Phoenix Simms on Muck Rack

Phoenix Simms

(She/They)
Canada, New Brunswick
As seen in: Medium, Ghost, Paste, Unwinnable, Uppercut Crit, Into The Spine, C[ ]ntainer
Covers:  Games, game narrative, indie games, game culture, digital humanities, visual culture, decolonialism, intersectional feminism, tabletop games
Doesn't Cover: NFTs and blockchain
Game critic & cryptid (she/they). Interlinked @Unwinnable Contributor @PasteGames. Co Editor of TIER. Biz: phoenix.simms@gmail.com banner @linaw_u, avi Elliot

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Phoenix Simms’s Biography

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My primary niche is game criticism, specifically game criticism that acknowledges how games are part of the larger media landscape. I mix game studies with my knowledge of modern literature and culture, as well as my lived experience as a biracial Canadian creator.

I believe the future of story-driven games lies in diverse indie and AA development. AAA games are limited by their capitalistic nature, and while there are some great exceptions, generally speaking, the huge hits are hyper-focused …

Phoenix Simms’s Journalist Portfolio

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The Keen Edge of Legacy: An Interview with tonia laird - Unwinnable

The Keen Edge of Legacy: An Interview with tonia laird - Unwinnable

"In all of her work there's a deep sense of care and respect for how people, both individually and collective…

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Where is the Weird? - Unwinnable

Where is the Weird? - Unwinnable

I miss AA and AAA being unabashedly bizarro in their design, whether they're story-driven or not. A state of …

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Fragile Traditions

Fragile Traditions

So, I replayed Silent Hill: Homecoming for the first time since it came out when I was in high school. A lot …

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Negative Spatial Awareness

Negative Spatial Awareness

I wrote here about different design aspects of Blue Prince we found evocative. For me, it was the references …

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A Conversation with Nathalie Lawhead

A Conversation with Nathalie Lawhead

Nathalie Lawhead joined us on Zoom to talk about their work, interactive fiction, internet subcultures, socia…

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Co-Opting Co-Op

Co-Opting Co-Op

My latest for Unwinnable, musing about the concepts of cosiness, wholesomeness, and how these terms are becom…

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Articles

Killing Interactive Art…and Loving It!

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By Phoenix Simms
| tier-review.com
Anthology of the Killer (hereafter AOTK) is an anti-game in the same way that Dada artworks and performances were anti-art. I don’t mean to say that AOTK is aiming for high-brow; indeed, this latest cult-hit title from thecatamites a.k.a. Stephen Gillmurphy and his various collaborators is unabashedly irreverent and unpretentious in its expression.
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Consigning Meaning to the Void

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By Phoenix Simms
There’s a cynical undertone throughout the Lovely Lady RPG’s (hereafter LLRPG) narration, when the author doesn’t insert themselves, that expresses the nihilism of Anglia and its jaded post-war society. The city is personified as a beast that’s slowly digesting Ghost and everyone else. The Sinner, who comes from another town which was destroyed by over-extraction of natural resources, yearns for a personal apocalypse and wants to draw Ghost too into oblivion.
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Genre-Queer

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By Phoenix Simms
| Ghost
Heisei Pistol Show (hereafter referred to as Heisei) is a time capsule of a game, full of visual expression that’s closely aligned with principles of Outsider and vent art. As a game about Heart, a former sex-worker-turned-assassin who is inspired by Lolita subculture ideals of maidenly femininity, Heisei is a personal manifesto adjacent to the Menhera subculture of the early 2000s (more specifically 2008-2009).
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