Re ‘wholesome’ - the opposite of an aesthetic of exploitation and violence is not an aesthetic of softness and giving, it’s the design and stories told against the grain of the reduction to uncritical aesthetics.

Think of softness and know that it can be radical, but it can also be violent. Think of the violence that can come with a white woman’s tears - to a recent & evergreen example.

Wholesome isn’t the thing. Softness isn’t the thing. Intentionality & context is the thing.

Like obviously a bunch of great & interesting games use soft aesthetics (and also it’s often cheaper to produce!) and not everything has to be ‘against’ the perception of what AAA aesthetics are, anyway.

But the thing of grouping a bunch of indie games under the banner of ‘wholesome’ begins to stride towards rhetorical territory of works of OUTCOME over PROCESS. That’s the Jane McGonigal lie. That games ‘produce’ (to her mind) better [citizens].

That’s the poison of uncritical Games For Good/Change (see this excellent @molleindustria talk for some thoughts on that )

And in describing games as united by an OUTPUT we do our players a disservice - producing in them a homogenous group on whom an affect is had (See The Player is a Material Made up of People for some complications from me on that )

AT THE SAME TIME it’s HARD to curate indie games & make room for them. If I look at what the Wholesome Direct curated, it feels like a clear interest in smaller scales & intimacy & slower pacing which is totally interesting. I get the use of wholesome in a marketing environment.

But as a maker, teacher, collaborator and someone always trying to better my practice (and the spaces I build to practice with others), I have to dig deeper and understand how a thing might be nourishing. By whom, for whom, with what tools.

Which, btw, I know a lot of those games do! Please use this as an excuse to look them all up. Also, for a chewier and smaller curation along similar themes check out @WildRumpus’ Mild Rumpus https://thewildrumpus.co.uk/mildrumpus 

(Also people have called Mutazione wholesome and I totally get it and love you for sharing a thing we worked hard on and especially love if it was meaningful to you.)