Video Game Reflections of 2025

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This is an unusual topic for me – I’m not usually one for the “end of year retrospective” type of post. But 2025 has been astonishingly rich in great video games. In particular, this year even the “mainstream” has been flooded with games that I’ve liked. You can see this just by contrasting how my playlist overlapped with The Game Awards nominees last year (2 total, and they’re both way down there) to this year (10 total, including 4 of the 6 Game of the Year nominees). And there are several other nominees for this year that I still plan to get around to.

Part of this has to do with the release of the Switch 2, since that’s where I played 3 of the GotY nominees, but it’s also a tribute to the massive strength of indie releases this year. Seriously, the second half of 2025 was just one indie smash after another, and I am still trying to catch up.

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Dachau, Berlin, and Why I Must Resist

four teenagers stand in front of the Berlin Wall, with the Brandenburg Gate visible behind it
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My heritage is German.

On my father’s side, my family is from Fort Wayne, Indiana, as one of a number of families that can be traced back to early settler migrations from central Pennsylvania, and ultimately from southern Germany. But that’s not the really German side.

The really German side is my mother’s. She was born in Germany in 1948 and came to the United States in the 50s, which makes me second generation German-American. (As such, I am also acutely aware of the inherent racism and prejudice that was built into the 20th century quota system, and the privilege my family had in coming from a country that was prioritized over others. However, that is not the focus of this particular post.)

In 1987, I took my first (and so far only) trip to Germany. The main focus of that trip was visiting some of the many relatives we had over there, but we also saw a variety of important landmarks and scenic spots. Obviously some of these were the touristy spots: Köln Cathedral, Rothenburg, Neuschwanstein, and so on. But some were important for other reasons.

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Seeing Rockalypse in Movies Again

~ Eric ~ 2 Comments

I tend to be pretty low-key about my work in the tabletop gaming industry. I don’t feel like I did a ton of things that couldn’t be (or haven’t been) done by others. I think I have a few unique ways of approaching things, such as the kind of thorough, interconnected worldbuilding I displayed in Steamscapes and my work on the Urban Settings Guide for the Sentinel Comics RPG (which may or may not see the light of day, depending on what happens to Greater Than Games).

But there’s one game that I think may be my most unique contribution, at least as of this writing. It’s self-contained, nicely concise, and it makes a strong case for my view of game design: that games are best when every element works together to create a unified experience. With such a game, you can feel that ethos when reading it, playing it, running it, or even just talking about it. For me, the best I’ve ever done at achieving that was Rockalypse.

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A May Revolution in Song

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It’s been a while since I’ve done a song-a-day project, and the last few started to lean more into musical conversation than topical discussion. But with everything happening, I decided it’s high time to get topical again.

For the month of May, 2025, I am diving deep into some of the strongest musical statements I can find. I expect these songs to be in various degrees challenging, inspiring, surprising, and appalling. I want to warn you right now that I am not pulling any punches on this one – there will be explicit language, explicit content, and abrasive opinions. I will post relevant content warnings on every selection, but it’s also completely understandable if you choose to nope out of the whole playlist. I’m also going to be less picky about making sure every song has a video or a live performance. Most of them do, but not all. So sometimes you’ll be staring at album covers or reading lyric videos, but that’s because the songs are important enough that they need to be there anyway.

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Luigi Wins by Doing Nothing

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In the discourse following the violent actions that ended the life of a health insurance CEO, one trend I found particularly alarming was the assertion that this event somehow proved that violence was the only effective means of systemic change. Amidst the absolutely justified anger surrounding the US healthcare system and the profit focus of its C-suite executive class, there was also an underlying frustration that nonviolent action had failed to bring about any change.

The comments I saw displaying this frustration typically showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the uses of both nonviolent and violent actions. More importantly, they too often veered into post hoc defenses of inaction, which has led us to a new type of online poster: the pro-violence slacktivist.

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Resistance Triage

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Well, here we are again. Yes, the irony is not lost on me that I wrote a literal Cassandra post before the election, yet afterwards everyone keeps finger-pointing and talking about the 2024 election as if it is an isolated incident and not the result of 40 years or more of long-term degradation of the US electoral process.

Anyway, we can’t think long-term right now. We are stuck in the moment, and we’re about to have another wave of intentional crises – a veritable Gish Gallop of oppression – that is designed to overwhelm our ability to fight against any of the individual pieces. It happened during Trump’s first administration, and it’s only going to get worse this time. While we don’t know exactly what will happen and when, there’s a lot of panic and anticipation about all the things that could happen.

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Cassandra Is Screaming

~ Eric ~ 1 Comment

As of this writing, we still have about 100 days until the 2024 US election. Things have been absolutely chaotic, and they’re constantly changing, so it doesn’t really make sense to write a reflective blog post about that. Instead, I want to take a look at broader historical trends to gain a sense of perspective on how we got where we are and some general explanations of the goals of those responsible.

But mostly I want to talk about what it’s like to be able to see big picture possibilities and to have a sense of what’s coming when so many people are distracted by narrow, short-term concerns. I want to talk about the steps that led our democracy into its death spiral and why we let them happen.

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Regional Bands That Should Have Been Bigger

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There are many cases of bands being in the right place in the right time. R.E.M. hit it big partially because the B-52s had focused record companies’ attention on the Athens, GA college music scene. CBGB was responsible for launching multiple careers in the 70s and 80s. And these days bands push to get into high-profile festivals like SXSW and Coachella with the hopes that they will be seen and boosted by influencers.

But there are plenty of stories where those things didn’t happen. There are many worthy bands that, for one reason or another, were not as lucky. Whether they were in the wrong place or whether their sound was just not what people were into at the time, these bands had talent, drive, and lots of great songs, but they didn’t necessarily hit it big. I’d like to look at four of my favorite overlooked bands of the 80s and 90s, with the hope that someone else might discover something new for themselves.

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“Superhero Fatigue” Isn’t Actually That

~ Eric ~ 1 Comment

Is superhero fatigue killing movies? Don’t the terrible numbers of 2023 show that there’s superhero fatigue? And if so, why does it exist? Is it because there’s too much to watch? Because it’s bad? Because it’s too “woke?” (Not even those scare quotes can convey the sarcasm I type that with.) Because Millennials are too old? Because Gen Z won’t go out to the movies? Most importantly, how can we make money again? WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE MONEY?

Everyone from Screen Rant to Forbes talks about this trend as if it’s a given, but no one can seem to agree on what it is and why it’s so pervasive. If you read the industry-focused analyses, the clear indicator is the rapidly declining success of the superhero movie as the box office juggernaut it was throughout the 2010s. If you read the fansite analyses, the clear indicator is the rapidly declining reviews both from critics and audiences (and from non-audience review bombers). But both of these are symptoms with no single clear cause, so anyone can project their own assumptions onto them. And that’s what’s happening, because these analyses are part of the actual real problem. They are themselves a symptom that is indicative of a totally different problem: the addiction to canon.

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Done With the 101

~ Eric ~ 2 Comments

or Why some media other people find deep feels so shallow

You ever watch a movie or a series that everyone else is gushing about, and you just can’t help but wonder…why? So then you try to find review sites you respect to explain what everyone’s getting out of it, and you find these effusive reviews about how complex and insightful the show is? And you read all those reviews and the examples that keep coming up are ridiculously simple things like, “Did you notice that Verna is an anagram of RAVEN?”

Well, it happens to me a lot. In particular, it has happened with every single thing I have watched from “horror auteur” Mike Flanagan. (Yes, people call him that. No, I do not agree.) And while it is tempting for me to just have a rant about how I think Flanagan is overrated, I wanted to glean something more broadly applicable from this experience. So I am using this opportunity to talk about why reasonable people can have different views about the depth of the same work.

I call it “the 101 effect.”

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