Reading List April 2023 (Patreon)

The April Reading List is here! Enjoy some good games discourse about how our familiarity with the medium affects our experience of it, have some cathartic commiseration over Waypoint’s untimely demise, and much, much more. For those wondering, the next video (a Games Under Five Hours video) is still about a week out, but on its way!

Second Opinions

Against the Storm Review — We Recommend by GameLuster: Nirav, an actual urban designer by trade, also checked out Against the Storm and came away with a positive opinion!

Way Less Point

If you haven’t heard the news, longtime games outlet Waypoint has been given its final notice. Come June, the Vice-subsidiary will be closing its doors. For most, this will be fairly unremarkable news, but for those deeply invested in games criticism, it’s a bit of a grim bellwether for what’s increasingly looking like an entire media sub-industry in free fall, and as a bellwether moment, it’s also become a lightning rod for folks to talk about the state of the industry, the ambitions and hopes of many of those working in it, and how the system it all runs on often runs counter to any of those desires.

Episode 562 — The End of an Era by Waypoint: The crew at Waypoint themselves spent their most recent podcast working through the news of their impending layoffs and used it as an opportunity to discuss the games media landscape as a whole.

Beacons in the Dark by Kaile Hultner: Hultner reflected on Waypoint’s contributions over the years, the cultural effect it had on the media landscape, and how its mission statement can be carried into the future.

RIP Waypoint, A Good Website About Video Games by Luke Plunkett: Plunkett put out a similar obituary, focusing on the hole left by Waypoint's absence.

Intimately Familiar

In a fascinating double feature, Razbuten and Adam Millard both hit on the same idea from opposite angles. The former talked about how becoming deeply and intimately familiar with the genre has soured their opinion on some of their past favorite games, while Millard talks about how that same familiarity can elevate a game that’s playing with and commenting on your ingrained expectations.

The Games I Wish I Never Replayed by Razbuten

Terra Nil Claims It’s A Reverse Citybuilder. It Isn’t. by Adam Millard

Everything Else

World of Warcraft’s Most Notorious Bug Inspired This Cursed Piece of Modern Art by Oli Welsh: Welsh interviewed Harris Rosenblum about a sculpture that was inspired by World of Warcraft’s infamous Corrupted Blood digital pandemic. Within, they talk plenty about the piece itself, but also about how Rosenblum draws meaning from internet culture and media at large.

One of Darkest Dungeon 2’s Cleverest Enemies Started with a Make-a-Wish Kid by Andy Chalk: It’s a cool and self-explanatory headline: One of Darkest Dungeon 2’s upcoming monsters, the Gaunt Chirurgeon, started out from an incredibly unlikely place as an idea by a Make-a-Wish recipient and fan named Sam Burns. Chalk got a chance to interview them (and the studio) on how the whole thing came to be.

Final Fantasy XII: More Important Than the Leading Man by Kimimi: Kimimi paints FFXII’s “ordinary” protagonists as model POV characters to the rest of the game’s other, larger-than-life personalities and world-shattering events.

A World Beyond Wordle: How Games Became a Big Deal at the New York Times by Keith Stuart: Stuart interviewed Jonathan Knight, the current head of NYT’s games division. Yes, you heard that right, the newspaper that bought Wordle has a whole games section now, and it turns out that like the crossword section before it, it’s wildly successful and producing new games all the time.

15 Years Ago, the NSA Spied on World of Warcraft — But Did a Leak Change Anything? by Kaile Hultner: Hultner talked about that one time several actual spy organizations surveilled popular MMOs for terrorists, then used the story as a jumping off point to discuss how online spaces have changed since then and if they’re still doing it today.

Cyberpunk 2077 in a World of Ads by Adam Srayi: Srayi explores how Cyberpunk 2077 uses a dizzying flood of diegetic advertising to sell its corporate hellscape world, and how many of the game’s artistic choices are informed by how advertising works in our own.

The Real Impact of Pokemon Go’s Changes That Niantic Won’t Face by Kenneth Shepard: Pokemon Go recently changed how its Remote Raid system works, which has made the game significantly harder for both rural players and those with disabilities to engage with the game. Shepard used the opportunity to discuss the biases many games can have built into them.

Stories That Use Time To Hurt You by Daryl Talks Games: While a bit less video game-focused than our usual entry, Daryl uses numerous pop culture examples from both games and other media to explore a single theme: how creators use time to tear characters apart and create gut-wrenching drama.

The Animation of Mega Man Battle Network by Video Game Animation Study: VGAS looked at all the animation work done throughout the Mega Man Battle Network series, primarily highlighting just how economically savvy many of the series’s animation choices were.

Nothing Sounds Like Final Fantasy X by HeavyEyed: HeavyEyed talked about a few choice musical motifs that are omnipresent throughout FFX, how their composition and meaning change over the course of the journey, and how they ultimately inform the game’s major themes.

Moving Sitting Still by Jay Castello: Castello gave a snapshot of the reviewer’s life, talking about their experience binging Octopath Traveler 2 while chained to a wall socket on a banged up Switch for a review.

How Old is Mario, Anyway? by Nicole Carpenter: In a more lighthearted jaunt, Carpenter did some digging and tried to figure out just how old the mostly blank-slate everyman protagonist actually is. The mustache says 40, but the actual Smash Bros trophy says…?