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Offscreenshaman's avatar

This is a hell of a swing, and one I deeply respect.

This nails something most critics fumble: games aren’t just digital stories or dopamine slot machines. They’re tension systems. Interactive ethics labs. Strategic engines. And Free Guy, despite its gestures toward liberation, reinforces the very dopamine-chasing logic it pretends to critique.

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Charlotte Simmons's avatar

Exactly.

And on the topic of games as digital stories (which I'll be dedicating its own post to), I often find that little thought is given to how the medium of a game serves whatever storytelling goes on. Firewatch was the example I gave in my introductory Cyber Treatment post, but even in the case of games with good gameplay, the mechanical engagement with the game tends to clash with the more emotional engagement with the story in a psychological sense.

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