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Reading List (March 2021)
🕑 Added 2021-03-25 11:00:04 +0000 UTCHello!
This month, the UK marked the one-year anniversary of its Covid-19 lockdown (I almost wrote "celebrated"). But hope is on the horizon, light is at the end of the tunnel, and other metaphors about good things being visible.
Until then, here's a handful of things to watch and read, handpicked by yours truly.
Designer Notes
[Read] Doom Eternal director says the Marauder is good, actually - Hugo Martin defends Eternal's polarising Souls-esque mini boss. "All he does is steer you into the fun zone."
[Read] Opinion: When choice becomes a metric, narrative design suffers - Interesting Gamasutra piece on the design of branching path games.
[Read] Life after permadeath - the brutal, beloved mechanic - Wireframe talks to the devs behind FTL, Rogue Legacy, and more to chat permadeath.
[Watch | CC | 8 mins] Why Hitman’s throwing feels so darn good - Polygon talks to IO about the design of Agent 47's most powerful weapon: his baseball pitcher's throw.
[Read] How the future of video game AI will change the way that we play - GamesRadar talks to various devs about upcoming advancements in AI.
[Watch | CC | 20 mins] How Your Personality Affects What You Play Psych of Play asks "is there some underlying connection between our personalities and our gaming preferences?"
[Read] Valuing Players’ Time - An oldie but a goodie, Yacht Club talks about all the ways they respect their players across the Shovel Knight games.
Culture Club
[Read] The year we spent in Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Polygon charts 365 days of events in and out of Nintendo's Switch mega hit.
[Read] Neopets is reckoning with black market pet trading - I love stories about the weird and highly specific culture of online communities.
[Read] Charm Your Communities - Innersloth (Among Us) community director Victoria Tran shares some tips for growing a playerbase through playfulness, delight, and positivity.
Critical Hit
[Watch | CC | 14 mins] Was Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War Really That Bad? - Writing on Games returns to last year's COD entry - "by far the most tightly-paced, varied and fun CoD campaign I've ever played".
Code Monkeys
[Watch | 8 mins] Splatoon's Ink System - Mechanic recreation expert Mix and Jam turns his attention to Splatoon's splatter gun. Unity shaders are complicated.
[Read] Outriders developers explain why a tiny cutscene plays every time you open a door - Twitter joked about these momentum-killing moments in Outriders. The devs explain the technical reason for their inclusion.
Indie Nation
[Read] How Loop Hero's impossible mishmash of ideas came to exist - RPS speaks to Loop Hero designer to discuss its design and development. "We were just talking about the idea of zero-player games as a genre".
[Read] What Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery means to CAPY devs - On its 10th anniversary, Capy's devs reminisce about their evocative iPad indie gem.
[Read] Indie Game Dev: Indie Archetypes - Spelunky 2 designer Derek Yu shares some archetypes to help you finish games. Are you the Daydreamer? The Wanderer? The Burrower?
Business Lunch
[Watch | 19 mins] Someone Else's Problem: How Game Publishers Buy Crunch Overseas - Where was Cyberpunk made? If you answered "Poland", you're only part right.
[Read] Yakuza's Creator On His Life, Career, And Why Sega Should've Fired Him In The '90s - Toshihiro Nagoshi charts his career, from Virtua Racing to Shenmue to Yakuza.
Scenes, Sound, Story
[Watch | 26 mins] What if Princess Mononoke were a GameBoy Advance game? - Loved this narrated time lapse of Brandon Greer making a Castlevania-inspired Ghibli homage in pixel art.
[Watch | CC | 36 mins] Untangling God Of War - Good Blood shows what two years of editing a YouTube video looks like.
[Watch | CC | 1 hour, 45 mins] The Animation of Sonic Games - New Frame Plus dropped a monster documentary on the changing animation of Sonic.
[Watch | 10 mins] Why Sound Design in Stealth Games is so Important - Game Audio Analysis looks at the importance of audio in the genre's that's all about being whisper quiet.
[Watch | CC | 10 mins] The Psychology of Loss Aversion in Portal - Story Mode looks at how Portal uses loss aversion and the endowment effect in its Companion Cube.
Beyond Bytes
[Watch | CC | 24 mins] The Fastest Way to Learn a New Language: The Video Game Map Theory - Ex-Vox reporter Johnny Harris has a YouTube channel worth following. This video shares a quick-fire way to learn languages.
[Watch | 11 mins] The Brilliant Sound of Sound of Metal - Sound of Metal is one of the most affecting movies I've seen in a while. And a big part of that is its empathetic and immersive sound design.
Comments
jt
Just wanted to say that these monthly reading lists are always great, not just for the content (I love the variety! There's always several things that spark more curiosity) but also the organization - having the medium, time, and a quick blurb helps a ton. Thank you for that thoughtfulness!
Game Maker's Toolkit
Hey - YouTube has recently decided to force ads on videos from people not in the partner program, I'm afraid!
cptnoremac
Mark, I've been noticing my videos are showing ads, even though I don't monetize my videos and this one in particular doesn't have any copyrighted stuff in it. Do you have the same issue? I remember you decided not to use ads, but it seems to me there's no choice.
Pookage
Happy Anniversaryyy 🥳
Will Kommor
The Indie Dev Archetypes article is extremely powerful, thank you for sharing!
Matteo @Paleblue Narratives
"But hope is on the horizon." So glad that things are going in the right direction over there.
