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gael ♱ 23 ♱ he/him

twitter: @underreallife e-mail: underreallife@gmail.com

Welcome to UNDER REAL LIFE. Here's where you come to get to know me and my work better. For context, I've been writing about videogames on the internet since I was around 16, inconsistently and unprofessionally, yet always with a healthy level of edge! I'm older now, but some things never change.

IRL, I‘m just your garden-variety university student and a notoriously chill guy. I love learning and art above most things, which led to me sidelining plans of working as a web developer (that's how I learnt how to make my site look so sick) in favor of English Studies, of all things. I skip class frequently tbf but I still keep up with the readings and I'm having a good time overall.

Other than that, I'm passionate about fashion subcultures, especially those under the J-fashion umbrella (visual kei, FRUiTS magazine, and brands like If Six Was Nine, Le Grand Bleu, Civarize, Gunda, UNDERCOVER, etc.) I don't dress extremely flashy myself — can't be bothered for uni — but a classmate once told me I looked like a Nomura character so make of that what you will...lol

FAV BOOKS
  • Giovanni's Room (1956)
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
  • A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma (2009)
  • El Jarama (1956)
  • Mrs Dalloway (1925)
FAV GAMES
  • Pathologic 2 (2009)
  • Gnosia (2021)
  • Problem Attic (2013)
  • Ladykiller in a Bind (2016)
  • Ramble Planet (2014)
FAV MOVIES
  • À nos amours (1983)
  • Mamma Roma (1962)
  • La Captive (2000)
  • Linda Linda Linda (2005)
  • L’Ami de mon amie (1987)
  • Shrek 2 (2004)

Now, for those who are new and don't know what to expect from my writing, I thought it would be a good idea to write down a list of videogame crit opinions to get us on the same page. I don't have all the answers, so I'm more than happy to have productive discussions about them! I will add more as I remember/come up with them.

  1. Review scores are not a problem, let alone the problem. I understand the concern when it comes to the hype-driven mainstream videogame media circuit (game companies effectively coercing these publications into defaulting to a high score), but beyond that scope? Every reason I've encountered so far seems arbitrary; a cop-out, if you ask me. I, for one, admire those able to abstract their arguments into numbers and stars. You don't have to, though. Just focus on the text itself!
  2. I haven't been able to discern an imbalance in quality, critical insight, or even account of historical and socioeconomic issues between reviews and “cultural criticism”, for better and for worse. This division alone annoys me. In all honesty, I wish the majority of pieces on a game with a poorly applied summary of a theory I've read had been "intrinsically more meaningful" instead, but alas!
  3. I love curation work! Curation, though, is not the same as criticism. And it's not like I believe these two practices to be incompatible, but you will never catch me going out of my way to take into consideration the limitations imposed by a videogame's time (some of the best videogames ever made are older than not — there's no excuse), production values (I will never argue that a game would have needed more resources to be better; the opposite, if anything), or risk-taking (I can acknowledge experimentation without valuing it for its sake; innovation means little to me). Even if we put my principles aside, I hope you understand how this condescension would be doing any game a disservice.
  4. “You’re not taking into consideration the hard work involved in making this game possible!” You’re right: as I critic, I don’t, because I can’t. If that’s what I based my criteria on, I’d be singing praises of every shitty blockbuster that crunched its bloody way into videogame stores. “Think about the people who made this.” They’re neither my subject matter nor my audience! Both parts understand I’m not a cog in their marketing campaign, and is criticism with a baseline favorability requirement criticism at all? “Can’t you at least be constructive?” Sure, if I’m offered a position as an editor or consultant; those pay more than even professional criticism does. Otherwise, I’d just be writing fanfiction.

    I will always put the people who make videogames above the videogames themselves. Just not like that; not in that sense.
  5. Are you a formalist? You can take inspiration from a diverse range of approaches. It's not like you have to choose.

news

January 14th, 2024. Fucking finals, man. I've had to stop writing until I finish my exams (did pretty well in my English Renaissance literature one, thank you very much, and also managed to pass Japanese), which sucks cause I was having a blast. I've written around 5k words so far. I'm not really sure anymore — I write a paragraph, I rewrite some other, then delete it, then restore it. Who knows at this point! The important thing is that it's interesting stuff. I've come to terms with the fact that this video is a pretty daunting endeavour. It's cool, though; that's how I want it to be. I'm very invested in the process, always thinking about it, researching, etc.

Still, it's gonna take me a long time, having to put a lot of work into it on top of uni coursework, etc. I was thinking about writing something short and casual in the meantime. I've been thinking about the youtube games crit space, and how disappointing the state of things is from what I've seen. And you know, despite my disillusionment, I've been trying to follow it closely for some time now, because I need to understand what sort of environment I will get myself into when I start uploading videos. But yeah, I've noticed some questionable trends I could write about. What do you guys think?

I've also been playing Void Stranger, a very time-consuming game I've also had to put aside for the time being. I haven't finished it so I don't really know, but a review is potentially on the table, sure.

Literally me

Oresama's Miyavi has influenced my style like crazy.

"but, for me, this underlined the point that these games perhaps weren't, in a sense, actually about what they were about. they were containers signifying the capability of larger meaning that could theoretically exist. they were meaning machines capable of eliciting empathy (a rhetoric that got even more intense later on in the 2010's around VR), but exactly how that empathy manifested itself was a placeholder. if games were to have a greater purpose in society, they simply must be able to do this. that capability of evoking empathy and containing larger meaning mattered far more than what specifically was being expressed."

— Liz Ryerson, The Californian Ideology

Shoutout to Takeshi Obata: I recently rewatched Death Note after buying a white Death Note T-shirt. Gorgeous, if a little wrinkly; that's what I get for buying fast-fashion (second-hand). I really liked the design, though.


Isn't this knit just beautiful?

So here's how they do it: picture a cast of beautifully drawn anime guys who have the most fire fits you can imagine. I'm really into fashion so I see them and go, "Man, I need to play this game!" That's how I end up playing an otome game, and that otome game turns out to contain some of the worst writing I've ever read. That's how they get me, every single time. And I like otoges as a concept (and in a few select cases, in practice, too), but the amount of terrible writing I've forced myself to endure for the sake of engaging with the genre is frankly unreasonable.

Look at these boots! I bought them second-hand last year and they are so cool, aren't they? Really like all the details.

Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism was accurately described by one of my teachers as "very old-school" but I'm sure people interested in criticism can extract many lessons from just its introduction, which you can read by clicking here. Feel free to skip the other essays if you're not that interested in *literary* criticism.


[Review] The Forgotten City

"Thus, the player’s presence in The Forgotten City’s world renders it meaningless."

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[Review] Fire Emblem: Three Houses

"This avatar, a pure extension of the player, embodies a cult leader to a degree few others I know have reached (the irony of this happening in a narrative that calls into question that exact dynamic wasn’t lost on me). Whether a cause is just or not depends on the side the avatar defends. I mean, even the Black Eagles route, regarded as the most immoral of the three in general, makes a laughable attempt to antagonize the other side beyond the original frame of moral ambiguity. You always made the right choice, did the right thing. Any student you want on your side wants to be on your side. They aren’t loyal to anything, and you’ll find them expressing polar opposite opinions on different routes. They’re sunflowers to the sun."

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There Aren't Too Many Videogames: Indiepocalypse or the Eugenics of Art

For a couple of years now, there’s been a lot of talk about a so-called Indiepocalypse. Developers and players alike worry that the exorbitant amount of videogames that are released on Steam every day are saturating the market, making it harder for indies to get their rightful spotlight. And I get it, to some extent. Indie Game: The Movie sold us a fantasy that’s out of reach for most, and that realization is just now dawning on those developers who were inspired by it. I’m empathetic to these folks, but my empathy has a limit. You can find it right at the scapegoat some of them found for this structural problem: bad games.

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[Review] Life is Strange 2

"A lot of these videogames are so insecure about their alleged lack of gameplay that they introduce small doses of interactivity here and there. Sometimes in the shape of quick-time events, other times in the shape of sterile puzzles. Life is Strange 2 has both. I remember the first one appearing when you try to convince Daniel to come with you. You have to win this microgame multiple times for him to do so as if you “kept trying no matter what”. And look, that’s the problem with this videogame imposter syndrome: it always leads to puerile ludic metaphors."

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[Review] Hypnospace Outlaw

"In this videogame, you don’t use social media as we know it, but the philosophy behind it—hyper-vigilance, centralization, inescapable corporate ownership and control of user-generated content—is the basis of this world. Hypnospace might look like the past, but it speaks like the present."

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On Polly Pocket

"Polly Pocket has always been about evoking a dimensionality other dollhouses couldn’t have. They were the size and form of a makeup kit, and when you opened them, one half would be perpendicular to the other, thus conveying horizontality and verticality simultaneously."

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[Review] Bury Me, My Love

"As advocacy journalism turned into fiction, it lacks earnest execution, while as a personal/universal narrative, it lacks a heart. Bury Me, My Love isn’t exploitative, but is for sure a palatable gamification of a conflict that doesn’t want to confront me."

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