.io, such as the California Wildfire Relief bundle earlier this year, are a cool feature of the site. After playing through it, I'm experiencing a lot of thoughts similar to what I felt after playing He Fucked the Girl Out of Me some time ago. These are autobiographical... the best word is games.

That doesn't feel right. It does... but it doesn't. Yeah, these are games. They're shared on itch, they have entries on IGDB with metadata for cover art and they have music and controls and

The distinction isn't because of the quality. Both Backwater Eulogy and HFTGOOM (amazing initialism (terrible word), by the way) are very good! But, plenty of games are good, and artistically meaningful as well, so that's not the difference either. Autobiographical games like these two are... vulnerable in a way other "games" aren't. You don't conjure up images of a real person digging through old photos for a project in other games. That's part of the process more often than we sometimes assume, but it's not brought to the audience's attention.

In most games, you don't have your avatar stroll up to the counter only for you, the player, to get a gut punch the way you do in games like these. Knowing that this was the creator's real experience that they decided they should share with the world makes the shock sting greater and the impact felt harder. These games are like conversations where you control the pace, but are ultimately listening to what those who made them have to share.

You probably can't, and even more so shouldn't, rate a conversation in exactly the same way you rate another video game. And luckily you don't have to. I do it because it helps me think about a narrative I just went through, but again, a numbered rating will never be entirely clear. And distilling a story into a single value is always going to be reductive, while the usefulness of doing so isn't always worth it. Regardless of what a good approach to "reviewing" them is, if such a thing even matters, I think the world at least benefits from talking about this type of game more. It's at least better for them existing.