Reading List September 2021 (Patreon)

It's time for another reading list folks! I put it off for a few days hoping I could get the next review out before the end of the week, but alas, it wasn't to be. Instead, look forward to a new review tomorrow, and in the meantime, enjoy these hours of fantastic games crit from across the internet!

Second Opinions

It Gets Better After 100 Hours… by Josh Strife Hayes: MMOs are known for their gargantuan runtimes, and they’re also known for having really dry early games you have to grind through to find any kind of entertainment. This can lead to the statement “it only gets good after 100 hours,” which as Hayes gets into, is an absolutely ludicrous thing to say to most people. This video was definitely in the back of my mind as I talked about FFXIV’s early game, and I think it shows!

Building Better Crafting Systems by Adam Millard - The Architect of Games: One thing I didn’t have time to talk about is FFXIV’s crafting system, and Millard explored why the system is fun as part of a much larger discussion of how to make a good crafting system in a game.

After All This Time, MMO Players are Still Thirsty for ‘the Next World of Warcraft’ by Luke Winkie: MMOs are a genre in flux, and a lot of them are drifting in the Destiny direction. Meanwhile, there’s been this new MMO called New World that...honestly, just looks incredibly, absurdly underwhelming. And yet, people are frothing at the mouth for it! Why? Winkie explains how the game is tapping into something fundamentally old school that many MMO players are hungering for and not a lot of games serve anymore.

All About Sable

One of the many games I haven’t had time to get to this month is Sable, the bite-sized open world exploration game. Coming in at only about a dozen hours of runtime, it’s yet another perfect game for us busy folks and a strong end-of-year wrapup contender. I haven’t gotten to play it yet, but that doesn’t mean you should sleep on it, too! Here’s what a whole bunch of other people have been saying:

My Journey with Sable by Eurothug4000: Eurothug talked about their personal experiences with Sable both as a player and as voiceover talent for the game’s trailer, as well as the artistic inspirations behind the game.

Sable: The Kotaku Review by Renata Price: Price reviewed Sable, focusing on the ways the game is a meditation on identity and the feeling of completeness the gameworld captures.

How Sable Outgrew the Shed by Making Games Is Fun: MGIF got a chance to interview the duo behind Sable, how the game quickly expanded beyond the scope of just a two-man indie studio, the ways the game used architecture to inspire its world, and of course, the ever-present challenges presented by Covid.

How the Sausage is Made

Alongside all the usual analysis of games, I came across a lot of solid articles from the other side of the curtain talking about the actual construction of those games. From an in-depth investigation to interviews about the design process behind a truly bizarre MMO to a deep dive tech exhibition, it’s all a look at the best — and sometimes worst — behind-the-scenes development stories.

Unity Workers Question Company Ethics As It Expands From Video Games to War by Patrick Klepek: Klepek investigated Unity’s “GovTech” branch and the decidedly shady ways the company has been quietly been developing AI-run simulations for likely use by the military — sometimes without even their own developers realizing what they’re doing! It’s a deeply troubling read, but Klepek also highlights the way the company’s employees have started pushing back against the policy.

The One: Meeting the Solo Developer Who Took The Matrix Online to the End by Robert Purchese: Did you know that at one point, The Matrix Online was literally being run by just one guy? Purchese got a chance to interview him, mostly to talk about the tongue-in-cheek fan theory about why there’s a different Morpheus in the recent Matrix trailers. But also buried in there are numerous interesting anecdotes about how the game was kept running over several years, from an in-game narrative run by roleplaying GMs to the passing of the torch from the movies to the MMO’s writer to its days as a solo dev project. It’s a truly bizarre and fascinating story!

From Resogun to Returnal: The Evolving VFX Magic that Brought Atropos to Life by Risto Jankkila: Jankkila went down a technical deep dive illustrating all the different techniques and innovations that went into creating Returnal’s lifelike tentacle animations.

Everything Else

Vibing to the End in Umurangi Generation by Errant Signal: In an incredibly powerful video, Errant Signal discussed the themes and commentary in politically-minded indie photography game Umurangi Generation and compared the game’s Evangelion-esque society to how many real world events are playing out today, calling the game “one of the most resonant games about the times we’re living in I’ve ever played.”

Opus: Echo of Starsong: The Kotaku Review by Sisi Jiang: Sisi covered space opera Opus: Echo of Starsong, its roots in Chinese literature, and its narrative’s unorthodox but phenomenal construction.

Deathloop and the Radical Necessity of 2 Black Leads by Williesha Morris: Deathloop is a trendsetter in more ways than one, and Morris interviewed a number of the developers about their decision to make a game with an all-black leading cast.

The Animation of Final Fantasy I by New Frame Plus: Dan over at New Frame Plus started a new series that’s going down the list of Final Fantasy games’ animation one by one, and he’s starting from the very beginning. And for a game with like 12 animations, he had a lot of really interesting stuff to say about economical design and making decisions about what to do with limited development resources!

Time Loops All Over Again by Oma Keeling: Time loops have been an increasingly common trope in video games, but how have they been using it? Keeling explores how several games (most notably the recent 12 Minutes) use the trope, and why it works for some and is absolutely disastrous for others.

The Power of Abandoned Places by Hello Future Me: HFM talked about abandoned locations real, digital, and textual, exploring this very specific aesthetic of a world long-since left behind by mortalkind and what these abandoned places silently say.

How Creative Limitations Shaped Ocarina of Time’s Best Music by 8-bit Music Theory: Koji Kondo, the composer behind Ocarina of Time (among many other classics), had one massive restriction, and if you’ve played OoT, you can probably guess what it was: he had to make a dozen melodies using only five notes. And as 8-bit Music Theory gets into, the five notes Kondo picked weren’t just a little unorthodox, but also immensely versatile, and ended up the cornerstone not just for the little songs you learn throughout the game, but the entire game’s musical score.

The Drumming That Shaped the NES by JoystickDrummer: JoystickDrummer explored the absolute earliest days of drumming on consoles and the many technical tricks that had to be used to make it even possible on that early hardware.

What It’s Like to Make Your Dream Game Amid Layoffs, COVID-19, and Adoption by Patrick Klepek: Klepek talked to the duo behind AlphaLink, a competitive multiplayer indie game in the vein of Towerfall, about their experiences trying to release their game with all the added turbulence caused by Covid.

The Ascent Devs Dish on the Messy Launch for 2021’s Best Sci-Fi RPG by Ari Notis: Notis interviewed the devs to do a sort of mini-postmortem on The Ascent’s launch, covering Game Pass marketing strategies and launch day technical issues.