Aguas’ Points began in the summer of 2022. On the eve of a new year, let’s look back at what has been published on the site, and briefly discuss upcoming articles and projects in 2023.
In the past six months Aguas’ Points published:
- A review of Eiyudin Chronicles: Rising;
- Ruminations on volumes one and two of the magazine A Profound Waste of Time;
- Launched the series Revisiting the GameCube: A Personal Journey. The games covered so far have been Lost Kingdoms, Crazy Taxi, and Pikmin. These games share a sentimental significance. I played them at nauseum growing up and had a great time revisiting them over the past year.
- Since I read the exhibit’s catalog Never Alone: Video Games as Interactive Design as part of my research for an article for Ars Technica, I took the opportunity to publish a review of the book here on Aguas’ Points.
- I shared my thoughts on attending this year’s PAX Unplugged and the exciting place that board games as a hobby and industry are in at the moment.
Future Articles and Projects
The series Revisiting the GameCube: A Personal Journey will continue into 2023. The next game that will be revisited is Wave Race: Blue Storm. There will also be more coverage of other games. As a teaser, I offer this: after Blue Storm,the next games include a futuristic racer, and a sequel to a game already covered. In total seven games will be covered for the series.
Reviews of essential books in game studies will begin sometime in the Spring. These short two-page articles will be published periodically on the site.
On the topic of books, sometime next year a review of Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the Jrpg edited by Rachael Hutchinson and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon will also be published on this site. As a longtime player and fan of the JRPG genre, I look forward to reading and discussing the collection of essays in this book. Who knows, this might turn into a bigger project on the history of the JRPG. This project could potentially lead to a review of Bitbooks’ A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games and other books.
Speaking of JRPGs, work on the “Untitled Dragon Quest Project” will begin once the Revisiting the GameCube series is finished. The plan is to replay all the mainline Dragon Quest games and then write long-form articles discussing their design, and cultural relevance, and tying these things together with some personal anecdotes.
Individual video game reviews will be published sporadically on Aguas’ Points because I already review video games for other publications. So, moving forward, reviews of games that are not being covered for a specific series will only appear in Aguas’ Points if I’m driven by an impulse to write about them.
The “No Ideas but in Things: Video Games Addressing Human Things Directly Without Us” (I promise that this is a working title) will be published in the future as an academic paper. Though, I already began to write somewhat about this in my ruminations on Pikmin.
In 2023 the future of Aguas’ Points will be tied to understanding games as cultural artifacts, their function, and their design. Aguas’ Points will begin to cover tabletop games. The article Pain and Glory at Pax Unplugged already pointed towards this direction. Lastly, I will begin an interview series with designers and academics.
Here is to a new year!
Cheers,
Aguas’ Points
Aguas' Points 