Notes from Along Kentucky Route Zero - Noah Caldwell-Gervais
One of the challenges facing video games’ interface with the broader arts communities is the historical game-centric nature of its criticism. More simply, video game criticism and research tend to start with video games as their core reference point for understanding how the game-in-question makes meaning. In Noah Caldwell-Gervais’ elegant video essay “Notes from Along Kentucky Route Zero”, he dives deep into the titular game but expands the potential starting points for understanding it by inverting some common criticisms of art-oriented games. These criticisms can include things like “there isn’t enough player agency” or “There aren’t any puzzles to solve.” But Caldwell-Gervais talks through other ways of seeing games, moving the primary question away from “what is this game missing compared to other games” toward “what do the modes of digital engagement of KR0 add to interactive theater or narrative poetry”? I can’t recommend this video essay enough to anyone from the arts coming new to video games, and trying to find ways to critically engage.
Creator: Noah Caldwell-Gervais
Link: https://youtu.be/pW3qZfF6JfI
Connections:
Jonathan Gold - Counter Intelligence (specifically the way he leverages music criticism into food writing)
Wu Hong, et al - A Conversation (the complexity of criticism of performance-photography and photography-performance)