Daniel Byrne

I think for me it’s always come down to the fact that video games, as a medium, are an art form capable of evoking human emotion. The reality of mediums as art is that they will all have notable and unremarkable examples, for every great painting there are numerous that call little attention to themselves or warrant it. For every Papers Please there are probably a thousand dodgy mobile games that function as a veil for little more than an attempt at dopamine-based money extortion. In looking to legitimize video games as an art form I sometimes feel we stretch too much justify the entirety of the medium when simply pointing to moments that truly elicit emotion or thinking in a way unique to games are proof enough.

In addition to representation, I think one of the nicest parts about these silence-oriented movies is that they represent a more intentional approach to the aspects of film making that are often seemingly secondary in the production of Hollywood film. More and more we’re starting to see movies that are truly conscious of exactly what is onscreen and what is being heard. It’s thinking like this that makes film that truly embraces the medium and tells stories only film is capable of, and I think a push in that direction makes The Quiet Place and all it’s contemporaries and derivatives so worthwhile in terms of a lasting affect on film.

I think what Crusader Kings does quite well and can in many ways make sense of a lot of the strange and amoral options given to a player in CKII is good old power politics. The traditional lowest common denominator of any kind of hierarchy. “Religious” wars existing as strictly a means to galvanize people to a cause and obtain wealth, killing a person because it’s the easiest way to maintain your hold on power, and so on. Hell, as said right at the beginning of the article: in Crusader Kings you take power because if you don’t, someone else will, and they’ll probably eventually take it from you.

It’s such a weird and interesting game. On the one hand it’s a grand strategy game with countless options and means to maneuver, a simulation of medieval politics and all that, and on the other hand some people only know it as that game where you can make a horse your vassal and accuse a newborn of plotting an assassination to remove them as a heir to your throne. The intersection of “historical simulation” and “game” leads for some really amusing and surreal moments.