Aguas’ Points has been in this world for over a year. On this New Year’s Eve, we take a look at what has been published on the site and discuss upcoming articles and projects for 2024.
In the past year Aguas’ Points published:
- A new installment in the series Revisiting the GameCube: A Personal Journey. The game covered was Wave Race: Blue Storm. The article was an excuse to write about water simulation in video games. When it was released in 2001, Wave Race: Blue Storm featured cutting-edge water simulation. Unfortunately, the game has not aged well when compared to other racing games. Overall though it was a valiant effort by Nintendo.
- The interview series with designers, academics, and the ludo literati began in 2023 with an interview of Taylor Reiner, a game designer and critic. He runs the YouTube channel Taylor’s Trick-Taking Table which focuses on card games. It was an insightful conversation on trick-taking games, their future, and Reiner’s work. I also briefly discussed the history of trick-taking games. The takeaway—Taiki Shinzawa is a god of game design.
- Aguas’ Points joined Kaile Hultner’s (No Escape) insurgency with “In Agreement with No Escape: Towards a Guerrilla Criticism.” Hultner is one of my biggest inspirations as a writer and critic. They speak truth to power and break Leviathan’s fangs with prose. The thing I’m most excited about next year is starting a reading group with them where we will cover text in game studies (more on this later).
- I published a preview of a review for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I set the stage for my review of the game for PopMatters by laying out my methodology. Let’s just say that it involved not having “fun” in the traditional sense while playing the game. The review was very unpopular.
- A review of Martin Amis’ Invasion of the Space Invaders, a book on the early days of video game arcade machines and the grimy places where they were played was published in July.
- The Aguas’ Points interview series continued with Jenna Stoeber, formerly of Polygon, now an independent YouTuber making great videos on the intersection of games and horror. Check out her thought-provoking “content.”
- Lastly, I reviewed Howl, a puzzle strategy game with some light RPG elements. The game’s gorgeous art style struck a chord with my aesthetic sensibilities. I also took the time to ruminate on the much-needed escapism that games provide us in hard times. Ironically, even if the topics covered are as grim as our reality.
Inside and Outside the Currents of Aguas’ Points
This year I became a member of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. This is a great honor, an indicator that my work is getting noticed.
The series Revisiting the GameCube: A Personal Journey will continue into 2024. I hoped to finish this project this past year, but things came up. The next game should be Tetri World; though, I’ve been working on this article since March. My research process proved to be too intensive. And yes, at a later date, I will cover that futuristic racer made by Sega and Nintendo that I teased last year. In total eight games will be covered for the series – I’m halfway there!
Game reviews will continue to be published sporadically on Aguas’ Points. The “Untitled Dragon Quest Project” will be placed on hold until I finish the Revisiting the GameCube series. I’m eager to start this project but I don’t want any distractions.
Reviews of books will continue, and I hope to publish more of them next year. No Escape’s reading group offers an opportunity in this matter. I still plan to review Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG edited by Rachael Hutchinson and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon. Stay tuned for that in the future.
I published a lot of articles in other publications this year, including PopMatters. 2023 also saw me collaborating heavily with Fred Serval of Homo Ludens. Our biggest project so far was the panel “Playing Colonialism” on the proliferation of colonial and imperialist themes in board games. The panel featured Mary Flanagan, Cole Wehrle, and Brian Train. We have a lot planned for 2024.
I will be publishing a lot more outside of Aguas’ Points and PopMatters next year. My portfolio is the best place to find my work around the net, at New York University, and my appearances at conferences.
Many Thanks
I’ll finish by saying thanks to all my collaborators, inspirations, and communities that helped me build resilience by providing places of comfort, growth, and challenge – contradictory, yes, but thus is life. Thank you to Deep-Hell, Kritiqal, and No Escape (truly the greatest trinity). Thank you to Pixel a Day, Transparency, and Pause and Select. After discovering these amazing video essayists, I realized that it was time to up my game.
To Fred Serval, Liz Davidson (Beyond Solitaire), Stuart Ellis-Gorman, Alexandre Fontaine Rousseau, Timothy, Pierre, Russ, and all the Homo Ludens folks, y’all are truly wonderful! To PopMatters and Karen Zarker, my editor, thank you for catching my typos and grammatical errors and making me a better writer. Thank you also to the Multi Play Network, Baby Castles (we will be born again!), New York University’s Urban Democracy Lab, the Brooklyn Institute of Social Research, Non-Breaking Space, Insert Credit, Blake Hester at Game Informer, and the New York Videogame Critics Circle.
All my love and gratitude to my partner for putting up with me and my writing. My heart is with those fighting oppression and lifting the subaltern! The last shall be first.
May next year be truly new!
Aguas’ Points
Aguas' Points 