Play on words
Art activist Gabriela de la Puente of The White Pube talks art and video games.
Words by Sam Bradley.
Illustrations by Bethany Thompson
The White Pube’s a vehicle for art criticism, so why did you start focusing on games?
We started off writing about exhibitions, and then gradually realized that we were interested in how those exhibitions took place and who was deciding about the artists been platformed, where the money was coming from. The beauty of the way that we write is that it can just be about anything; it’s writing around an encounter. So whatever we encounter can be written about, and it felt translatable to all these different things. And I wanted to make the most of that. So theme parks, restaurants, video games. [Mobile game] Tap Tap Fish was my first game review, back in 2017.
And then last year… I’m not sure what made me buy a Switch, but it felt a bit cosmic. I hadn’t played games in years and I remember going to see my cousin; he and his daughter were playing Pokemon: Let’s Go. He let me have a go, and then he turned Breath of the Wild on so I could have a go with that. I was like: this is sick. I went to Game the next day to buy one. It wasn’t going to lead to a review in any sense, I just really wanted to play some games. But I was starting to realize that games were so much better than exhibitions… and that I should admit that to myself, and to the writing. I reviewed Breath of the Wild and it kind of went from there, slowly. I felt like I was coming out of a relationship with exhibitions… or cheating on exhibitions with games, until I decided it was best just to break up start something else. Zarina’s [Muhammad, the other half of The White Pube] been very accommodating as well.
Have you written much about digital or virtual exhibitions?
I feel so bad saying it, but it is what it is; I hate online exhibitions so deeply. I feel guilty for saying that because I feel like people don’t really have a choice at the moment. I also know that it’s a fairly accessible way, in terms of finances and physical accessibility, to enjoy something. But for me it always feels clunky. I can always see the limits of it and I don’t enjoy that. So I’ve not reviewed any online exhibitions.
You seem to write a lot more about the feeling of playing a game than its mechanics or narrative – why take that approach?
Partly, it’s because I don’t quite understand mechanics yet. It’s really strange. The way I write about art has almost restarted now that I’m thinking about games. I would go to an exhibition, and think: I’ve got no words for this whatsoever, and feel strange and guilty about that. Then I went to art school and did learn how you can attach some kind of conversation to a painting, even if you don’t know that much about it. But ultimately, that conversation for me was easiest when it was coming through my own evaluation of it, compared to understanding the artwork in terms of the historical canon of art history. So it was more about: did I find any energy in the work? If so, why? And if not, how come? It feels more relevant and more attainable. That type of embodied criticism, as I’ve come to know, it, is more honest, because it doesn’t take on this persona of a third-person, objective critic who thinks that they’ve got all the power, and this is how things are, this is bad and this is why and this is good and I’ll tell you why it’s great.
I don’t believe in any of that. If you think something’s good, it’s because of like, a whole compass of reasons. And you should explain to the reader what your compass points are. So I’ve been applying that to games. I don’t quite understand how a game functions, the technicalities of it; I’m starting to understand how a game is like a collaboration of art level design, gameplay mechanics, and narrative design, but I couldn’t make one. At the moment, it is very feelings-first, it’s about my encounter with whatever it is I’m playing.
I think the closest I’ve ever come to making one was using the level designer in TimeSplitters.
My friend makes like little games on itch.io and because I’m interested in writing she keeps saying: ‘Well, why don’t you just try to write something. And like see if it can be stretched out into a game?’ That is what I’m trying to do at the moment just for fun. We’ll see what happens.
Do you think that approach is missing from games criticism?
There’s so much games journalism. It’s so readily available, so fast, and it serves one purpose. But this other purpose, interrogating whether developers know how people actually feel when they play their games, and how it affects them or how it matters to them in detail? I don’t know if that’s there. Because all you really see is fans.
I sent an email to Triple Click recently, which is a games podcast made up of three games journalists, because I wanted to ask them that question. I was like: ‘I know that there’s so much games journalism in existence but, have you got any recommendations for like, different ways games are written about, that might not fit that general pattern?’ And they didn’t have an answer. There must be stuff out there. Recently I bought the bundle for Heterotopia, which is a games magazine. Some of the writing in that is the closest to I’ve been looking for. I still feel like I’m digging.
You guys take quite an activist approach, to art writing. Do you think you’d want to take that approach to games? You’d have plenty to talk about.
I know. I feel a little bit... as if I’m being purposefully ignorant of how bad the games industry is. When I wrote about exhibitions, I would already know so much about the galleries and the artists in detail and that would always inform what I was writing about. But I don’t look that far into the teams making these games or the studios. For now, I feel like I’m just trying to get to grips with the art and not the infrastructure around it. There’s some guilt with that because I’m not giving the full picture. I think it’s going to move towards that naturally as I understand more and more and speak to more people. In a way I’m scared for like, the influx of that knowledge and stress because I know how heavy that weight has been for the creative industries and arts workers.
But I also think if you’ve got a website, or publication, you’ve got a responsibility to acknowledge all of that. It’s hard because The White Pube isn’t journalism, so I’m always trying to figure out how to fit that in. Is that something that then takes place on social media, rather than in the writing? Because ultimately, that’s where it’s probably most digestible.
I suppose the relationship between studios and the games themselves, players experience them, is maybe a bit more discrete than art and an artist.
Well you can find the studio name, but sometimes it’s difficult to know that stuff. That information is quite obscured and partly, I respect that, because maybe this is just someone’s job and maybe they don’t want to be as visible; they just want the work to be visible... I really do want to respect that.
Has writing about games changed the way you play them?
Yeah, definitely. But in the in the best way. I’ve just played Before I Forget, which was about a woman who has early onset Alzheimer’s, it’s by 3-Fold Games. There’s this mechanic in the game whereby everything in the flat around the main character, Sunita, is really washed-out until she picks up an object or looks at it closely – and then all the colour and texture floods in. Once you’ve looked at everything in detail, the flat just becomes her home; it feels a lot different.
I feel like there’s an analogy there for me starting to learn how games work. And how much more texture there is in playing them now, because I’ve got more footholds. I think more carefully about the narrative structure. Why is this happening now? Why have they waited to tell us this piece of information? And why do we have to go all the way there on this big giant adventure, to get an item and bring it back? Why isn’t any music playing? Why is music playing? Why are we only allowed to change the armour, but not the character’s appearance? All these different things have made games mean something else to me.
I appreciate them so much more. Like I’ve just learned a new language and now I can hear it. I did enjoy games up until this point but now, I’m on another level.
It’s why I’m staying up so late. My sleeping pattern has gone to shit, because I just get locked in. I’m playing Death Stranding at the moment... oh my God. I am staying up till like three o’clock in the morning and waking up late because I’m enjoying spending time with all these different artworks. And which is funny, because it’s something I’ve never done with art.
I’ve never stayed up thinking about an installation, or film or painting – but with games, I’m like, waking up thinking about them and making notes and seeking out podcasts and buying magazines about them, and trying to make friends who have worked on games, because I’m finding their thought patterns so interesting. It’s great. I’m really, really happy. I feel like I’ve had a career change even though my career has not changed. It’s so much more fun.
Have you ever played Bastion? Depending on the path you took through the levels, the voiceover narration would change – and on the new game plus mode, if you spent too long fighting with an enemy that didn’t need to be dealt with, it would accuse you of enjoying the violence too much. It was reframing the story the second time around.
That’s it! All of these touches that the writers put in are so interesting to me. I played God of War a few weeks ago and then once I’d finished it and sat down to write, I put somebody else’s gameplay on YouTube just playing on in in background, because I find that quite helpful when I’m writing. I was realizing that all the lines at the beginning of the game landed completely differently once you knew what happens at the end. It was dramatic irony like you would have in theatre.
Those are things that I don’t think I would have caught if I hadn’t have started to think about all of this stuff so closely. I’m now I’m looking out for all of that stuff now. Before I was just playing Mario Kart, mind-off; now every single thing is a choice.
What have you been playing under lockdown?
So much Call of Duty. Like, so much. I’m really surprised I’ve not been full-on cancelled for enjoying Call of Duty as much as I do. I really like it.
It got actually got weirdly emotional because me and my fiancé were in lockdown, apart. And we were having phone calls. And it was just sad because we didn’t have an activity to do or something that we could share, until we both realized that we should play Call of Duty, and we started to do it every day. I would be on my beanbag, put my phone on my shoulder and have it on loudspeaker and be playing Call of Duty and he would do exactly the same. And we’d be in the same matches, discussing what was happening and then going quiet, because we were really concentrating. It’s so funny, because since we’ve been reunited we’ve not played it.
It was it was really like a stand-in for something that wasn’t there. Which is so strange, because it’s like, a very violent game. Of all the things to bond over. It just makes me laugh. I also went through the obligatory Animal Crossing phase very early on with 120 hours logged. After that, I got more into the routine of reviewing things. Me and Zarina take turns publishing on the website, so I knew I was always going to have a two week deadline.
That meant one week to play and one week to write. I appreciated that because it meant that things never got too boring. One of the things I miss most about like life before lockdown was having a different day, every day of the week and new people and new places and ideas. All of that is gone. But that feeling is being serviced a little bit in planning these different games every two weeks, whether they’re massive games or little ones, or stuff that I play and don’t ever write about, it still feels healthy.
If I hadn’t had the job of writing about games, I think my brain would have just flattened out.
My mood would have probably been a lot worse than it was, because I was always bringing new things to the table.
