Reading List (September 2022) (Patreon)

September’s reading list is here, folks! It’s still going to be another two-ish weeks before the next video on Nier releases, but in the meantime, enjoy a whole bunch of chatter on the excellent Neon White, as well as some nuanced discussion about games using art styles as marketing tools, industry self-reflection, and much more!

Second Opinions

The Game That Teaches You How to Speedrun by HeavyEyed: HeavyEyed gave an in-progress review of Neon White, the many ways it teaches someone how to speedrun, and how he’s caught the competitive bug and burned a ton of hours trying to push his run times as low as possible.

Neon White Shows Us What a Perfect Difficulty Curve Looks Like by Jacob Geller: Geller moonlit over at Polygon to cover Neon White, discussing pacing and the appeal of the game’s oddball characters.

Neon White’s Developers Being Too Good at Their Own Games Caused Real Problems by Patrick Klepek: Klepek used Neon White to talk about a classic problem: how does a developer maintain the perspective of a fresh player with no experience with their game when they’ve been playing it for thousands of hours?

Is a Video Game Beef a Beef If the Other Person Doesn’t Know It’s Happening? By Patrick Klepek: After he was done interviewing the developers, Klepek also more informally recorded his experience of Neon White’s leaderboard system and his constant competition against his coworkers.

Are Modern Games Designed to Waste Our Lives? by Joshua Calixto: Calixto follows the growing trend of time-waster, gacha, and other free-to-play mechanics in games — especially those that aren’t free-to-play and are entirely lacking in microtransactions!

Aesthetic Expectations

This month, we return to the idea of “wholesome” games marketing and how a game’s art style often primes us for a certain experience and explores the positives and potential downfalls for both developer and player in this exchange.

We Are OFK’s Marketing Belies a Larger Issue for Indie Games by Ty Galiz-Rowe: Galiz-Rowe compared We Are OFK, a game that follows a virtual Gorillaz-style band, with the game/band’s marketing leading up to its release, talking about how details such as “wholesome” tags and specific art styles prime players for specific expectations along the way.

How Cult of the Lamb’s Cute Aesthetic Allowed its Developers to Explore Darker Themes by Joel Couture: Couture interviewed the developers behind Cult of the Lamb on art style, overarching game themes, and how it tempts players mechanically down the path of evil.

On Criticism

In a medium all about analyzing art, you’re bound to get a few articles all about analyzing itself. This month brought in a few good meditations on the nature of games criticism and how the field has changed over the years.

Game Guides vs The SEO Grind: Who Wins and Loses? By Ben Sailer: Sailer covered a lesser-discussed aspect of games media: guides, and how they’ve become overrun by click-hunting content mills.

So Why Even Do It At All? by Edward Smith: Smith talks through their experiences as a media critic and grapples with the fundamental contradiction of always having to criticize something you love.

Everything Else

Remembering Mike Fahey, The Soul of Kotaku by Patricia Hernandez et. al.: Following the loss of longtime Kotaku writer and cornerstone of games media, Mike Fahey, pretty much every writer past or present on Kotaku came together to pay tribute.

The Animation of Final Fantasy IV by New Frame Plus: Dan has finally hit one of the big ones — FF4 is a massive leap forward in the identity of the franchise towards the narrative-centric fantasy epic we all remember it as today, and Dan’s continued retrospective series explores all the ramifications of that shift for the series’ animators.

A Totem by Yussef Cole: Cole related their experiences playing the new Last of Us remake and its hollowness as a self-homage.

Context Sensitivity by Matthewmatosis: Matthewmatosis discussed context sensitivity, the concept of mapping multiple actions to the same button input depending on circumstances, and builds an argument that the more a game manages to avoid relying on context sensitivity, the more control remains in the player’s hands and the better it ends up feeling.

Mini-Game, Mass Effect by Gameservatory: In a fun animated essay, Gameservatory uses Mass Effect as a jumping off point to talk about minigame design, how minigames are used to represent activities that fall outside a game’s core verbs, and how they make or break one’s sense of immersion or fun.

Warhammer 40k’s Latest Legend Improves One of Magic’s Oldest Cards by Stan Golovehuk: While only video game adjacent, Solovehuk covered one of the upcoming Magic TCG releases, a crossover with Warhammer 40k. But really, this article is a single case study of the deckbuilding process as Golovehuk starts with a single new legendary creature and digs back through the game’s entire history to build a deck around them. If you’ve ever wondered why this game inspires so many to pour so much time and passion into it, Golovehuk takes you through the entire process of discovery and joy that is building a new deck.

The Success (and Failure) of Tekken Bloodline by Writing on Games: Writing on Games did a review of Tekken Bloodline, the recent Netflix anime spinoff detailing the origins of the Tekken franchise, talking about how the series gets closer to capturing the game’s narrative than any previous attempt while also still falling short.

Why I Haven’t Played Hades by LambHoot: LambHoot used Hades as a jumping off point for how Greek culture is always portrayed in popular media.

I’m Nervous About Playing My Rank-Up Game So I’m Writing This Instead by Imogen Mellor: Mellor talked through the all-too-familiar highs and lows of trying to navigate a competitive game’s ranked system solo, in this case, their climb from bronze to platinum in Valorant.

This New Soulslike Proves Easy Mode Isn’t Just Possible, It Makes Everything Better by Claire Jackson: Jackson reviewed the recent Soulslike Steelrising and mostly zeroed in on the game’s extremely granular difficulty options.

A Fan-Made Revival of a Long-Dead Action Game Gets the Official Green Light from Paradox by Andy Chalk: Chalk interviewed the fan developers recreating indie beat ’em up The Showdown Effect, a story that’s unique both for the community rallying around such a small game and the official blessing the original publisher has given them.