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Reading List (March 2018)
🕑 Added 2018-03-22 10:28:48 +0000 UTC Hello everybody! Hope you're having a wonderful March. Here's a whole bunch of articles to read and videos to watch.In the trenches
[Read] How One Man Made the Indie Video Game Sensation Stardew Valley - Eric Barone opens up about the obsessive work that went into his charming farming sim.
[Read] Toxic Management cost an award-winning game studio its best developers - The Verge chronicles the slow downfall of Telltale games, and what went wrong at the top.
Making games
[Watch | CC] The Road To War | The AI of Shogun: Total War - Tommy Thompson has been working on a monstrous multi-part project to talk about how the AI in Sega’s strategy game works.
[Watch] Level Design Workshop: Designing Celeste - Celeste’s developers reveal all on making levels for Celeste.
[Read] Designing for problem solvers - SpellTower dev Zach Gage talks about how to improve tutorials by letting players solve problems themselves.
[Read] On Incoherent Game Systems - Over on Gamasutra, James Margaris gives examples of games where different game systems fail to mesh together.
[Read] OlliOlli's 'press x to land' and why the team decided to make it more forgiving - A tiny taste of the millions of minute decisions that go into making a great game like OlliOlli.
[Read] Practical guide on FPS level design - Lots of good tips and best practices.
Analyse this
[Watch] Three Short Arguments on The Secret of Monkey Island - There’s lots to like about Ian’s love letter to Monkey Island 1.
[Watch] Why Dragon Quest Builders is a better building game than Minecraft - “Build” has become a key verb in a bunch of games. This YouTube video explains why Dragon Quest does it best.
[Watch] The Design Of Arbiter's Grounds - Still not sick of Zelda dungeon design? Here’s another take on one of Twilight Princess’s levels.
[Watch] Breaking Down Level Design in Celeste - Not from the dev, this time. Just a player, with some smart stuff to say about how Celeste works.
[Watch | CC] How Celeste Teaches You Its Mechanics - Good Game Design - Likewise, Snoman wants to show you how Celeste introduces new mechanics.
[Watch | CC] A Tale of Tarrey Town (How Breath of the Wild Builds a Better Future) - A lovely little video about Breath of the Wild’s most brilliant side quest.
[Read] Ranking the Metal Gear games - These ranking lists are always fun for a laugh, a moan, and an argument.
[Watch] How Limbo & Inside Use Tone to Create Space - Dan Root breaks down the monochrome worlds of Playdead’s debut games. Like, literally breaks them down. Some cool visual effects in here.
Culture club
[Read] The Video Game Soda Machine Project - This blog catalogues screenshots of soda machines in video games. Because why not?
[Watch] The Great Kinect Art Heist - Here's A Thing - A bizarre story about Kinect, art, history, colonialism, and more. Wonderfully told.
[Read] Campo Santo Blog - I love this! One of the main characters in Campo Santo’s next game is a black woman with natural hair. The devs talk about the cultural and technical challenges of showing this in the game.
Breaching the subject
[Read] Reimagining failure in strategy game design in Into the Breach - One of the best games this month was Subset’s new tactics game. Let’s start with a piece about how the devs flipped the script on strategy design.
[Watch | CC] Does Into The Breach Really Have Perfect Information? Why RNG Matters. - Then Adam explores deterministic games, perfect information, and RNG. I was gonna do something on this myself, but Adam beat me to it! So just go watch this.
[Read] Into the Breach: User Interface design - And here’s a great in-depth look at something most players never think much about: the interface. The game’s UI actually influenced and limited the design in interesting ways.
Get political
[Read] Call for Submissions — Underrepresented Puzzle Game Creators! - Jonathan Blow and pals are giving oodles of money to minority developers. Take a look, and maybe share this to someone relevant?
[Read] There's a huge problem with fighting the anti-video game debate with a #notallgames mentality - The White House took aim at games with guns. The industry fought back. IGN’s got an opinion on this response.
[Read] How to create computer games for women - Important stuff. Read it.
[Watch] Age Ratings Across the World - Super Bunnyhop takes a look at how age ratings work in different countries. Fascinating stuff.
Beyond games
[Watch] Stalking for Love - Pop Culture Detective looks at a particularly grim trope, of stalkers getting their girl.
[Watch | CC] Ink Cartridges Are A Scam - You’ll never look at a printer in the same way.
[Watch] Blade Runner 2049: How Denis Villeneuve Created the Most Complicated Sex Scene of All Time - One of the most interesting parts of the new Blade Runner, broken down.
[Read] I Watched All 629 Episodes of The Simpsons in a Month. Here’s What I Learned. - I don’t 100% agree with this (I feel like Golden Age Simpsons had plenty of emotionally-driven episodes) but the stuff about Lisa is on point and slightly heartbreaking.
[Read] How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love - Wow, this is slightly nuts.
[Read] The Star Wars video that baffled YouTube's copyright cops - Online copyright is only going to get more complicated.
Comments
Josh Foreman
Geez. That TellTale piece almost triggered some PTSD for me. I worked at a couple place just like that before landing here at ArenaNet over 14 years ago and haven't looked back. It's still shocking to me that that kind of culture is still the norm in most of the industry. Also, my friend took over as narrative director them almost 2 years ago. I need to check in on her.
Alex Van Aken
Thanks so much Mark for sharing my video on Celeste’s level design! Means the world.
Emanuel
I love how much Celeste is mentioned when talking about every aspect of game design.
Weird article on TellTale, and the CEO. Personally, I found Tales from Borderlands to be their best game (and yes, I have heard that the team on that one was essentially allowed to do whatever they wanted in the last couple episodes, as the game didn't make money) - and I did not enjoy Walking Dead at all.
