Are you a brick or a builder?
A woman made of leaves asks you this question in City Of Muse, a little-known seaside walking sim released in 2021. "What are you: a brick or a builder?" she says. It's a question I have often remembered, from a tiny game, likely long forgotten by the few who played it.
As Wall Week comes to a close, I want to take a sincere moment at the end of our overextended joke to talk about what we are building here at Jank, and why a paywall is more than just a turnstile charging an entry fee. This article is not paywalled - you're invited in.
When we talk about videogame walls for Wall Week, we're not always thinking of them as a divider. Even our own paywall, which is as porous and reliant on good will as any other, isn't meant to be some impassable and offensive barrier. If I build a wall in Age of Empires 2, or fix a broken one with a team of multiplayer engineers in Foxhole, I'm keeping my enemies out. But when I build a castle rampart or a cabin wall in Minecraft, I'm thinking of the future,