Reading List (December 2022) (Patreon)

Yes, you read that headline correctly. We’re pretty well into January at this point, but I still owe you folks a reading list! Enjoy some of the best games crit from December, including the last vestiges of the game of the year debate, a few videos highlighting Fortnite’s ever-changing nature, and much more!

Second Opinions

I Strongly Recommend: Cult of the Lamb by Skillup: Watching Skillup’s video on Cult of the Lamb is a fascinating comparison point (it’s also just extremely well edited). Skillup more or less noted many of the same things about Cult of the Lamb that I did, but came away with the exact opposite reaction to the game — and a very compelling case backing up his conclusions.

How Neon White Lets You Speedrun Speedrunning by Game Maker’s Toolkit: Every year, Mark Brown does a video about the “most innovative” game he played. This year, he picked Neon White, and his reason why might sound a little familiar!

GOTY Lists

December is always GOTY month, and from unknown indie recommendations to a few journalists that decided to go beyond simply declaring their favorite games, all of these lists are worth checking out.

The Best Video Games THis Year Helped Me Feel Closer to People by Patrick Klepek: Klepek’s GOTY list came with a twist in the form of several anecdotes about communal play.

17 Fantastic Games That Went Under The Radar in 2022 by Ethan Gach: Here at First Five, we love underappreciated indie lists, and Kotaku made a big one with a bunch of games even I’ve never heard of.

The Best Video Essays of 2022 by Daniel Schindel: Not content just to cover the top 10 in games, Polygon also had some video essay recommendations. And this being a video essay recommendation list, you can’t go wrong with their additional picks!

The Top Ten Games of 2022 by Jacob Geller: Geller turns his trademark style to his yearly GOTY list with ten compelling pitches, waxing poetically over huge releases and pitching obscure indies alike.

Fortnite’s A-changin’

Fortnite’s infamous for constantly transforming — cosmetics, mechanics, game modes, maps, nothing is sacred in Fortnite. This month, two youtubers tackled the effects of Fortnite’s ever-changing landscape.

How Fortnite Exploits Your FOMO by Game Maker’s Toolkit: GMTK was busy this month! He dove into the world of Fortnite and talked about the many pros and cons of its ever-changing mechanics, collaborations, and cosmetics.

The Existential Nightmare of Fortnite by Writing on Games: Hamish Black experienced one of the classic joys of aging: coming across something inexplicable the “kids these days” are into — in this case, that ever-changing Fortnite landscape GMTK just got finished describing — and how he bonded with his nephew over the experience.

Everything Else

How World of Warcraft’s New Dragon Race Brought a 10-Year-Old Loot System to its Knees by Corwin Hayward: As a venerable MMO, World of Warcraft has old systems of code layered on top of code and one small detail can have an entirely unintended butterfly effect. In one the most fascinating game development anecdotes I’ve read all year, the MMO’s new expansion wreaked massive havoc with the loot table of one of WoW’s most infamously rare mounts.

The Rise of the Video Game Union by Nicole Carpenter: Unions have been a massive hot topic in video games this year, and if you haven’t been following along with dripfed news over the months, Carpenter has you covered with a primer on one of the biggest shifts in game development today.

Ghost of Tsushima and the Cutting Word by Levi Rubeck: Rubeck ruminated on the nature of poetry and Ghost of Tsushima’s use of haikus.

Why Is It So Easy To Break Videogame Economies? By Adam Millard: Millard tackled how to make an effective game economy. Money economies, time economies, ammo economies; how can a game properly use scarcity to engage a player?

Objectively Good by Jon Bailes: Bailes talks about the science of how games properly signpost their challenges and opportunities and otherwise guide the player — and how sometimes, it comes at the cost of the art.

Inside Roblox’s Criminal Underworld, Where Kids Are Scamming Kids by Luke Winkie: Winkie investigated Roblox’s now-familiar cosmetic-based trading market and the scammers taking advantage of it to steal thousands of dollars of cosmetics from children.

Power Without Control In Pentiment by Ruth Cassidy: Cassidy talks about the weight of your authority in medieval narrative hit Pentiment, something that forced her to speak softly and think carefully about every action.

Paradise Killer: A Late-Stage Dystopia by Pixel a Day: Kat dove into the themes of vaporwave murder mystery Paradise Killer and how the game’s ideas of a paradise built on suffering relate to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by LeGuin and John Calhoun’s rodent experiments.

Fixing Pokemon with Cinematography by Daryl Talks Games: Daryl tried to improve modern Pokemon’s lackluster presentation with a tour through camera techniques from games and movies alike.

What Elden Ring Is Like For Someone Who Doesn’t Play Games by Razbuten: Razbuten continued his sporadic experiments with his wife to see if someone that doesn’t really play games can parse FromSoft’s most accessible (but still brutally difficult) game yet.

The Phyrigan Mode Feels Threatening by 8-bit Music Theory: 8-bit continued their tour through common musical modes, using examples from Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, and Metroid to illustrate its power to signal danger to a listener.

BEST Run and Guns (You Never Played) by Shmup Junkie: Enjoy watching someone with a ton of knowledge of something incredibly niche flex? Shmup Junkie runs through a bunch of obscure run and gun games with infectious and abounding enthusiasm.

Stealth Is Everywhere in Games, but the Innovations of Thief Have Been Forgotten by Jeremy Peel: Peel did a retrospective on stealth grandaddy Thief and how many of the innovations it first pioneered have fallen to the wayside today.