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Author: Ruth Cassidy

Friction Burns
Screenshot from Pentiment, where a group of monks in their brown robes are having a lavish dinner with the local baron under an al fresco painting of the last supper. Lorenz is saying "Andreas! Glad you could join us."

Power Without Control In Pentiment

By Ruth Cassidy • December 21st, 2022

Pentiment is a game about the changing balance of social power, and this uncomfortable dinner sets the stage for how even words are catalysts of change.

Friction Burns
A screenshot from Against the Storm, showing a translucent magical powerline, a shimmering church, some thorny trees and mushrooms showing a lot of potential hostility

Against the Storm, Against Randomness, Against the Inevitable

By Ruth Cassidy • November 29th, 2022

An exploration of the tensions you play with, vs the tensions the game’s text shows you. It isn’t enough to survive against all odds – for the purpose of your task list, that’s simply assumed.

Feature Story
Artwork from the videogame Sunless Skies shows a small Victorian-styled spacefaring vessel approaching a massive circular space station, giving the appearance the smaller ship is about to be swallowed whole.

Whose Body Horror Is It, Anyway?

By Ruth Cassidy • October 21st, 2022

A look at body horror, the just world fallacy, and lungs that turn into glass.

Friction Burns
A house with a tin roof built on top of horizontal oil drums sits in a warehouse that is also a museum, a single light illuminating an old man asking questions of the residents on the porch

Finding The On-Ramp To Route Zero

By Ruth Cassidy • September 26th, 2022

Kentucky Route Zero carries its own ghosts of its critical legacy. How do I get past that?

Friction Burns
The primary teenage exocolonist stands to the left with some holographic cards floating from their hand as they stare at the viewer, and the rest of the gang poses in the background in a variety of stylish and skin-baring outfits

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist: Let’s Do The Time Warp Again(?)

By Ruth Cassidy • September 14th, 2022

Consequences matter when you decide, but sometimes death is useful.

Friction Burns
Screenshot of Signs of the Sojourner with a shadowy anthropomorphized animal on the left and a smiling young person on the right, with cards held and played in between

There’s Two Sides To The Story in Signs of the Sojourner

By Ruth Cassidy • August 29th, 2022

There’s a truth at its heart of Signs of the Sojourner’s conversational card games: you cannot prepare the perfect conversation.

Friction Burns
Banner for Wholesome Direct 2022, featuring a pair of cartoon cats sitting on a stump and staring into a starry neon sky, with planets and game consoles floating about

Wholesome Games, and the Context Collapse of Branding Culture

By Ruth Cassidy • August 10th, 2022

Whether they meant to or not, Wholesome Games have staked unique ground, so their choices invite criticism about what is and is not included. 

Friction Burns
Title screen for Queer Man Peering into a Rock Pool dot jpeg, with some stylized waves crashing around a thin beach with a man scampering along

Shifting Tides and Dynamics in Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.Jpg

By Ruth Cassidy • July 29th, 2022

Like the changing tides, and the pitching skies, the perspective in Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg shifts.

Friction Burns
Headshot of a young woman with short hair and glasses looking pensively at the camera with a autumnal backdrop

Life Is Strange: Artificial Colors

By Ruth Cassidy • July 13th, 2022

Characters’ quirks and quips are endearing, but they never feel like more than the LARP versions of themselves: there to give information or resources, or be acted upon.

Friction Burns
Two images from the game Card Shark, once where a play holds a hand of playing cards, and another with a man pouring wine into a glass, suspiciously

In Card Shark, The Devil Finds Work For Busy Hands

By Ruth Cassidy • June 16th, 2022

The easiest mark is one distracted by believing they’re getting one over on someone else.

Friction Burns
The cover for Citizen Sleeper, featuring the robot Sleeper looking over a space station washed in starlight and some vehicles flying around

Conversation In The Ruins Of Interplanetary Capitalism

By Ruth Cassidy • June 3rd, 2022

An interview with Gareth Damian Martin about Citizen Sleeper, and its bodies

Friction Burns
A screenshot from the game NORCO showing a tree of connected, or disconnected, relationships

NORCO Is A Connected Web Of Estrangement

By Ruth Cassidy • May 12th, 2022

The desire for connection and rejection of it shapes the core family in a web, but it plays out across the story’s politics too.

Friction Burns
Detective Kim Kitsuragi leangs against his blue police lorry reading a newspaper while his partner Detective Harry Du Boi sits in the cab holding a sword and the painterly white of the Pale looms behind them

In Disco Elysium, Cops Aren’t Community

By Ruth Cassidy • April 14th, 2022

No matter how kindly or redemptively you play Harry, and for all Kim speaks to his belief that the RCM are doing good, Disco Elysium itself recognises that cops are not social care.

Friction Burns
a still frame of the reload animation for a Hi-Power in Fallout New Vegas.

Weapon Degradation – Or Ephemeral Equipment?

By Ruth Cassidy • March 4th, 2022

Does having the specific language to spot a mechanic – or a narrative trope – prime players and critics to see what they know, instead of what they’re experiencing?

Friction Burns
An approximation of the character art for Boyfriend Dungeon except it'sa piece of broccoli

Broccoli Dungeon

By Ruth Cassidy • February 25th, 2022

I want to come to the defense of challenging art, but I’d found Boyfriend Dungeon to feel too safe.

Friction Burns
the turtle-faced alien Wrex from Mass Effect

For Commander Shepard, Ignorance Is Access

By Ruth Cassidy • January 31st, 2022

Shepard’s xenophobia and its invisibility are both tools to give players what they want: as much access to the game’s world as possible, without the social cost.

Friction Burns
Garrus Vakarian, his apparently deeply attractive lizard self, from Mass Effect.

Being Willfully Bad at Games

By Ruth Cassidy • January 26th, 2022

Being ‘bad at games’ was partly a statement of intent: I will not get good and I don’t care to try.

Friction Burns
A still image of the game Unpacking showing a dorm style room with a bed, wardrobe and desk and several open cardboard boxes.

Unpacking Vulnerability, Empathy and Player Agency

By Ruth Cassidy • December 17th, 2021

It’s that moment when you walk down the street and realise that every single stranger, whose presence is fleeting in your life, has lived an entire history up until that moment.

Friction Burns
A still image of Frostpunk showing a bunch of container like houses around a central generator, surrounded in snow

Authoritarianism (In Frostpunk) Is Not Inevitable

By Ruth Cassidy • December 10th, 2021

In that optimisation-first mindset, it’s easy to do – violence will make this problem go away’. But then, so would meeting your citizens’ material needs.

Friction Burns
Concept art for Dishonored showing a mask held in a mans hand, and a futiristic dystopia behind it.

Dishonored’s Chaos System Was Never Punishing You

By Ruth Cassidy • November 12th, 2021

Dishonored’s Chaos system introduces a world where you can take exactly what you want, and have fun with it, but the cost is laid bare.

Friction Burns
in a screenshot from Umurangi Generation, a disposable camera sits on top of a concrete block next to some cans of spray paint.

Urgency and Mastery in Umurangi Generation

By Ruth Cassidy • October 29th, 2021

While I followed advice to turn off the timer, I kept chewing on its presence. Was it at odds with the game’s purpose, or was I acting in conflict with it?

Feature Excerpt
A screenshot from the Pendragon videogame.

Pendragon and Anti-Fascist Medievalism

By Ruth Cassidy • October 29th, 2021

“Camelot has, for the moment, fallen, but the dream of Camelot – of a sane Government by consensus, led by an Arthur and not a Mordred – must and will live on.”

Friction Burns
The Disco Elysium detective standing shirtless with his hand to his head in pain, in a crowded and gross room.

How Disco Elysium’s Centrist Path Observes the Player

By Ruth Cassidy • October 1st, 2021

“It isn’t about diplomacy, or pacifying all sides, but about absolute control.”

Feature Excerpt

Imagining the Future in Games

By Ruth Cassidy • June 24th, 2021

A vision of tomorrow, today!

Feature Excerpt

Your Choices Matter: The Real Power Fantasy

By Ruth Cassidy • August 28th, 2020

An interview with the co-narrative leads on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire about subverting that power fantasy of the Chosen One.

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