What’s the deal with Pragmata, the latest entry in the vaunted “games that used to come out on Xbox 360 all the time” genre? To hear many tell it, Capcom—on an impressive hot streak that also includes Resident Evil Requiem—continues to demonstrate that sometimes making an eccentric, well-paced single-player game is enough even during these turbulent times. But others have decided it’s several strains of strange in a way that has, at least to an extent, poisoned the well. On the latest Aftermath Hours, we attempt to approach the game on its own terms while also grappling with the dark cloud hanging over it.
This time around, we’re joined by games reporter extraordinaire Rebekah Valentine, formerly of IGN and now (very) newly of Kotaku—which of course none of us have ever heard of. We ask her about the whys and hows of her big move to a site that—fingers crossed—seems to be in the midst of a renaissance, as well as little things like The State Of Games Journalism.
We also discuss the way discourse around games has evolved as games journalism’s influence has waned, handily exemplified by the absolutely deranged takes that Capcom’s otherwise great new action game, Pragmata, is generating. Chris argues that a) it’s not (ew) “pro-natalist propaganda,” and b) that it’s actually uncle-core, which is different from a dad game in several crucial ways. Finally, we decide how many rooms in a house is too many, not that anybody who works for Aftermath knows much about that.
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can create a new internet where people can be normal about things for even a single week, please, I’m begging you.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Chris: I was looking at Kotaku, and there was a piece [about how] everyone should just be normal about this game. It’s true. It’s correct.
The “pro-natalist” thing is like, she’s a child who’s a robot, but also he’s not her dad. He’s her weird uncle. Pragmata at its core is uncle-core. It is an uncle-based game. You have a different relationship with a child who is a nephew or niece than you do with a son or a daughter. I think that every time that I see something that makes me annoyed about this game, it is because that person is either trying to put an overly paternalistic view of the narrative on there—which is an easy conclusion to come to because so many narratives involving an older man and a younger child are intrinsically [about] their spiritual dad.
Nathan: Especially in video games.
Chris: I think people keep going back to The Last Of Us and Bioshock, and I think that Pragmata is better than those games.
It kills that relationship so well. I have never felt a game where the banter has just been like “Hey, yeah, I like crayons, blah, blah, blah,” and it feels like a kid. As a person of both nephew and uncle experience, my relationship with both my uncles and aunts was like, I get to see the best version of them. And then later on in life, I realize the things where they were faulty and where they weren’t complete.
But my aunt will always be the person that I watched King Kong with on a black-and-white TV with. Later on in life, she was a mess. But that is kind of what the relationship feels like, and it doesn’t feel lacking for that information. It feels like a good time. It is so weird to play what is functionally arcade Dead Space and for it to just feel nice for, like, 90 percent of the game—to just feel warm and good. Maybe that’s childish or immature, but it feels really good.
Rebekah: So a million people bought this game. How many of the million people who bought the game are on the internet in a deep way? They’re not just checking their phone and seeing a Google News headline from IGN or Kotaku or wherever and clicking on it and reading it and closing it. Like, they’re online having discourse about Pragmata. A very small number! And then that number’s inflated a little bit because there’s a lot of people who are online having discourse about Pragmata who did not buy that game.
But ultimately, the actual meaningful impact of that stupid discourse on the overall world impression of Pragmata is so small and so miniscule. And so to some extent, there’s this whole thing I feel like we get caught up in sometimes where we see something going on over on the really bad website, and it feels overwhelming. It feels like “Oh my gosh, what is happening here?” When really, it’s just a bunch of weirdos in their weirdo corner having weirdo talk, and we can have a whole different conversation about Pragmata over here that doesn’t have to have anything to do with them.
That said, we all know in here how groups of people on the internet saying crap can actually have real material impact on the world. And so on one hand, I want to just dismiss it and let them gripe in their little room about whatever they think Pragmata is about, and we can do whatever we wanna do over here. But on the other hand, I have this impulse to be like “No, but we have to open our mouths and say, ‘Actually, that’s a really weird thing to take away from this game, and maybe we should not do that.’” I feel both ways about it, and I don't know how to confront it.
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Nathan Grayson
