Reading List June 2022 (Patreon)

This month’s reading list is live, and it's a print-heavy one this time around. This time, we’ve got a whole bunch Unwinnable’s been unusually charitable with its free articles, all of which have been excellent. There are also unfortunately about a half dozen elephants in the room to acknowledge. We’ve been through a bit of an awful month as far as world news goes, and that means a lot of investigative journalism about what it’s all going to mean for the video game industry.

Second Opinions

Conversation in the Ruins of Interplanetary Capitalism by Ruth Cassidy: Cassidy interviewed Citizen Sleeper’s developer, Gareth Damian Martin, about the themes inherent to the game and how it captures real lived experiences of “precarity” in its dice generating system.

Citizen Sleeper Is a Game About Finding Home in a World That Hates You by Renata Price: Price also picked up on that sense of “precarity” that Martin described, further highlighting how the game sometimes gives you bad days where you struggle to accomplish anything or good days where everything hums along just right and how, ultimately, the game’s endings make that struggle feel worth it.

The Melancholy Realism of Citizen Sleeper by Cameron Kunzelman: In Kunzelman’s review, they used Citizen Sleeper as a jumping off point to talk about the themes behind a growing collection of games they call “melancholy realism.”

Shadows of Forbidden Gods Exhibits the Power of Evil Chaos Theory by Sin Vega: Vega also gave evil god simulator Shadows of Forbidden Gods a review, and came away feeling like the game’s greatest strength was its roleplaying possibilities. Also mentioned are a few UI issues I neglected to mention after getting more comfortable with the game.

On Bad Endings: Resistance and Meaning-Making in the Apocalypse by Emma Goehler: Goehler mused on the general doomer vibes Norco has going on in its depiction of a near-future version of the titular Louisiana oil town, talking about how the game doesn’t give the player easy ways of resolving its central tension, as well as how closely that tension strikes to our own real world problems.

Norco Is an Unforgettable Game About Losing and Finding Religion by Marisa Clogher: Clogher explored one of Norco’s major themes, how the game relates to faith, and how it touched on her own experiences.

Unwinnable’s Smashing It

Unwinnable’s a solid magazine that’s absolutely worth throwing money at to subscribe to. Their free articles regularly show up here, but this month, everything they put out was gold. See the top story by Ruth Cassidy in the Second Opinions section, then check out what else the outlet’s been doing here.

Anything by Emily Price: Price talked about the nature of being a critic, mostly by analyzing their own experiences trying to be one.

Passion and Generosity in the Vision of Gran Turismo by Ben Sailer: Sailer lovingly characterizes both the latest Gran Turismo and its producer, Kazunori Yamauchi, and finds meaning in many of the game’s most controversial decisions.

Final Fantasy Is About…

In a fun double feature, Jackson Tyler and Dia Lacina debated about the core appeal of the Final Fantasy series.

Final Fantasy Is About Guys by Jackson Tyler: Tyler highlights the many iconic dudes of Final Fantasy and what makes them so.

Final Fantasy Is About Towns by Dia Lacina: Lacina, meanwhile, made an argument for the many ways Final Fantasy’s towns individually define each game’s setting.

Making Games During Disaster

From Ukraine to Uvalde, there has been plenty of devastating news with far-reaching consequences this past month. Here’s the latest reporting on how the industry has been wrestling with many of the issues affecting life today.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Dev Diaries: Game Development During the War: The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. devs gave the briefest snapshot of what life has been like attempting to make a video game in the middle of an active invasion. For some, that’s meant developing the game in bathrooms. For others, it’s meant taking a break entirely to go fight in the war.

Call of Duty Devs Tell Us What It’s Like to Make a Game in the Wake of a Mass Shooting by Patrick Klepek: As unbelievable as it might sound given everything that’s happened since, it’s only been a month since the Uvalde mass shooting. In the wake of that event, Klepek talked to several Call of Duty developers about how real world violence affects their work.

Video Game Company Responses to Roe v. Wade Being Overturned by Smangaliso Simelane: The Roe v. Wade overturning is a little too recent to have gotten any of the huge features interviewing a dozen different developers I’d normally cover here, but still deserves highlighting. Here are a number of the off-the-cuff responses the industry’s had to the

New Quebec French Language Law Has Game Devs Fearful Of The Future by Zack Zwiezen: While not as dire as a literal war, Quebec’s new Bill 96 is poised to heavily disrupt the video game industry in the province, requiring among other things that immigrants learn French within six months. Quebec happens to be a hotspot for game development, and the industry happens to frequently hire across state and country lines to find talent. It’s not hard to see how poorly these two systems are going to interact.

Everything Else

Miyamoto Hated Wind Waker’s Graphics by DidYouKnowGaming?: DYKG got their hands on a bunch of never before translated magazine articles about Wind Waker and found a treasure trove of new fun facts about the game, including the many, many ways Miyamoto disagreed with the team’s artistic vision, how the game was originally supposed to be entirely under water, and even the existence of one poor soul who was delegated the game’s “Tingle Specialist.”

Making Sense of VRChat, the “Metaverse” People Actually Like by People Make Games: As Zuckerberg keeps trying to pitch Metaverse, many have noted that the idea doesn’t already exist, but has already been popularized by someone completely different. But what’s VRChat like? The folks over at PMG dove into the game, discovered both its ability to do good and sometimes troubling potential for harm, and compared it to the wild west origin days of the internet.

Destiny 2 is Somehow on the Cutting Edge of Trauma Conversations by Merritt K: Since their (re)introduction, Crow has quickly become one of Destiny 2’s most nuanced and interesting characters, and the newest update took that a step further. Merritt discussed the latest curveballs the character was forced to contend with and how they relate to real life therapy techniques.

The Life And Death Of Skateboarding Games by Leon Massey: Massey went through the entire history of the skateboarding genre, from its biggest highs to its long stretches of complete silence, highlighting what every major entry in the genre did right or wrong along the way.

The Man Who Spent Three Years Learning to Kill a Dragon by Chariot Rider: Chariot covered Myst-like Comer, a one-man adventure game made in ‘98 back before “one-man” indie bands were a thing, and used the game’s obscurity and ambition to talk about the larger nature of creative endeavors.

A Billion-Dollar Crypto Gaming Startup Promised Riches and Delivered Disaster by Joshua Brustein: Brustein told the story of NFT-based game Axie Infinity, one of the first games entirely built on an NFT economy (which, if you’ve seen Dan Olson’s excellent documentary on NFTs, is discussed at length). Brustein goes through the highs and immediately following lows of the game, from its peak as a money-making machine to its economy’s near-instant crash, as well as what its players are up to now.

Why Old MMOs Feel Better by Josh Strife Hayes: JSH discusses how, by sanding off frustrating systems that developed significant friction, MMO design traded adversity for accessibility, how these changes were almost inevitable, and why some players feel left behind by them.

Five Fighting Game Characters That Needed To Be BANNED by Hold Back to Block: Recently, fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ was being dominated by a single character so hard that people considered banning her, and HBtB used this as a jumping off point to talk about when and why fighting characters historically get banned.

Devs Share The Wild, Secret Hacks Your Favorite Games Rely On by Zack Zwiezen: There’s been a recent wave of anecdotes on twitter about a lot of the stage magic developers throw together to make their games function, and Zwiezen was kind enough to collect them all in one place. From using high-velocity vehicles to simulate artillery to the classic fake loading screen, stop in and look at all the creative solutions developers come up with for their games that you don’t even notice!

How The Hero Shooter Took Over Competitive FPS Design by Natalie Clayton: The hero shooter genre has come a long way in recent years, and with Overwatch 2 on the horizon, Clayton highlighted the many ways that other games have built upon the original in the years since its release.

Cheating in Video Games Used to be Fun by Jenna Stoeber: Stoeber went through the history of cheating in video games, going from the medium’s earliest, tongue-in-cheek hacks to the modern day tug of war between developers and hackers in competitive multiplayer games.