Reading List (November 2022) (Patreon)

The reading list comes at last, and this month, the cup runneth over! This is probably the biggest list I’ve ever put together, with banger retrospectives of both the absolute best and the worst gaming has to offer, wonderful critical breakdowns of industry cornerstones World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, and much, more more!

Second Opinions

My take on Marvel Snap is by far the minority. If you’re interested in the game and not dissuaded by my coverage, I’d encourage you look at this pair of articles by Nicole Carpenter and Ash Parrish that look at many of the same design decisions I was turned off by in a much more favorable light.

How Marvel Snap Was Designed to Fit into Your Life by Ash Parrish

Marvel Snap’s Best Trick is How it Teaches You to Play by Nicole Carpenter

Heart, Kidney, Pancreas, Shard by Madison Butler: Butler goes more deeply into the themes of the excellent Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator.

GOTY Retrospectives

It’s GOTY season, which has brought a few games from earlier in the year back into conversation. But rather than some GOTY listicles, enjoy some meatier fare on a few of the games people remember most fondly from 2022.

Citizen Sleeper and the Gaps in Which People Live by Deter Ludik: Ludik does an extensive review of Citizen Sleeper, detailing both its ttrpg lineage in fine detail and going through each of its many “social links” and how each arc affects a player. If you don’t know where you’ll find the time to play one of the best games of the year, this is the text equivalent of a full-spoilers video essay that’ll make you feel like you did.

How The Fight for Bodily Autonomy Shaped 2022’s Most Fascinating Video Game by Robin Bea: Bea interviewed Citizen Sleeper’s developer, Damian Martin, about the game’s post-release content, its themes, and how it grew from Martin’s previous effort, In Other Waters.

Grieving in Elden Ring: My Quest for Closure in The Lands Between by Giovanni Colantonio: Colantonio wrote an elegy wrapped in observations on Elden Ring, finding parallels between the game and a deceased friend that deconstructed the game alongside him.

Truly Terrible Retrospectives

From the best, we go to the worst — a pair of retrospectives on games not just so bad that they’re good, but so bad that just having them described to you is its own special form of schadenfreude.

Ring: A Mind Melting Adventure Game by MandaloreGaming: Mandalore did his yearly coverage of a truly cursed point and click adventure game, and the results are impossible to describe in a pithy sentence or two. Drink deep of a truly bizarre slice of video game history!

The Far Cry Campaign You CAN’T Play by Raycevick: Raycevick dove into the weird history of video games to talk about Far Cry 3’s unique coop campaign. It’s a wild ride of slapped together story, repetitive gameplay, and truly absurd bugs.

Everything Else

Why It’s Rude to Suck at Warcraft by Folding Ideas: Dan Olson dove into the psychological science behind World of Warcraft’s endgame culture of competition, how the way the game is played has evolved over its decade run, and the natural way the game’s design encourages toxic behavior.

Going Loud by Reid McCarter: McCarter analyzes the politics of the latest Call of Duty through a fresh angle, comparing what the game has to say about quiet stealth operations versus loud, open combat.

How Valve is Profiting from Steam’s Back-Door Casinos by People Make Games: PMG tackled the phenomenon of Counter-Strike GO skin gambling, a new unregulated frontier of gambling that has game players, including many minors, bet in-game cosmetics. They talk history, testimonials of former gamblers, interviews with ex-Valve developers, and how even Valve themselves make money off the phenomenon.

A Misguided Guide to Finishing Your Gaming Backlog by Daryl Talks Games: Daryl talks through the psychological reasons behind why our gaming backlog’s stress us out so much, then embarks on a quest to finally lay his to rest.

One of Gaming’s Most Hated Execs Is Jumping Into the Metaverse by Austin Carr et. al.: Led by Austin Carr, the team over at Bloomberg did a big interview of former EA CEO and current Unity CEO John Riccitiello, going through his checkered career, his efforts to upend Unity’s company culture, and his current efforts to break into the Metaverse. It’s an op-ed that’s trying to paint Riccitiello in at least a mildly positive light, but just can’t quite say it all with a straight face.

The PC Gamer Indie Zine: The folks over at PC Gamer randomly made a zine this month, a cute little extra effort featuring a half dozen different authors talking about everything from Stardew Valley to AIM-imitating visual novel, Emily Is Away.

Five Problems With Chess by Tom Francis: Francis, developer of indie darlings Gunpoint and Heat Signature, has some beef with chess. And in the process of developing a game that fixes those problems, he wrote up a doc highlighting the pain points he experiences.

Bayonetta 3 Is Not For You — It’s For Everyone by Jessica Howard: Reactions to Bayonetta 3 lingered through the start of this month, the most poignant of which being Howard’s navigation of the many different discussions of whether the titular character’s sexuality makes her a feminist symbol or base eye candy, and who for.

Playing Games in the “Wrong” Way by Razbuten: From speedrunning to self-imposed challenge runs, Razbuten went through all the ways we love to take games and play them in unintended ways.

In Defense of 2007’s The Witcher, The Overlooked Game That’s Getting Remade for a Reason by Claire Jackson: Jackson looks on the brighter side of the original Witcher game, highlighting its ability to sell the smaller moments and character work that the game excelled at alongside all the quirky mechanics and funky graphics the game is more popularly known for.

The Tragedy of Halo Reach by John Battle: Battle made an ode to Halo: Reach and the many ways the game’s narrative touched him.

ROBLOX_OOF.mp3 by Hbomberguy: What starts as a simple video to find the source of one of the most recognizable sound effects in the medium quickly devolves into an investigation into the many lies and obfuscations of one of the sound effect’s…”alleged” creators.

A Culture of Combat by Leon Massey: It’s a pretty common question nowadays: why is such an outsized percentage of games about murderin’ stuff? Massey approaches the question from a unique angle, primarily focusing on the initial design challenges early games had that could have led to such a prevalent focus on combat.

Why Did Link’s Cel Shading Disappear? By Jasper: Jasper uses one weird glitch in Breath of the Wild to give a whole gdc talk on the basics of video game lighting and the many layers of magic tricks developers use to create a specific visual style.

Atari 50 Is An Incredible Playable Tour Through Video Game History by Andrew Webster: Webster reviewed what he’s calling “the best attempt at a retro collection I’ve ever experienced,” a collection of over 90 Atari games celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary.

When Retro Aesthetics Wrongfoot You by Robert Purchese: Purchese talked about Faith and Inscryption, two games that use our already established understanding of their art styles and mechanics to lull us into a false sense of security, before suddenly establishing their horror by flipping that script.

Tabletop, Card Game Retailers Join the Game Industry’s Burgeoning Union Push by Nicole Carpenter: It isn’t just video game studios that are starting to unionize. Carpenter goes through some of the highest profile union efforts in the adjacent tabletop gaming space this year.