Reading List August 2020 (Patreon)

Hey folks! It's time for August's reading list! This time around, I ended up reading a lot about the new hotness in town: Fall Guys, as well as plenty of people waxing lyrical over the Halos of yesteryear as the MCC continues its march of releases. Check it out!

Second Opinions

Whenever I finish a review, I usually end up watching a few other reviews or other related content afterwards. Here’s some of the best stuff other people have had to say about the games I’ve been talking about lately!

Necrobarista Review by Jay Castello:  Castello’s review focused in on how Necrobarista handles its theme of death, as well as how that gentle treatment bounced off of their own life experiences.

What It’s Like to Make Hugely Successful Games With Your Friend From Third Grade by Patrick Klepek:  Klepek interviewed the developers behind Risk of Rain 2 about developing the game, as well as their unique working relationship.

No Straight Roads Looks Great But That’s About It by SkillUp:  Fellow rhythm game lover SkillUp also took a look at NSR, and while we came to many similar conclusions, we still ended up making very different reviews! SkillUp was a bit more down on the game, but I'd still second a lot of the points he brings up.

So Glad I Finally Discovered The Sci-Fi Puzzle Adventure Observation by Ari Notis: Notis gave horror puzzler Observation a review for its Xbox One release, and on top of reviewing the game, they also cover some of the real scientific mysteries that fueled its narrative.

Postmortem: Eastshade by Danny Weinbaum:  I had a great time covering open world exploration painter Eastshade when it first came out, so I was happy to see this postmortem from the one of the game’s devs randomly pop up on Gamasutra!

All About Fall Guys!

I haven’t covered it on the channel, but I’m enjoying Fall Guys just as much as the next, er, guy. Unsurprisingly, the summer smash hit is getting plenty of thinkpieces!

Fall Guys Was Ready to Be a Hit by Ricardo Contreras et al.: The team at Waypoint meditated on how Fall Guys (among other things) and how the game was already prepared to reap the profits from its influx of players, rather than trying to throw down the track to monetize the game as they went after the fact, as part of their site’s podcast a few weeks back.

A Twitter Thread on Fall Guys’ Development:  Fall Guys dev Jeff Tanton recently also put out a big long thread of anecdotes from Fall Guys’ earliest development stages. It’s not a full-blown thinkpiece, but it’s still an interesting read!

Confessions of a Fall Guys Grabber by Ari Notis:  We all know that guy who grabs other people purely to sow chaos. Now thanks to Notis, we get a rare glimpse into the mind of one!

Halo: A Retrospective

Between Halo 3 getting its big PC splash and Halo Infinite, which a month ago still looked like it was nigh, there’s also been a lot of people gearing up to talk about all things Halo. And that means a lot of looking to the series’ past.

Looking for the Heart of Halo in Bungie’s Finest Moment by Chris Tapsell: Tapsell did a brief retrospective about Halo 3’s success and attempted to capture the way Bungie almost made the game look effortless.

How an Alleged Dick in a ‘Halo 3’ Trailer Started an Emergency at Bungie by Patrick Klepek: Klepek chronicles the hilarious inquisition launched at Bungie after a rogue penis somehow appeared in a Halo 3 trailer. Was it a bug? A random dev having a laugh? They were hellbent on finding out!

I Read Every Halo Novel and Became the Master Chief of Loneliness | Unraveled by Brian David Gilbert: This one is a bit of a personal indulgence, since I remember being hooked on these books as a kid. BDG’s latest is an entertaining descent into madness that ends up roundabout enough that it never quite reaches a point beyond generally analyzing like 30 books, but dang if he isn’t hilarious in getting there.

Everything Else

How Final Fantasy 14 Clawed its Way Back from Disaster to Become 2020’s Best MMO by Steven Messner: Final Fantasy XIV’s redemption story is probably one of the most well-known in the industry at this point, but Messner went one on one with some of the game’s highest tier staff and extracted a few additional anecdotes about the game’s continuing development.

The Heart of the Cards: RNG and Speedrunning by Jason Coles:  Speedrunning culture is always fascinating to dive into, but Coles dove into a very specific corner of that world by asking three speedrunners a simple question: how the hell do you speedrun a game that is entirely randomly generated?

Who Put All These Banjos in My Sci-Fi Game? By Clayton Ashley: Video game sci-fi has been trending away from sleek spaceships and towards a rustic, blue collar aesthetic for a few years now, and Ashley explores the underlying cultural themes and historical precedent in the genre to discuss why.

How Six Months of COVID-19 Quarantine Affected Life at Supergiant Games by Noclip: Noclip’s ongoing documentary ended up being terribly serendipitous in the age of covid, because they were already in position to cover the day to day operation of a game studio trying to work through the pandemic, giving one of the most in-depth glimpses of how the industry is adjusting yet.

Ubisoft Forward and the Way It Was Covered Highlighted Everything Wrong About the Games Industry by Waverly: Waverly criticized the way Ubisoft’s most recent media event was covered, noting that media outlets have put themselves in the position of listing a litany of abuses from the company’s upper echelons at the same time as they hype up the company’s upcoming games. 

The Virtual Spaces of Garry’s Mod by Chariot Rider: Garry’s Mod has always been a bit of a wild west frontier, and Chariot Rider explores how this game runs completely counter to most gaming experiences because of its lack of curation and its persistent culture of adopting spaces for forms of play they weren’t intended for.

How Persona 5 Royal’s Mature Love Interests Reinforce Toxic Masculinity by Jessica Howard: Persona 5 has a lot of uncomfortable relationships between the main player (a minor) and adults that most awkwardly laugh off with a quick “oh, Japan!” But Howard tackled the subject head on with considerable thoughtfulness as she highlighted the power dynamics at play in these relationships, as well as how they’re constructed within standard gender roles to make them a little easier to swallow.

Final Fantasy’s Meta-Narrative Proves Video Games’ Short Memory by Grace: Grace goes back in time to highlight the OG Final Fantasy and how it used its platform limitations to further its narrative, juxtaposing the game against AAA trends of today.

The State of Hit Registration by Kevin Lee: Valorant’s team has been regularly communicating with their player base in pretty specific detail about the basic technical aspects of how their game works, which both presents a fascinating case study of how a problem can look very different to a developer and a player and serves as a fun little tutorial on how hit registration works in shooters.