Reading List December 2020 (Patreon)

The reading list comes again! This month, there was a ton of thoughtful discussion about how games handle their runtimes, as well as fantastic writing about accessibility issues. But that's not all — this month also features everything from discussions about weird new trends in open world games to the advantages of digital card game art's malleable nature. Give these fine articles a look!

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!

Haven — Easy Allies Review by Brandon Jones: Jones made a slickly done review of Haven, tackling a number of details I didn’t cover in my own review in the process.

Best Adventure Game 2020: Paradise Killer by Andy Kelly and Jody Macgregor: Literally the same day I dropped my Paradise Killer review, PC Gamer hailed it as the best adventure game of 2020, and Andy Kelly in particular had a very different line of reasoning than I did.

I’m Not Yet Sold on Paradise Killer, but Its Soundtrack Is Unforgettable by Ari Notis: Kotaku’s Morning Music segment gave Notis a chance to focus on the game’s excellent soundtrack.

Developing Raji: An Ancient Epic & Crossing the Finish Line by Game Dev Unchained: The developers of Raji recently came onto a podcast to talk in more detail about their experiences developing games in India and the challenges they ran into developing Raji.

Thinking About Pacing

There are a lot of different points to consider when designing a game's pacing. Adam Millard tackled the issue from the creative side while the folks over at Vice had an entire saga discussing the industry/technical side with the PS5's Activities feature.

When Great Games Have Terrible Beginnings by Adam Millard: Millard focused on the slow burn game, the one that “gets good eventually” (read: 20 hours in), and diagnoses why some games have great openings, and others can be a slog with no hint of the greatness to come.

Internal Sony Docs Explain How “Activities” Became a Cornerstone for PS5 by Patrick Klepek: As part of a two-parter from Vice, Klepek got his hands on some internal documents from Sony laying out the argument for the PS5’s Activities feature, which is designed to let people jump around games and skip content. Turns out the argument’s pretty familiar: people like single player games, but they struggle to find the time to devote to them and rarely get to finish!

Sony Wants to Reduce Friction in Games, but For Many, That’s the Point by Waypoint Radio: And then the group at Vice went on to debate the pros and cons of that same feature on the Waypoint podcast, which you can check an excerpted transcript or just listen to in full here!

All About Accessibility

I stumbled across a number of articles tackling the issue of accessibility in games this month that covered the full gamut of topics ranging from disability to difficulty modes to even economic accessibility issues like internet speeds.

How Accessible Were This Year’s Games? By GMTK: Mark Brown did his yearly ritual checking out how the latest games to see what kind of accessibility options they offered in a great overview.

Inaccessibility Is Still Leaving Some Color Blind Gamers in the Dark by Marisa Ingemi: Ingemi tackled the issue of color blindness in games through an interesting avenue: not just the actual color coding of the game itself, but the way players use that lexicon socially in Among Us, which is a problem that’s much harder to solve than just making a new colorblind mode.

Why Games Are Massive (Literally) by Raycevick: Raycevick tackled the outrageously ballooning file sizes of some AAA video games and made a solid, impassioned accessibility argument for those without high-speed internet.

Easy Mode is Essential For Me and I Shouldn’t Have to Defend It by Helen Ashcroft: Dark Souls had another round in the media, which means of course that topics of difficulty, artistic vision, and accessibility cropped up again, as well. For those who need a refresher or missed the last three rounds of this debate, Ashcroft lays out why they’ve been exhausted over time by its repetition.

Everything Else

Humans of Jorvik by Matt Margini: Margini ruminated on Valhalla’s bizarre rash of weirdo NPCs you can run into in the wild — and man does he go places.

Four Short Games About Pain by Jacob Geller: Geller discussed a series of horror games made by Kitty Horrorshow. If short, fascinating experiences are your jam (and if you’re here, they should be!), you shouldn’t skip these.

It’s Weird How Some Games Are Now Too Big to Fail by Luke Plunkett: Plunkett tackles the growing trend of live service games that completely remake themselves after launch, as well as the pros and cons of such development.

How Games Teach Empathy (ft. People) by Zoltiboi et. al.: Zoltiboi got a group of a half dozen content creators together for a collaboration to discuss how games invoke empathy through personal anecdotes about how individual games got them to empathize with others.

The Vtuber Industry: Corporatization, Labor, and Kawaii by Tyler Colp: Colp investigated the world of corporate vtubing, only to discover that it’s largely a black box, and what little he could find on public record was...ethically dubious.

How a Dark Time-Traveling Fantasy Game Became the Original Fallout by Peter Tieryas: Tieryas got a chance to interview the developers of the original Fallout for numerous fascinating anecdotes about the game’s original inception and development.

Runeterra, Fold-ins, and the Power of Print by James Law: Law explores the unique storytelling in Legends of Runeterra’s card art, including how they take advantage of their digital medium.

Naoki Yoshida, Helming the Realm of FFXIV by Archipel: Archipel continued its excellent march of interviews with high-profile Japanese creatives with an interview of Naoki Yoshida, the man that wrestled Final Fantasy XIV out of the mire of its disastrous 1.0 launch to its place today.

How Per Aspera Makes You Feel Like an Artificial Intelligence by Jonathan Bolding: Bolding interviewed the developers behin Per Aspera, a city builder that lets you inhabit the role of a hypercomplex AI colonizing Mars, and focused in on all the big picture sci-fi and real world concepts that informed how they designed both the game’s story and its simulation.

WoW’s Revendreth Makes Me Question if Bad People Deserve to Go to Hell by Ash Parrish: Parrish wrote about their experiences in one of WoW’s new zones, ruminated on how they can’t find anywhere they truly fit in WoW’s new afterlife, and wondered at the justice of hell’s punishment system.

If Found… Review: A Game By and For Trans People by Graham Beatrice Harrison: If Found is one of the many games I didn’t get a chance to cover this year, but Harrison is the latest of a long line of glowing recommendations I’ve seen for the game, primarily focusing on the game’s narrative excellence and its themes with trans identity.

Goodbye, Kentucky Route Zero by Jeremy Signor: Signor had some thoughtful coverage of the final chapter in the decade-long running Kentucky Route Zero. But be warned, there are spoilers!