First of all, some background.

Last year, Microsoft terminated two employees after a peaceful vigil against the use of Azure services by the Israeli military in the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. You can sign a petition supporting these employees here.

BNC has officially announced Microsoft as a priority target of the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement, which seeks to limit the economic power of Israel, and Israel’s ability to call on economic support from businesses around the world.

As part of this boycott, last week they called for consumers to boycott Xbox and other Microsoft game services. Notably for me, that includes Minecraft, which I discovered literally as I began stream on Monday, resulting in a hasty switch to The Long Dark for the remainder of stream.

What do you do when you can’t play your game?

I wasn’t kidding in the subheading when I said I played Minecraft about 20+ hours a week. Really. I did. That means that I spent the first day reading and rereading the BDS website trying to work out a way I felt good about continuing to play. I’m not proud to admit I spent a while bargaining with myself, citing my mental health & tendency to spiral in boredom, my Autism and how it’s natural and normal for me to have fixations on something in particular… but eventually I had to face that I couldn’t justify continuing to play through the boycott.

(ps. this means I’ll probably be playing The Long Dark on forseeable Mondays, but if you have other requests feel free to drop them in the Discord)

I’ve spent the rest of the week looking for other games to keep me busy, and I have to admit nothing has quite hit the sweet spot yet. I played some more of The Forest which I tried for the first time on stream last weekend, and didn’t quite vibe with. I played more of The Long Dark off stream. I played some Animal Crossing New Horizons, I played some Stardew Valley, some Sims 4, some Sims 1, some Balatro… if it was in my game library I at least looked at it. But I haven’t caved yet, and have uninstalled Minecraft from my devices (i own it on three) to stop me launching it out of habit.

I’ll keep hunting for a replacement game for now, and I’ll let you know what I find.

Luckily Candy Crush isn’t my mobile game of choice or this would be worse.

I’ve decided that whenever I get the urge to play Minecraft I’m going to do something to promote the boycott

So today I made a tumblr post about it. But really, the thing I’m focusing on here is that the more successful this boycott is, the more likely it is that eventually I’ll be able to play Minecraft again without feeling a pit in my stomach about it.

So I’m asking you - are you in this with me? Are you willing to forgo a game or two to support Palestine?

At the very least can you suggest some indie games to keep me entertained in the meantime?

See you next newsletter.