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Reading List (February 2022)
🕑 Added 2022-02-22 11:00:05 +0000 UTCHello! Welcome back to the reading list. This month I’ve got two special categories for you: one filled with articles about Deathloop, to coincide with my new GMTK video. And another with some must-read stuff about NFTs.
Speak soon!
The Design of Games
[Read] Four veteran combat designers on how to make a battle system memorable - “Devil May Cry 5, Nier Automata, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Jedi: Fallen Order devs reveal the tricks of the trade”
Break the Loop
[Read] Clear goals and organic paths: The Arkane guide to player agency - “Arkane Lyon's campaign director Dana Nightingale discusses how to empower players and earn their trust”
[Read] A restorative reading of Deathloop - My video glanced over Deathloop’s many positives to explore what I see as design flaws. This article goes the other way.
[Read] Deathloop Redefines Blackness In Video Games - “Good Black characters in gaming are rare, and extraordinary Black characters are even more so.”
[Read] Time loop games are evolving, and challenging a fantasy of perfection - “The time loop concept has been growing increasingly popular in games for a while now. Yet some of this year’s examples have helped refresh the format, by diving into its psychological and philosophical repercussions.”
The Business of Games
[Read] These are the video game studios leading the charge for a four-day workweek - “Crows Crows Crows, alongside a growing number of independent studios — Die Gute Fabrik, Young Horses, Kitfox Games, Armor Games, Ko_Op Mode — plus, Eidos-Montreal, are pushing back against such ingrained approaches to work.”
[Read] Wordle and IP law: What happens when a hot game gets cloned - Written before Wordle got bought by the New York Times, this Ars Technica piece wades into the murky legal waters of video game clones.
[Read] What the Activision Blizzard deal means for game devs and platforms - Since we last did a reading list, Microsoft took out its cheque book and dropped a cool 80 bil’ on Activision. Here’s some more details.
The Development of Games
[Watch | 13 mins] I Made 10,000,000,000 Games! - Jonas Tyroller gets a world record by using procedural generation to make 10 billion games. I like the comment, “so THAT’S how mobile games are made…”
[Read] Budgeting to Build Your Community - Smarty pants Victoria Tran, of Among Us fame, talks about paying for community and marketing.
[Read] Four Years of Celeste - Maddy Thorson reflects on the last four years, living in a post-Celeste world.
[Watch | 13 mins] Tomb Raider on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance is incredible - A seemingly impossible port of Tomb Raider 1 has appeared on the GBA. Modern Vintage Gamer uncovers how it was made and how it works.
The Playing of Games
[Read] Animal Crossing: The polite battleground for gaming's soul - “Games, I've often worried, do not always trust us very much. They don't trust us to enjoy them without buzzers going off and pop-ins erupting and points going up.”
The Art of Games
[Read] Black Hair in Video Games Is Terrible. These 3D Artists Are Changing That - “When Black gamers booted up Outriders last April, only four of the 24 hairstyle options for characters could conceivably be considered a Black hairstyle. Even worse, all of them fell under the tired tropes of minifros and dreads.”
[Watch | 18 mins] How to Animate a Basic Walk Cycle - Dan Root talks you through the basic, ahem, steps, to animating a walk. Good for games, as well as other types of animation.
[Read] Animal Crossing Furniture’s Surprising Designer Origins - This cute article tracks down the real-world inspiration for Animal Crossing’s tables and chairs.
[Watch | No Voice | 5 mins] What 24 Consoles Would Look Like if They Rendered Themselves - I kinda love this? Consoles “rendered within the limits of their colour palette, processing power, and hardware.”
The History of Games
[Read] Streets of Rage 2 Design Docs - These popped up on my radar. “These documents gave a deep insight into the game’s inner workings, technical aspects, designs and even some cut content.”
[Read] The eject button held all the power on the original Xbox - A simple, but interesting point, about the relative size of buttons on consoles.
Beyond Games
[Read] Fossils Reveal When Animals Started Making Noise - “Fossils reveal when the major types of sound-production—and sound-detection—structures appeared in the forerunners of today’s invertebrate and vertebrate creatures.”
[Watch | CC | 13 mins] When Hollywood Speaks Chinese, I Cringe - “Here is a problem rarely discussed, but should be relatable to anyone who speaks a language beyond English: Hollywood just doesn't seem to understand how non-English languages work.”
[Watch | 19 mins] Inside MKBHD's $1,000,000 Studio - This blows my mind a bit. Up your pledges people! I want a robot arm! It will help with GMTK. Promise.
No Friggin’ Thanks
[Watch | 23 mins] What the hell are NFT's? - I feel like this is the most clear and digestible explanation of this absurd fad. Watch if you’re still confused about bored apes and ugly lions.
[Read] NFT Fantasy: Why Items-as-NFTs Does Not Enable Transfer Of Assets Between Games - And what about using NFTs to transfer armour and swords between games? Beyond absurd, according to this article (and also basic logic).
[Read] Mapping the celebrity NFT complex - Did you see that clip of Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon talking about their bored apes? That cringey clip is just the tip of the iceberg…
[Watch | CC | 2 hours, 18 mins] Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs - You’ve probably seen this crop up on YouTube already, but it felt wrong not to include it. Dan Olsen goes really in-depth on Web3.
Comments
jt
As always, the range on this list is really fun! I've been avoiding all the NFT stuff and appreciated the articles shared. Also, I'm really enjoying the Accented Cinema channel, thanks for the intro!
Tukaro
NFTs remind me of pet rocks, or those companies where you'd pay for a certificate saying you named a star. Except both of those are more useful than NFTs and don't burn down forests. Can't wait until this MLM goes down like Enron...
Willhart
A little heavy on reading (compared to watching) this time, though I guess it is in the name.
