Reading List September 2020 (Patreon)

As the months start changing, I still need to get a reading list to you guys! About the most striking trend this month is just how much public soul searching people are doing to cope with the neverending hellscape that is 2020 — I think I've come across like 20 articles talking about how this or that game reflects our current reality in depressing ways, and more than the hard-hittingness of any individual piece, the combined weight of them all makes for a rather dour time. Luckily though, it's not all doom and gloom, and we also cover everything from TrackMania's long and incredibly weird history to a psychoanalysis of Alan Wake's duds.

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!

Spiritfarer Shows the Cost of Living for Others, Rather Than for Yourself by Jeremy Signor: Much of what I found best about Spiritfarer, Signor was less thrilled about, and he dug into the narrative implications of what those mechanical systems say about the game’s main character.

Back and Forth on Spiritfarer by Yussef Cole and Reid McCarter:  Bullet Points featured two games this month: Spiritfarer and Necrobarista. And hey, those are games I featured, too! In this one, Cole and McCarter trade letters back and forth as they progress through Spiritfarer, making what’s mostly a review as they debate the game’s mechanics and how it handles the theme of death.

Undeath and Still Life by Violet Adele Bloch: Continuing the Bullet Points monthly train, Bloch wove a wide web, comparing Necrobarista to video essayists’ work, other games, and her own life experiences including catching Covid.

BPM: Bullets Per Minute Review - A Missed Opportunity by GmanLives: There are a lot of parts of BPM that I found...tolerable. Like, they weren't great, and they mostly only worked because they didn't get in the way of what really made the game tick. I was very forgiving of this game in my review. So while Gman and I ended up with drastically different reviews of BPM, I feel like if the game had altered one or two things, if those elements I didn't care for as much had been just a tad more obtrusive, I likely would have made a review very similar to this one, and I think he makes a lot of solid points.

Hey, That’s So Relatable!

As 2020 has dragged on (and down and down and down), there has been a mounting pile of existential thinkpieces searching for meaning in this hell year. And for us video game journalists, that means finding parallels between our current situation and the games we’re playing as we march through it.

‘Among Us’ Is Not Just the Game of 2020, It’s ‘2020: The Game’ by Sean Sands: The subhead says it all: “You’re trapped with each other in a crumbling environment, trying to save yourselves despite bad faith actors. And in the game.” Sands dives into the structure of Among Us and how closely it aligns with the experience of living in America today.

Waiting Room by Reid McCarter: (warning: major plot spoilers for Necrobarista) Another part of Bullet Points’ month of Necrobarista/Spiritfarer discourse, McCarter specifically focuses in on the overwhelming debt the main character suffers under, and the obvious parallels many in real life suffer under, as well.

Hades: The Kotaku Review by Nathan Grayson: Grayson, meanwhile, considers Hades’ constant attempts to achieve a futilely impossible task, how it relates to the seemingly equally impossible barriers to surmount in the real world, and where that narrative arc takes its hero, Zagreus, as a person.

Business Concerns

Business goes on, however, and there have been plenty of fascinating thinkpieces focused on the industry side discussing a full range of issues that the medium is still wrestling with.

A Worker-Owned Game Studio Rises From the Wreckage of Skullgirls Developer by Patrick Klepek: Lab Zero’s been at the center of a month-long implosion, but luckily, the story has a somewhat hopeful ending, as Klepek details how Lab Zero’s former employees have banded together to start anew.

If Video Games Want to Be a Force for Good, They Need to Learn From Sports by Chris Plante: Plante compares the working worlds of video games and sports, and how our industry could learn a lot from recent collective action in the sporting world.

Authentic Voice Acting Is More Than Skin Deep by Yussef Cole: Cole dives deep into the issues surrounding diversity in voice acting, and how true representation requires far more than just hiring voice actors of color.

Can Influencer-Branded Game Stores Work? By Simon Carless: Carless highlights a weird new trend in the market: gaming storefronts with streamers’ names attached to them, then dives into the potential feasibility of the idea.

Everything Else

Why The Longing Takes Four Hundred Days to Play by Adam Millard: Millard covers The Longing as a springing-off point for what he calls “temporal mechanics,” all the different ways games use time to both create interesting mechanical systems and make interesting narrative points.

The Complicated Emotions of an Industrial Game in a Post Industrial City by Rosh Kelly: Kelly takes an extremely personal look at games like Factorio and Satisfactory, and how they relate to his own heritage as a Newcastle native, living in the husk of a former industrial center that wasn’t so different from what you build in these games.

‘Tell Me Why’ Smothers Its Representation in Bubble Wrap by Dia Lacina: Lacina did a fantastic review of Dontnod’s latest, Tell Me Why, and in particular focused on how the game’s efforts to dot every i and cross every t end up making it feel a little sanitized.

Revisiting ‘Kingdoms of Amalur’ Makes Gaming’s MMO Fate Seem Inevitable by Cameron Kunzelman: Kunzelman gave Kingdoms of Amalur’s remake a look, and notes how many of the game’s mechanical ideas were ahead of their time, and have become commonplace today.

How Splinter Cell Changed by Turbo Button: Turbo Button did a big retrospective on the Splinter Cell series as a whole, highlighting specifically how the series has changed over time.

Trackmania Deserves to Be Far Bigger Than It Is by Writing on Games: Writing on Games gave an ode to the Trackmania racing series, one of his favorite of the year, and dives into the series’ bizarre decade-plus history.

I Trained Like a Professional Gamer by Michelle Khare: Khare of Challenge Accepted dipped into the video game world by training alongside professionals for a Fortnite tournament, showing off a bit of what the profession entails.

Slow In & Slow Out by New Frame Plus: Dan at New Frame Plus has been covering the 12 principles of animation by covering examples ranging from Overwatch to Kingdom Hearts and dozens of other games in between.

The Many Layers of Alan Wake by Jessica Howard: The title ends up being a bit of an amusing red herring — Howard takes a deep dive into analyzing the actual physical layers of clothing Alan Wake wears, and the story they tell about their main character.

Divinity, Demons, and Decay by Kimimi the Game-Eating She-Monster: Kimimi does a retrospective review of Shin Megami Tensei 2, one of the old precursors to the Persona series, and dives into the game’s many themes and oppressive atmosphere.