The first day of fall each year, I make sure I indulge in a pumpkin spice latte and let the season have me. No other season grabs me like fall; spring’s start is nebulous, and I somewhat scorn winter and summer. I regard autumn with new music, new attitude and my indulgent, overrated elixir of what I’ve been known to describe as liquid gold. Soon, we’ll have apple cider, Halloween costumes, nude trees.
When I was a younger student, devouring games at a ferocious rate, fall was simply another word for “holiday,” the nebulous season the games marketing divisions internally refer to as “Q4” (the fourth quarter.) Q4, holiday, and Capitalist Festivus see the release of the year’s major games. These games promise the unthinkable, but replace each other every year. For most, sequels replace new promises, as the “hype machine” and “gamer hive mind” (marketing) guide purchasing habits away from having quiet, individual experiences.
This is when I got into my pumpkin spice tradition. Consuming like games were candy, I became fixated on playing everything, and managed to play nearly nothing. I never finished “Dark Souls” or “Rayman Origins,” never saw the Dark Brotherhood questline in “Skyrim,” never figured out “XCOM.” The air turned cold, the naked branches put on white quilts, and I declared Games of the Year based mostly on what I managed before the honeycrisp apples arrived. The problem of recency in games is nothing new, and it afflicts most those who drive the industry forward, its primary buyers and the writers who guide them.
Any repeat reader of this column knows I’ve fallen out of this addiction to zeitgeist. I held on dearly for fear of “spoilers” when I was transitioning from high school into adulthood, but I eventually stopped taking the ride of games as seriously as the works as whole projects. When the seasons move, shaking their butts wearing leaves green, brown, or invisible, I end up valuing art more as how its authors construct their beginnings to inform their endings, vice versa, and throughout, rather than whether or not Chapter Five was especially interesting or if I would’ve enjoyed the twist more if I hadn’t read that journal about it for class. My relationship to the zeitgeist, as it were, is primarily through its writers, via their podcasts and on Twitter.
My Twitter feed, at the onset of fall, loves four games so far. The big two, “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” and “Super Mario Maker,” are perennials, representatives for gaming’s greatest empires. And for good reason; each is excellent, both as a franchise and as a new game. The other two, “We Know The Devil” and “Undertale,” each reflect the cutie/queer indie games revolution and channel a bit of spookiness for the Halloween season, and work to give autumn games a new, more risky, reflective identity.
Yet two spring releases perhaps serve as better icons for spring than any others. The first is “Splatoon,” a spring release which promises eternal summer, a season mostly ignored and forgotten by video games that still has new content pushing back our need for the next squad-based shooter. Then there’s “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,” easily described as a “Game of Thrones”-like open world masterpiece. The titular Wild Hunt stalks the land as an icy reminder that winter is always coming, but the witcher, Geralt of Rivia, has friends in high enough places that he can inadvertently cause great change to the world’s political landscape.
Yet, most of all, the game features a quiet moment toward its conclusion, in which unsettled people are forced to reconcile a new ruler. They respond by doing as they always have; the great change, the unthinkable, is hardly recognized by the common people who aren’t linked into its ecosystem. Do you know what’s coming out? I can hardly remember what my latte tasted like.
What games did you love this fall? How did your pumpkin spice latte taste? Let Alex know at alexlovendahl@gmail.com.
