Reader Question: Thoughts on Chulip
originally posted on Cohost, 10-12-2023
silvernevermind asks: 15 days late since i chose to only start using cohost like, yesterday (and sorry if you were already sent an ask about it idk if cohost can search specific accounts), but would love to hear you talk about Chulip. ive been watching wayneradiotvs playthrough of it and its deeply captured my attention/thoughts. im only about halfway through the vods but its probably already cemented itself in whatever my top 25 would look like. <3
note: like Oikospiel, Chulip was included in my 5x5 grid of favorite games, hence the mention of a Top 25.
It's never too late to ask me about video games!!! I have so much to say all the time...
Chulip, to me... Is a game that begs to be taken seriously, in a way no other game really does. It begs to be taken seriously despite itself. It raises goofy, absurdist scenarios and says "this is important." It shows strange, silly, and often disturbing people that look more like muppets than humans and says "this person deserves love, too." These people are often cruel (or ambivalent at best) towards the player, and yet they're all struggling with things themselves. It'd be easiest to write them all off as not being good people or not being worth caring for, and yet the single objective of the game is to explicitly, deliberately, compassionately care about all of them. Not to accept them as bizarre video game characters but to listen, understand, and show kindness to them as people with pasts, desires, trauma, failures, and real agency in their lives. It's a game nominally about unrequited romantic love, but is mechanically and thematically about unconditionally loving everybody in the world because there is not a single person who doesn't deserve it. I love the RTV crew as entertainers, but the idea of Content Creators playing this game kind of makes my stomach churn because the easiest Content to milk from this game would be to lean into the comedy and the absurdity and, even if the heart of the game is addressed, it might simply be utilized as more Entertainment Fuel. Watching someone love others in their own way is different from loving others yourself in your own way. Maybe those RTV kids are doing the game justice but I'd recommend playing it for yourself sometime either way. The deliberate pursuit of compassion is the point; go ahead and pursue it yourself!
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