For UpperCut, Grace Curtis spoiled Life Sim games forever. She’s managed to describe the listlessness that crept into my Stardew Valley farm so eloquently that the prospect of ever booting up something similar now fills me with dread. Thanks, Curtis. For Polygon, Kazuma Hashimoto demonstrated how Ghost of Tsushima doesn’t grapple with the nuanced depictions of samurai that the developers were inspired by, and is a worse game for it. This is a much more informed opinion than that seemingly displayed by the developers, which is of course the point. Eurogamer’s “Someone Should Make A Game About” series continues to delight. Here’s Alexis Ong explaining how the Chinese underworld works. For Vice, Patrick Klepeck analysed worker representation in Alien: Isolation, contrasting the grim message of the original 90’s film to the even grimmer message of the 2014 videogame. It’s a disturbingly astute reflection on capital’s onward march towards destruction. For The Guardian, Zahaan Bharmal reported on the concept of “lyfe”, designed to accommodate for the fact that our existing preconceptions might be limiting. I think it probably makes more sense to just adopt the following as appropriately accommodating characteristics required for life rather than bothering with a whole new umbrella category, but I’m just your average chump with a philosophy degree. This Psyche piece (a new offshoot of Aeon) by Craig Schamel is good. It’s about how self-help books are adrift from social and economic facts. In their recent paper, they define a “lyving” organism as satisfying four criteria: dissipation (the ability to harness and convert free energy sources); autocatalysis (the ability to grow or expand exponentially); homeostasis (the ability to limit change internally when things change externally); and learning (the ability to record, process and carry out actions based on information). With this definition, life is just one specific instance of lyfe. And in Bartlett’s opinion, there is a higher probability of finding lyfe on Mars than life. A chance event in Martian history may have sculpted lyfe differently from that on Earth. A treat: To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings — Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) July 30, 2020 Music this week is Albion & Pheonix by The Levellers.
