Recommendations for November 2

More recommendations!

First,  a great article from Evan Narcisse at Kotaku about the need for better portrayals of blackness in video games. Don't have a lot to say about this one, other than that I really appreciate how he specifies certain black characters in games as examples of how to do things well, but reminds the reader that it's not enough to just clap your hands and finish at that. Also, apparently this is an except from The State of Play, an anthology of video game cultural analysis which just came out. I think I'll have to pick that up.

On that note, Laura Hudson at Offworld (which I really need to read more regularly) has a nice feature on Kiro'o Games, the first game development studio in Cameroon, and their upcoming game, Aurion. I actually remember hearing about this last year and am glad I was reminded of it. Video games often lack a sense of identity that draws on where they were made - or at least, that identity tends to be implicit. So I'm glad that we're starting to see games come out of areas outside of the traditional development centres of North America, Japan and Europe. (Chilean developer ACE Team is another example.) That these folks seem to be pulling a Tolkien on African history and mythology makes me even more excited.

Because of the Blue Jays recent, but too short, playoff run, I've fallen back in love with baseball. Which means I've been reading a lot about baseball history. Corinne Landrey at The Hardball Times wrote about how this years World Series between the Mets and the Royals is the first ever not to feature one of the original eight MLB teams. That's pretty shocking, considering that this was the 53rd World Series since the MLB started expanding. Equally shocking, to me at least, was that the New York Yankees used to be called the Baltimore Orioles. Weird. I also liked this article by Rany Jazayerli at the recently shutdown Grantland about the biggest plays in MLB history. Baseball is great because of how it's punctuated by moments like these. Dozens and dozens of things happen that seem to be of no consequence and then all of the sudden games, series and seasons pivot on one hit, one catch, or one throw. And to round out the baseball reading with contemporary events, here's Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs congratulating the Kansas City Royals on winning the World Series yesterday - and for being such a damn fun team.

Finally, some Canadian politics, in the form of comments on Justin Trudeau's policy plans for electoral reform from Evan Solomon at Maclean's and the Syrian refugee crisis from the CBC. These were both important issues for me during the election, so I was glad to see some continuing coverage of them. Both articles are a bit pessimistic, though. On the electoral reform front, while the Liberals might put forward a ranked ballot as the easiest change that also benefits them, I'd prefer anything to First-Past-the-Post (although my preference is Single Transferable Vote.) On the refugee crisis, I find it strange that the article talks about the difficulty in processing the applications for so many people before the end of the year, but doesn't really address what those applications are like and whether things could be done to reduce the paperwork.

One final recommendation, although not for an article: Bouletcorp is a fantastic webcomic that everyone should read. It's mostly in French, but there are English versions of many strips, so you have no excuse!