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Image credit: RPS

Sundays are for trying to work out what the hell we’re supposed to do when every videogame company above a certain scale has business links to some kind of fearful death machine. And also, for rediscovering the joys of small fan heaters. My fan heater is called Phil. He hunkers by my feet and fills my ears with a soothing roar. Occasionally I try to dry socks on him and he gets mad, switches off and sulks for 15 minutes, but beyond that, we have a pretty good working relationship. He’s humming away right now as I assemble this round-up of Top Reads.

To start off Inception-style, a round-up within this round-up of writing in response to the USA’s recent attack on Venezuela. In a piece from the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford, six Venezuelan journalists discuss the situation and criticise some of the reporting from non-Venezuelan outlets. I admit, I found this one a little frustrating, as the quantity of interviewees prevents the write-up from going into great depth.

González, who focuses on investigating disinformation, complained about global ( and especially American) outlets leaving out the historical context of what has happened in the country. For example, he pointed to articles critical of María Corina Machado that occasionally mischaracterise her in ways that align with regime propaganda. Batiz stressed that international media has reflected a narrative that benefits Delcy Rodríguez, positioning her as a "moderate" or the only person capable of leading a peaceful transition to democracy.

Over at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières, former Venezuelan government minister Andrés Izarra argues that the USA’s purportedly ‘clean’ military intervention was possible because “Madurismo” is “not a personalist regime” but a “patrimonial” or “mafioso” structure - “and mafia states, by their very nature, are transferable”. Brazilian sociologist and economist Sabrina Fernandes has a sprawling and scattershot essay on extractivist imperialism across South America.

While searching for pieces on this subject, I came across César Márquez and David Pino’s live archive of videogames made by or with contributions from Venezuelan developers, including Sukeban’s VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action and Jose Hernandez’s Sokobond Express. There’s also Gina Saraceni’s academic essay on “crude materials and subsoil energies in Venezuelan poetry”, exploring “how oil permeates the language and aesthetic structures of poetry, thereby engendering diverse poetic interpretations of the subsoil in Venezuela.” Best of luck to everybody living with uncertainty and violence in Venezuela today.

Over at Thrilling Tales of Old Videogames, Drew Mackie speculates entertainingly about the naming of Final Fantasy summons after Hindu gods, inspired by Hindu priest Shivam Bhatt’s Bluesky response to an earlier article.

The Hindu god Shiva is, of course, none of this at all — not female and not possessing ice magic and certainly never a lesbian motorcycle. He’s got no specific associations with ice, snow or winter; in fact, he’s the god of time, among many other things (but none of them being especially cold or wet), and he’s a principal god in many Hindu traditions. In Shaivism, one of the most widely practiced forms of modern Hinduism, Shiva is the supreme being. In another, he’s one of the three supreme deities in the Trimurti, where he serves the role as destroyer alongside Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver. In fact, the closest I could come to a link between Shiva and his Final Fantasy alter ego is Rudra, an older storm god associated with and sometimes conflated with him — and even that felt like a stretch, because the distance between storm god and ice goddess is considerable.

Suspicious Developments boss Tom Francis has four bits of advice based on 15 years as an independent game developer. The clarity here is as consoling as a steady draft of warm air across my feet. Obligatory conflict of interest disclosure that Francis has not only written for RPS in the past, but stolen our favourite Graham.

You are going to take an exam that costs all of your life savings to sit. If you ace this exam, you’ll win 2-10 times your life savings. The games-playing public already knows all the answers to the exam, and will tell you if you ask them.

It is incredible how many devs don’t ask them. Or don’t ask enough of them. Or don’t ask them early enough, or enough times.

Testing can be a fair bit of work and time, but nothing is as expensive as launching without it.

Over at alternative videogame history website canon fire, Amr Al-Aaser writes about Super Junkoid, a total conversion hack of Super Metroid in which a girl navigates a dream world created by a snake. As Al-Aaser describes, the game recontextualises many of Metroid’s parts to create an uncanny effect that accompanies a sense of being slowly digested. Eek!

The environmental art is the real star, reusing parts and motifs from Super Metroid, but more often transforming tilesets until they’re barely recognizable, with deep, saturated palettes that add to the surreal atmosphere. Hatches are changed into the crow doors from Doki Doki Panic, the new context making entering their mouths threatening, as if each door you pass through brings you further into being digested by the snake, with the increasingly organic environments adding to the feeling.

The environments paint a clear picture even without direct narrative, with tableaus decorating the backgrounds. Images of Junko repeat throughout in statues, stained glass windows, and eventually replicas of Junko, living, dead and partially animated. A few areas even require you to intentionally take damage, gritting your way through as your health depletes, only able to catch your breath at the hot spring safe rooms.

Polygon veterans Maddy Myers and Zoë Hannah have founded a new subscription-based videogame website, Mothership, which covers “the intersection between gaming and gender, bodies, and identity”. The official full launch will take place on 26th January. The site will feature writing by other former Polygon alumni like Nicole Carpenter, Nicole Clark, and Susana Polo, together with contributions from Grant Stoner and Nico Deyo. These are all excellent critics and reporters. Consider throwing them a bone.

Music this week is Metric’s Down, followed by Spy X Family’s Protect The Light as a pick-me-up. May your Sunday be breezy, cosy and Philicitous.