It was hard to keep up, and the deluge of great games has led to a lot of chatter this year about the crowding of platforms, the increase in microtransactions, the possibility of (yet another?) "indie apocalypse," and the seemingly inescapable gravity of the marketplace. Game developers, of course, didn't pause and wait for us to have these debates. They just kept shipping incredible games.As the year went on, events in the world only got more frustrating and the games continued to impress.
But games were also the way we got through the hardest weeks. In March I wrote that "Breath of the Wild Is the Zelda Adventure I Always Wanted," but it was also the game I needed to make it through the year. Collecting korok seeds and solving shrine puzzles could not be more trivial an activity, but when I needed something to lift me out of the deepest slumps, or something to pull me away from Twitter and into bed at 3AM, there they were. By March, I was trying to work through how those two things fit together, causing me to write a little about the intersection of video games and self-care. It wasn't the first time, either. Back in my 2014 (2014!) Game of the Year list for Giant Bomb, I wrote about the tension between needing to recover during hard times and needing to remain engaged:In 2017, games needed to be more than distractions. They had heavy lifting to do.
My takeaway then was that it was a hard line to walk, but it was one we had to do, and one that games could help us with. In 2017, I understand that better than I ever could've then.In the lead up to our big end of year coverage, I honestly wasn't sure what we were going to do. Last year, we concocted Waypoint High, an alternate universe where our favorite characters of 2016 were awarded Senior Superlatives, danced together at the prom, and snuck out of class to get high in the tennis courts. It was fun. 2017 was not fun. And, frankly, it just didn't feel right. In 2017, games needed to be more than distractions. They had heavy lifting to do.So, when Waypoint's managing editor, Danielle Riendeau, suggested that we should build a pantheon to play off of the "godly" year of games, everything clicked into place.Whether about Athena, Agni, Anansi, or Amaterasu, myths did work for the people and the cultures who told their stories. As Paul Veyne argues in Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?, these stories were not "simply" held as fact, but used as tools for thinking through daily problems, civic responsibilities, and the most philosophical of inquiries. For cultures around the world, the stories of gods and goddesses allowed humans to conceptualize justice, demonstrate the folly of arrogance, and make sense of unexplained phenomenon. And, you know, they also made for great entertainment.This year we’ve been forced to face hard truths about our community and our country, and this has put the need for self-care and the need for social improvement in conflict over and over, again and again. Do you spend the night engaging with the rando on Twitter who seems to be coming from an honest place, or do you take the night off and just watch some shit? Do you correct your racist uncle at the holiday dinner, or just roll your eyes and rub your temples? Do you put on your heavy coat and walk down to the protest, or just hit RT from the comfort of your bed?