Waste Eating Space Robots: Don Everhart's Games of the Year
Don Everhart, Contributing Editor
Like plenty of others, I don’t know how to talk about games this year without talking about the state of labor in games. In a word, conditions are dismal. Layoffs at studios and in media have been even more abundant than the torrent of successfully hyped new releases. It makes sense to lead with this subject because games are made by people, after all. Often, those people are chewed up and spat out by the games industry before they can have even the semblance of a career. Even if you’re an independent creator, you’re still subject to the punishing calendar and marketing cycles that surround the industry as a whole. I care too much about games to ignore the poor labor conditions in the studios and publishers that make and circulate some of my favorite things.
Do I have ideas that could help this state of affairs? Nothing new. I think the measure of how effective unionization efforts have been in games is marked by just how hard the largest companies have fought those efforts. Nothing says that you care about your workers like a corporate willingness to shutter entire studios. The same situation and corporate playbook has been used to gut publications. In the face of closure after closure, I still support independent games and publications of games criticism, writing, and media. The main one that I contribute to is this one, which is entirely run with our small group of volunteers. I do this because it’s fun and I like to get writing out there with a group of friends. The folks who publish on this site also happen to be good editors and working with one or two people like that is always welcome. I feel that particularly keenly as I also think that the editorial process is increasingly, and purposefully, undervalued by the billionaires and capital groups who increasingly consolidate our media. As writing and performance are collapsed into “content,” I think there’s less of an emphasis on process and more on volume. Screw volume. Embrace community, engage in extended back-and-forths with people you value, and make things that satisfy.
I still think there’s something good about writing pieces that review the past year. I like when other contributors earnestly write about their favorite experiences with games in the last year. Honestly, I think that’s what a lot of my friends enjoy reading, too. It can’t all be about semiotics or the psychogeography of Silent Hill, not all the time. People like to know what they might have missed and they also like to hear what people enjoyed and would recommend.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon.
With that in mind, how about my favorite games that were released in 2023? Let me put the big-budget one first: I love Armored Core VI. It’s made by a big studio, has a big publisher, and was almost guaranteed to be a success in a business sense. It had a damn highlight advertisement at last year’s Game Awards (an advertising event that I hesitate to mention) when its developer, From Software, won big with Elden Ring. But it has a lot more going for it than spectacle, as I wrote for Bullet Points Monthly. The short of it is this: Armored Core VI explores selfhood and identity with the violent smashing together of heavy machinery. Spectacle is a major component, but it’s spectacle in the service of story. Here’s some supporting hyperbole: I think it’s the best game made by From since Bloodborne or, maybe, the first Dark Souls. It might be their very best. Armored Core VI’s legion of contributing workers gave so much more to the player in terms of flexibility and time than in earlier From games and that lets a very good story (with outstanding English-language localization) shine.
Next up: Akka Arrh. I couldn’t possibly leave out a Llamasoft game in a year in which Jeff Minter and Giles Zorzin released a game. I already raved about it on one of our episodes of the Gamers with Glasses show, so check that out if you haven’t already. A funny thing about Akka Arrh is that, while it was lovingly made in rural England by two weirdo shepherds (really, I promise that is an accurate description), it was also published by Atari. Of course it was: the game is based on an then-unreleased arcade prototype from the 1980s and Atari owns the rights. It’s a good thing that Minter and Atari made up following the debacle of Tempest 4000/TxK, because Akka Arrh is one of the best and most creative games that Llamasoft has made. Llamasoft has a long history of mashing overwhelming, eye-searing visuals with rave techno music, but Akka Arrh takes a different tack. Okay, I admit that the visuals are still in line with Minter’s admittedly limited artistic abilities. But the music is gloriously minimal and emergent, responsive to the shifting, rotating, psychedelic influence of the player’s movements and the patterned enemy waves of each level. Nobody does semiosis (gotcha!) in videogames like Llamasoft, and Akka Arrh is their latest proof of that fact.
Akka Arrh by Llamasoft.
Now, how about an indie game by any definition of the term? You all read my GwG Recommends piece on Waste Eater, right? Cain Maddox, the game’s sole developer and distributor, accomplished better writing and art in something that will take most people 15 or so minutes to experience than just about anyone else who put out a game this year. I chalk that up to a combination of present-day anarchist politics and (notable anarchist) Ursula K. Le Guin vibes. With that in mind, Waste Eater brings me back to the topic of labor: it’s a game about what happens to workers after their work is done. Spoiler warning: as the game opens, the main character is breathing their last breaths in a landscape that is directly inspired by art created to warn our future descendents about nuclear waste sites. That landscape of towering, crooked thorns wasn’t created with subtlety in mind, and neither was Waste Eater. Play it and take a moment for those who, in our present day, find their employment in the meanest, most hazardous ways. They make this world possible.
Those three games - Armored Core VI, Akka Arrh, and Waste Eater - are the ones that made the biggest impression on me this year. My gratitude goes out to those who made them. I hope that From Software treats its workers better than the average game company, but I’m not optimistic about that. It’s astounding that Minter has put out games for over 40 years. Long may he continue in Basingstoke, UK. And I look forward to what cain does next, whatever shape it takes, but I wouldn’t mind another short story. I’ll keep an eye out for him and his work in 2024 and beyond. Until then.
