Tag Archives: Assassin’s Creed

Detestable Presentable Liberty

Detestable Presentable Liberty

Words and artwork by Stephen Beirne. This piece is community funded – if you enjoyed this article and would like the header image for a wallpaper, please support my writing by visiting my Patreon and becoming a patron.

Spoilers for Presentable Liberty, a game by Wertpol. You don’t have to have played it before reading on but it’s well worth your time.

Speaking to Abnormal Mapping on the devastation capitalism wrecks on labourers forced to exist in its spaces, Lana Polansky says of a friend working in the games industry:

“He said to me verbatim, ‘I know I sold my soul to the devil for a decent paycheque.’ […] I said to him, you know, I have no job stability and I had to fight tooth and nail to get a decent income. After four or three years of working I had to fight for an additional year to busk for the money I have now. But at least I have my freedom. I have no stability and no benefits.”

This came in context of, among many things, the banjaxed atrocity that was Assassin’s Creed Unity, and its predecessor Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag’s modern day setting of Abstergo Entertainment, alluding to Ubisoft as a soulless totalitarian videogame company. Both were regarded by the larger games press with all the detachment of a contented dilettante, unable to connect their subtext and inoperability with the working conditions that inspired the end result.

On Unity’s release, many folks were more interested in lamenting ‘patch culture’ than in calling for labour unionization, despite the clue being in the title. As examples go, it is just one raindrop in a torrent. I have to indict myself in this too, because we are a culture bred to consume simply in order to fulfil ideals of consumerism. There’s no time to consider the human cost of our purchases; we must feast. Continue reading →

Games of the Year 2014

This piece is community funded – if you enjoyed this article or would like the header image for a wallpaper, please support my writing by visiting my Patreon and becoming a patron.

Usually a Game of the Year article is a list of the best games that came out that year. This, however, is a Games of the Year article, which I am taking to mean games I played in 2014 in general, regardless of when they came out. Partly because I am a rebel. Partly because it’s a ton less interesting to only talk about games that came into the world this past year when I could be talking about games that were important to me, a human being who exists at this point in time. Even if they were made twenty years ago, and even if they were only important insofar as they were shite as all hell.

So without further ado, here is a list of whatever games I can remember having played this year together with a few short words on why, perhaps, they were memorable. Continue reading →