Thursday, February 29, 2024

Bad Company

 I think I've probably played games less than 20 times in my life.  (Unless we're counting Pong, which my granny had for some reason). Despite unfamiliarity with the whole area, its idiolect and lingo, I  could understand this fascinating Vulture piece by Kieran Press-Reynolds on the outwardly mystifying appeal of the game Lethal Company. A grim, grinding parody of precarious work conditions under late capitalism, it's set in outer space, where players are peons tasked with resource extraction for a mysterious corporation. 

"Every round, the quota is raised until it’s literally impossible to succeed. There’s no Employee of the Month awards, no daily check-ins with the boss, no OSHA regulations — simply ever-escalating toil, followed by death."  

The pay-off is a cathartic displacement of the stresses and anxieties of your non-game working life:

"The faceless megacorp ejected us from the ship. We couldn’t stop giggling as we watched our bodies disappear in the ether."







Thursday, February 22, 2024

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Bama

Love this video, love this song - the video made by my son Eli with his creative partner Max Schneiderman, the single is by their super-talented friend Julia Robyn.