Many of us are getting through the pandemic and ongoing domestic insurgency in part by playing mobile games to escape—so as a digital culture professor and former video game reviewer, I thought I'd make a ranking. sethabramson.substack.com/p/proof-recomm…
1/ I figured I'd also do a brief thread to highlight a few of the 100 mobile video games listed at PROOF—at the link above—that really stand out to me for one reason or another. If you try out only one or two of the 100 games listed, these would be some good options to check out.
2/ There are 100 games on this ranking of mobile games, and I've only played *2* all the way through *multiple* times; it's just not something I tend to do. But I did with these 2 games, whose art, tone and complexity is perfectly calibrated: a Card RPG (l) and strategy game (r).
3/ Having said that, because sports games aren't really subject to a "playing all the way through" analysis, I'll say that the game I spent the *most* time playing—including winning many Retro Bowls—is the one below, which is endlessly customizable and has a great franchise mode.
4/ Here are two games I got wonderfully lost in for quite some time, as they both create incredibly deep and believable magical worlds that are well *worth* getting lost in for some time: the former is a Strategy game and the latter a Card RPG. Can't recommend them highly enough.
5/ Games that are absolute artistic achievements that you just want to stare at:
6/ Four more games particularly noteworthy for their artistic vision:
7/ Here are four of the eight most addictive games on the list:
9/ (It probably goes without saying, but Proof subscribers are warmly invited to suggest new games for me to play in the comments at the link atop this thread. I try my best to check out games recommended by members of the PROOF community—and rank them if I feel they deserve it.)
10/ Okay, so how about the *strangest* games in the PROOF Top 100 Android Video Games? Easy:
11/ Four more *strange* games in the PROOF Top 100 Android Video Games:
12/ If you like "adorable" games, I've got four games that'll have you clutching your stuffed unicorn and shouting, "He's so fluffy! I'm gonna die!"
13/ And second-to-last, here are the games I found myself most viscerally invested in—anxious, consumed, totally transported but fixated. You might even say "ensorcelled." (Besides Gris and Kingdom Two Crowns, both of which I mentioned already.) The untitled game is "Grim Quest."
14/ Finally—as I often get asked by folks who don't play video games at *all* where they should start if they do decide to just *try* playing games on their Android phone—here (besides Threes) are the best super-duper-starter games that made the PROOF Top 100 Android Video Games:
15/ (I should say that Alone is a *very* hard game—it's just also very, very simple. It can be picked up and played instantaneously.)
(🔐) MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: Significant New Evidence Emerges That the Arizona "Audit" Now Aimed at Discrediting the 2020 Election May Be a Criminal Conspiracy Born in Florida and Involving Donald Trump
1/ In April, @TrumpFile noted a connection between a powerful Republican and the head of the Cyber Ninjas (the firm running the fraudulent Arizona "audit"). In May, Sarasota resident Ira Elliott (@rockpilot) noted the same thing. Days ago, a TikTok user made the same observation.
2/ What these observations—which focused on a single data-point of correspondence—lacked, despite their evident importance, was a series of additional data-points to give the coincidence of Doug Logan and a powerful GOP figure in Florida any lasting meaning or real consequence.
We spent years subjected to inane far-right memes of Dems crying about Clinton's loss—which few did, as the left's focus quickly turned to protecting America from a criminal sociopath. Now all we see—every day—are Trumpists crying like babies over Trump getting decimated in 2020.
If you can't accept that your orange God-Emperor got brutally destroyed in the Electoral College, and instead are fetishizing supposed "evidence" you've never seen offered to you by an ex-crack addict *pillow salesman*, you're the definition of a "snowflake"—and an embarrassment.
We spend too much time on social media entertaining the tantrums of pathetic cultists whose susceptibility to being conned by the *most obvious fraud in American history* shouldn't be ours or America's problem.
Like, I'm sorry you're a gullible rube—but don't make it my problem.
(🔓) PROOF UNLOCKED: I'm working on the third entry in this PROOF series (from the Culture section) now—including 15+ new game recommendations and the first-ever Top 100 Android Video Games(!)—but if you missed the prior entry on Android games, here it is: sethabramson.substack.com/p/proof-recomm…
(PS) It's funny because, when I hit 40, I suddenly found I wasn't much interested in console games anymore, and I thought, "Well—I guess that's it for me and video games"—and then, almost without realizing it, I started playing a ton of Android games, and now I'm super into them.
(PS2) For those who don't know, I was—among other things—a video game critic at Indiewire, and I actually have *taught* video games in the Digital Language Arts program at University of New Hampshire, so this review series really comes out of experience/training (not "the blue").
(🆚) MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: Far-Right Militants Were in Trump's Insurrection Week Command Center
With each day, PROOF gets closer—via images, videos, and transcripts—to putting Trump at the heart of the planning for the insurrection. I hope you'll RT this. sethabramson.substack.com/p/major-breaki…
1/ The information PROOF readers now know about the planning of the insurrection that goes beyond what's routinely available in major media is now as large in size and scope as either the Mueller Report or the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report about Trump and Russia.
2/ In this second part of a 3-part epic exposé of events at the Willard Hotel on January 5, January 6, January 7, and January 8, PROOF identifies 3 more members of Trump's secretive war room and introduces 2 new key far-right orgs that had a *significant* presence at the Willard.
If there's a type of newsletter you can be certain isn't on Facebook, it's one that runs a comprehensive investigation of the January 6 insurrection. Facebook has said that it will have no political or controversial newsletters—a pretty weird flex, but OK. Sethabramson.substack.com
(PS) Don't get me wrong: I have no doubt that the type of person who's still using Facebook regularly in 2021 will love the sort of content that Facebook plans to put out through its "noncontroversial" newsletters. I think the most dynamic content will continue to be on Substack.
(PS2) By "dynamic" I of course don't mean the disingenuous clickbait a bad actor like Glenn Greenwald or Bari Weiss pumps out daily. I'm referring to substacks by folks like Tim Snyder, Virginia Heffernan, E. Jean Carroll, Neko Case, Patti Smith, Roxane Gay, Dan Rather and so on.
I'm aghast. Michael Wolff wrote a full-throated exoneration of Trump that gets every fact about January 5 and 6 wrong. Per usual, he does it giving no sense of who his source is (typically Bannon). Sorry, but JFC, if you want truth and 1000+ named sources: sethabramson.substack.com
(PS) I'm not just saying this now. Back in January, I said that 2021 would be too early for any legitimate book about the insurrection because it would take 2-3 years for all the facts to come out. I said we needed a careful, methodical investigation—which is why I started PROOF.
(PS2) A legitimate book on January 6 would be published in 2024 at the earliest and require at least 1000 pages in one volume or 600+ pages in each of two volumes. It would *have* to have publicly available sourcing or at least a quote-specific categorization of types of sources.