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Reading List (August & September 2021)
🕑 Added 2021-09-29 07:00:00 +0000 UTCHello everyone! So, as I took August off work, you didn’t get a reading list. And I feel bad about that! So, to make up for it, here’s an absolutely bumper list of interesting stuff from both August and September 2021. Over 50 links in total!
The Design of Games
[Read] Insert Coin to Continue - “After all those years, is ‘Game Over’ still relevant? Is it really useful, or just a relic of the past?”
[Read] Creating a traditional roguelike for a wider audience - “The main critique about the genre is that it has an intrinsic Burden of Knowledge – you have to learn so [much] stuff at the same time to be able to even survive the first level.”
[Read] ‘Sleeping Dogs’ is still the gold standard for virtual cities - “The source of its strength is its unmistakable sense of place. Its virtual Hong Kong is not a playground, it’s a setting for dramas big and small.”
[Read] How Humans' Greatest Wish Made Online Games Lonelier - “When game developers introduced mounted flying, it changed the MMORPG genre forever—both for better and for worse”
[Watch | 7 hours] A Thorough Look At Resident Evil - “This is a video retrospective and critique of 18 different Resident Evil games and their DLCs, covering a span of twenty five years of game development”
[Watch | 25 mins] Vibing to the End in Umurangi Generation - “Apologies in advance, this one's a little spicy.”
[Read] Put an 'undo' button in every strategy game - “Old World, 2021's best new strategy game, borrows its most radical mechanic from Microsoft Word. Hit Ctrl-Z, and you can undo any action.”
[Read] 'Cookie Clicker' Wasn't Meant to Be Fun. Why Is It So Popular 8 Years Later? - “A satire of modern game design became the very thing it was poking fun at—and people love it.”
[Read] How Werner Herzog Inspired 'Temple Run' - “Ten years after hitting the App Store, 'Temple Run' has been downloaded 2 billion times. We spoke to the creators about the making of the game.”
The Road to Deathloop
[Read] The making of Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider, and how Arkane killed a god - “Every aspect of Death Of The Outsider is about the struggle to find your path toward either light or dark."
[Watch | CC | 1 hour] Thief: The Dark Project - “Danny peaks through the Looking Glass to remember the original Thief series and the long shadow it has cast on the world of game design”
[Watch | 12 mins] How The Dishonored Series Fixed X-Ray Vision - “X-ray vision. Love it or hate it, it's here to stay in Stealth Games, but could it be better?”
[Watch | CC | 1 hour] How Arkane Studios Designed Prey - “We talk to the team at Arkane Austin about the design of their immersive sim cult classic, Prey.”
The Business of Games
[Read | Long Read] Titanfall 2 Was Abandoned By EA, And Then Things Got Weird - “The hacking tools that Jeanue used seem to have profound, mind-boggling reach, able to DDOS players with impunity.”
[Read] How Terry Cavanagh bet it all on the simple joy of platforming - “I was working on one last project, which was this little gravity-flipping platformer.”
[Read] Die Gute Fabrik's 4-Day Week - “This is not an article advocating for a 4-day week's benefits - rather explaining how we did it”
[Watch | CC | 23 mins] Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers - “With Roblox Corporation now being valued at more than $45 billion, we ask whether the kids making the vast majority of its content are being taken advantage of?”
The Development of Games
[Watch | CC | 24 mins] The Beauty of Bézier Curves - “They're used for animation, text rendering, and all sorts of curved shapes! But how do they actually work?”
[Read] Narrative design myth-busting: It's not "just writing" - “Historically, throughout much of the 80s and 90s, game narrative was equated with cutscenes and dialogue (and by implication not mechanics, systems, art, or UI).”
[Watch | CC | 20 mins] How Hades Was Made and Why Zagreus Almost Wasn't in The Game - “Discover how Supergiant Games prioritized a transparent and inclusive development process before they even had the idea for their first roguelike dungeon-crawler.”
[Read] Late nights, high scores, and blanket forts: the challenges of testing music and fitness games - “When it comes to QA testing for music and fitness games, these hacks aren’t just a way to save time — they’re a necessity.”
[Read] Game engines on Steam: The definitive breakdown - “Have you ever wondered which game engines are most popular? Unity seems like it's used the most, but does Unreal dominate in the AAA space?”
[Read] Trailers With Their Own Hook - “At worst, a game trailer with a novel concept can be a distraction, but at best it can mean going viral in the best way possible.”
The Playing of Games
[Read] Have you ever gone to great lengths to save an NPC? - “Saving Solaire is one of the most unintuitive, confusing, goddam inconvenient side quests in the whole series. But people do it. Why? Why go that far for someone who doesn't exist?”
[Watch | 21 mins] A Redditor on r/TheLastOfUs2 sent death threats to himself and blamed us - This story is wild, scary, and sad.
[Read] Covid Is Pulling the Plug on Beloved Japanese Arcades - “Normally Game Newton, a small Tokyo arcade in the Itabashi City ward, would be a cacophony of applause and cheers. But not so after 2020”
[Watch | 10 mins] This Circle is in Vanilla Minecraft - “Circles in Minecraft: Possible or not? In this video, I push vanilla Minecraft to it's limits to see if i can make a real circle in Minecraft with no mods”
[Read] Cash for kills: why are people paying for coaches to get better at video games? - “A 30-minute seminar on how to succeed in esports with famed Valorant streamer and pro player Dicey costs $30”
[Read] The Unlikely Fan Remaster of Shrek SuperSlam, A Game Revived by Memes - “Against all odds, Shrek SuperSlam grew a niche audience thanks to a surge of popular Shrek memes and a loyal online following in the fighting game community.”
[Watch | 13 mins] How I Remade The Simpsons Hit and Run in a Week - Neat!
[Watch | CC | 47 mins] how many Super Mario games are there? - “An analysis of the apparent controversy surrounding the enumeration and classification of the mainline series of games within the Mario franchise”
The Art of Games
[Read] The Wistful Optimism of Hollow Knight’s Last Stag - “A curious mapmaker, a reclusive historian, a furtive grifter, a masked adventurer known simply as the Knight, and — running through tunnels the size of highways — an old Stag.”
[Watch | 25 mins] I am Dead: Drawing Inspiration from a Real Place - “Richard Hogg & Ricky Haggett discuss their videogame I am Dead, and the way in which they drew inspirations from the real town of Hastings to create the fictional island of Shelmerston.”
[Read] 20 Years Of Silent Hill 2's Pyramid Head, A Video Game Monster Like No Other - “A towering, faceless executioner, Pyramid Head is one of the most bizarre, unsettling creatures that's ever oozed out of a human mind”
[Read] From Resogun to Returnal: the evolving VFX magic that brought Atropos to life - “From early on in Returnal’s development, it was clear that we wanted to do something special with enemy creatures on Atropos”
[Watch | 9 mins] The Drumming That Shaped The NES - “When did drumming actually come to video games is a question I've always wanted to research. This video answers that question”
[Read] Tim Schafer on his game writing philosophy: “always punch up, never punch down” - “I didn't set out to make a game about healing, but that's just naturally what flows out of going into someone's mind and helping them.”
[Watch | CC | 6 mins] How video game rocks get made - “How do you make video game rocks look real? Sometimes, it involves a trip out to the desert.”
[Read] Why don’t video games take sex seriously? - “A new generation of indie creators are taking matters into their own hands by offering nuanced, diverse and LGBTQ+ friendly portrayals of all things erotic.”
[Read] Astro’s Playroom: the story behind those fun PlayStation character cameos - “Considering that each and every creator we asked agreed to lend their amazing characters to the cause goes to show there is a real fraternity and comradery between creators”
The History of Games
[Read] Searching for the "Best" Version of Final Fantasy - “Final Fantasy’s place in culture isn’t fixed to the most recent version of Final Fantasy, but as an essence that emerges between each version. What is that essence?”
[Read] Quake Renaissance: a short history of 25 years of Quake modding - “For a year or two, Quake multiplayer seemed like the hot new platform for young amateur creativity, the Gen-X teen equivalent of Roblox.”
[Read | Long Read] The Complete History of ‘Kaizo Mario’ - “You start up Mario, pull out the cassette, plug in Tennis, play for a while, pull it out, plug in Mario, and there it is, a world full of bugs”.
[Read | Long Read] The Oral History Of Dragon Age: Origins - "We talked to nine developers who worked on Dragon Age: Origins about where BioWare's legendary fantasy series all began.”
[Read | Long Read] 1992: Silverwolf - 50 Years of Text Games digs up a mysterious gem.
[Watch | 42 mins] The History and Development of Star Fox Command - “John Rairdin sits down with many of the original developers from Q-Games to uncover brand new information”
[Read] Clive Sinclair and the offbeat brilliance of the ZX Spectrum - “The affordability of Sinclair’s revolutionary 1982 home computer let a generation of young bedroom coders make anarchic, punky games, and its hardware limitations merely fostered extra creativity”
[Watch | CC | 18 mins] A Love Letter to SEGA Classics - “Join me on my adventure as I visit 3 SEGA series from the Dreamcast era”
[Watch | 52 mins] Exposing Fraud And Deception In The Retro Video Game Market - “We take a look at the current retro video game bubble. We learn who caused it to happen, who is profiting, and what needs to be done to fix it.”
Beyond Games
[Watch | 11 mins] My new book was a financial disaster. What happened? - The king of taking Ls, Austin looks back on his failed literary attempt.
[Watch | 20 mins] The Most Difficult Shot in Movie History (And Why It Matters) - “Brian De Palma’s infamous 1990 bomb The Bonfire Of The Vanities has one the craziest, most difficult shots ever attempted. So let’s look at the story behind it, how it was done, and what it all means.”
Comments
Germanos
This list is mighty! Thanks, Mark. Glad its back!
Luis Guillermo Jimenez Gomez
Thanks Mark. Co-sign the rec on the videos on Umurangi, Roblox, Star Fox Command and Sega Classics.
jt
Epic list! Found myself going through a lot of the development ones (probably inspired by your new series!) and the history section. Thanks for such wide-ranging and interesting recommendations!
Benj
Bimey, that is a big one!
Willhart
NeverKnowsBest also made some cool videos recently. I recommend checking him out as he can be both really funny and great at explaining things.
OSW Review
Thanks Mark! Watching that "guy who sent death threats to himself to damage TLOU2 reviewers" was indeed scary and depressingly sad. The surrounding aftermath and intentional misinformation/twisting is equally creepy and wow, lost a bit of faith in the good of mankind. Really impressed with how GFR handled it.
