Welcome back to the Aftermath newsletter and back to me, Riley. You've got me in your inbox again because the rest of the team is busy prepping some exciting stuff for Monday, so be sure to check out the site next week. If you'd like to check out the site and its many excellent blogs now, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
| Sanrio Film's Extravagant Quest To Be The Next Disney
Chris dives into the entire Sanrio catalogue, unearthing weird, long-forgotten movies from your childhood. There's tons of great pictures and videos too.
| | How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory
Nathan unravels what's behind the (very, very) false claims around Sweet Baby and looks at how conspiracy theories go big.
| | Crusader Kings III Keeps Killing Everyone I Love
Luke reviews the latest Crusader Kings expansion, which adds legends (fun) and plagues (really fun, but in a terrible way).
| | |  |  |  |  | There Must Be Better Words
I absolutely hate the word "IP," closely followed by "franchise," as Aftermath's staff can attest when I rigorously edit it from their blogs. And so the BAFTA Game Awards experienced my rage this week (read: I glared at my computer screen, alone in my house) when they announced the nominees for their best New Intellectual Property category.
The category itself has gone through several name changes over the years: in 2005 it was for "Originality," before resurfacing in 2015 as "Original Property." Renaming that to "IP" is new this year. While I cannot imagine anyone tearfully taking the stage to thank the Academy for honoring their hard work in service of IP, the idea of the category isn't dissimilar from ones other industries have, like "best original screenplay." I can even understand the desire not to limit the category to "games," given the thorniness of that definition and the range of interactive art the BAFTAs could recognize.
But still! We, regular people, simply do not have to talk like a marketing department. This kind of speak has infiltrated the mouths of games journalists and gamers alike, and I've already mocked it furiously. I find ways to work around some of this in my writing--it's just as easy to say "series" as it is to say "franchise"--but other words are more insidious. Nathan and I once got in a bicker over "drop," as in "the game dropped by surprise last night"--borrowing from music, it crosses the line into marketing-speak to me, while Nathan argued that "release" isn't all that different if you really think about it.
But all of it speaks to how hard it can feel to separate writing and talking about games from consumerism, the way games and other art are simply becoming widgets rich men can buy and sell. Refusing to say "IP" isn't going to keep the David Zaslavs of the world from turning everything into content mush, but maybe it's a start. | Some good stuff from around the internet:
| Aftermath has two podcasts: Aftermath Hours, where we discuss the week's biggest gaming news, and 52 Pickup, where Gita Jackson and Alex Jaffe take you through the world of the greatest DC Comics series you've never heard of. Check them out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. | And that's it from me. Enjoy your weekend, and we'll see you next week! | | | | |
