Reading List (August 2022) (Patreon)

Reading list time has come again, folks! This time, we were blindsided by the sudden arrival of none other than Sakurai himself to the youtube scene and I've once again found a fair few cool articles highlighting anecdotes about how the music in your favorite games is made. Enjoy all that and more in this month's reading list!

Second Opinions

Fire Emblem Fans Should Give This Steam Hit a Try by Ethan Gach: How I initially discovered the game, Gach over at Kotaku also covered Symphony of War with a quick review of his own!

No More Robots’ Mike Rose is Giving Games Publishing the Human Touch by Dominic Preston: No More Robots has published a lot of games I’ve covered over the years, including the recent TombStar! And Preston interviewed the company’s head and founder, Mike Rose, covering a great deal about his design ethos and where he sees publishing companies existing in the development process.

New Challenger Approaching!

Out of the blue, Masahiro Sakurai of Smash Bros fame came out with his own video essay channel, and we’ve been bombarded all week with bite sized videos on a range of game development topics, all drawn from Sakurai’s decades of industry experience.

Kirby’s Dream Land: Sakurai looks back at his time developing Kirby’s Dream Land and discussed the game’s core mechanical conceits.

Stop for Big Moments!: Sakurai talks about how he uses hit stop in Smash Bros and elsewhere — and how you can use it too, no matter the genre.

Game Development Isn’t a Game: Sakurai takes a moment to discuss work mentality in the video game industry.

Music in Games, From Top to Bottom

As always, I’ve kept an eye out for cool articles about how the music in games is made, and this time, I have a spread of ‘em talking about the process at every level, from song choice to that experimental phase where you’re looking for the perfect sound to drive the vibe of the soundtrack to finally sitting down and constructing the basic building blocks.

How Music Can Make a Game by HeavyEyed: HeavyEyed discussed their favorite video game needle drops (use of outside, already licensed music in a new work), the many ways they affect each game’s tone for both good or ill.

Locrian Doesn’t Have to be S p O o K y by 8-bit Music Theory: Even if you don’t know the term, you’ve probably heard of the Locrian mode. It’s the spoooooky key, meant to make things sound dark, scary, or particularly hellish. But 8-bit Music Theory pointed out some counterexamples for how the mode can be used to produce something other than its trademark effect.

Into the Breach and the Unlikely Sound of the End of the Earth by Dom Peppiatt: Peppiatt interviewed the composer behind Into the Breach’s killer soundtrack, Ben Prunty, on how he discovered the game’s sound not once but twice — first when he composed it, then again for the recent update after four years away.

Everything Else

An Oral History of Tim Curry’s Escape to the One Place Uncorrupted by Capitalism by Duncan Fyfe: We all know the line. Fyfe interviewed dozens of developers that worked on RTS Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 about its most well-remembered and memed moment, revealing entertaining anecdotes and interesting notes about the game’s production alike.

How to Get Started With Fighting Games and Have a Nice Time by Patrick Gill: Fighting games can be tough and intimidating to get into, but Gill detailed his recent experiences getting into the genre to try and give you a foolproof method for enjoying the steep learning curve of the genre!

Is Zelda Better without Companions? by Razbuten: Razbuten looks at multiple decades of Zelda games to chart how their design philosophy towards the use of companion characters has been tweaked for every individual installment, which ones work, which ones don’t, and how they contribute to the series’ core themes and aesthetic.

Fans Have Taken Back Android: Netrunner, the Popular Card Game Discontinued in 2018 by Charles Theel: Out of the blue, one of the most popular living card games on the market got discontinued in 2018 right when it was in its prime. But where the game designers stopped, the community kept going, producing entirely new runs of cards and starting up a business to keep the game alive.

The World’s First Syndicated Game Journalist Was an 11-Year-Old Kid by Alexis Ong: Ong digs into a rather curious slice of video game history: Rawson Stovall, the “Vid Kid,” the first person who ever got to put the words “game reviewer” on a resume, and even managed to snag an interview with the man himself.

Breath of the Wild Fixed Stamina, It’s Perfect Now, We Did It by Afterthoughts: Afterthoughts held up one of Breath of the Wild’s most striking elements, its stamina meter, as a tour de force of UX design.

Guilty Gear’s Bridget Has Changed, So Have Fighting Games by Renata Price: Bridget made a massive splash when she landed in Guilty Gear Strive earlier this month and came out as trans. Price talks about how the character’s (incredibly convoluted) backstory has evolved over the decades to keep pace with trans representation in the fgc.

Wholesome Games, and the Context Collapse of Branding Culture by Ruth Cassidy: Cassidy used the recent rise of Wholesome Games to muse on how the meaning of the word has evolved in the gaming lexicon and been co opted for more corporate purposes.

Three Things That Inspired Me to Finish My Game by Game Maker’s Toolkit: GMTK continued their diary detailing their adventures in making a video game, this time talking through the challenges of keeping oneself motivated through as long a creative project as a video game.

Why Genshin Impact is an Artistic and Technical Masterpiece by Stylized Station: Stylized delivers a loving homage to Genshin Impact that makes me wish I could see the game in the same light and covers many of the tricks that the developers executed to achieve the game’s signature look.

Why Do We Love Hostile Worlds? by Adam Millard: Going well beyond the initial premise, Millard didn’t just break down why “hostile” game design is so enjoyable, but also three ways hostile games sell that feeling without actually falling too far outside of more mainstream design trends.

Inside the Studio Designing the Follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter by NoClip: NoClip launched another embedded interview series, this time with Heart Machine, and will follow the studio during the entire time they develop their upcoming game, Hyper Light Breaker. In this first episode, they get to know some key players at the studio, talk about their last game, Solar Ash, and discuss the ever-present effects of Covid on the development process.

BattleTech Has Grown Into a Sprawling, Must-Play Mech War Sim by Dominic Tarason: Tarason explores the many mods both big and small that have completely transformed 2018 tactics game BattleTech in a definitive buyers and modding guide to one of the best tactics games in recent years.

How To Calculate A Game’s True Value From Its Price and Length by John Walker: Just a bit of fun, fluffy satire here to close out the list, but it hammers at a core value of the channel, so why not take a minute to watch Walker take the piss out of the dollar-to-hour argument.