Reading List (March 2024) (Patreon)

Hey all! Thanks for your words of support yesterday. Right now I’m just playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 to refresh and reset. But I’ll back to making GMTK videos soon!

For now, here’s a whole bunch of brilliant articles and videos I think you’ll appreciate.

Design

[Read] Ten Tips For A Better Game City - “I compiled this list of the ten most important aspects of city design that you should keep in mind when creating a video game urban environment.” Requires a (free) Medium account.

[Watch | CC | 28 mins] City Levels: The Most Underrated Biome - A well-made passion project about the importance of urban sprawls in games.

[Watch | 27 mins] Top 3 Mistakes People Make When Thinking About Balatro - Slay the Spire expert Jorbs breaks down some of the strategic thinking needed to win big at Balatro.

[Watch | 15 mins] I Made A Difficult Game About Climbing - Fellow YouTuber Pontypants spent a year making a Getting Over It-style game. It has blown up - so check out this look at how he made the game.

[Watch | 51 mins] A Guide to Apex's Perfect Competitive Map - “We dive into the world of the second map to become a mainstay in the Apex Legends Global Series, considered to be the best Competitive Map in the game”.

[Watch | 26 mins] This Problem Changes Your Perspective On Game Dev - Jonas Tyroller likens (game) design to a trawler searching the ocean floor - and uses this metaphor to explain various ways to improve the design process.

Development

[Watch | 22 mins] FNAF, Thanks For The Memories - MatPat’s final Game Theory episode looks at how the creation of one game has rippled out to change the world in many significant ways.

[Watch | CC | 55 mins] Before FNAF: The Strange Beauty of Scott Cawthon's Other Games - The creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s has a decades-long career of weird RPGs, Christian films, and mobile slots apps. This interesting video digs through them all.

[Watch | 7 mins] Where does Outer Wilds put its Pocket Dimensions? - Outer Wilds takes place in a single contiguous galaxy. So where is the twisty impossible inside of Dark Bramble?

[Watch | 2 hours] Daniel Mullins: An Exhaustive Analysis - “A deep dive into the strange and often brilliant mind behind Inscryption, The Hex and Pony Island. A video about history, sacrifice and Satan.”

[Watch | CC | 16 mins] The worst glitch in Nintendo history - From Skyward Sword, “here's what the glitch is, how it's caused, and how Nintendo fixed what had to potential to become a huge problem”.

Business

[Watch | 18 mins] Making a Game Last Forever - Raycevick talks about what made Alpha Protocol special, and how GOG worked to save it from abandonment.

[Watch | 9 mins] Marketing is NOT Why Most Indie Games Fail - The developers of Eastshade argue that market research is more important than marketing. Is your game as good (be honest!) as the top-earning games in your genre?

[Read] Why So Many Games Journalists End Up Going Into Game Development - “While her shift is relatively recent, it’s indicative of a broader trend that’s pervaded games journalism nearly since its inception”.

[Read] Games Journalism: An FAQ - “For all the volume and frequency of these discussions, many people seem to have very little idea how the job actually works.”

[Watch | 10 mins] Why Video Game Layoffs Aren't Done Yet - Extra Credits explores “the root causes behind the industry's turmoil, from economic shifts to corporate missteps.”

[Read] Legendary Industry Veterans Get Candid On Ageism In Gaming - “The men behind iconic games and studios like Gears of War, Ultima Underworld, Apogee Software, and more on aging gracefully in games”

Culture

[Read | Long Read] How to colorize Game Boy games - Looking for a creative project? This blog post goes through the steps of adding colour to classic Game Boy games. Some titles (like Kirby 2 and Mega Man 5) have already been done and look awesome.

[Play / Read] Who firewatches the firewatchers? “When a longtime friend told me he became a real firewatcher after playing [2016’s Firewatch], I had questions.” This essay is presented in Twine.

[Read] “When the Trocadero was the centre of the video game universe” - I loved the Trocadero. It’s incredible that such a space existed in the middle of London - and so sad that it’s gone.

[Watch | CC | 18 mins] Street Fighter II Complete Restoration with The 8-Bit Guy - It was oddly interesting and relaxing to watch this guy save an old arcade cabinet from the brink of destruction.

[Read] One fan spent three years saving a Final Fantasy game before it shut down - “It took three years, two terabytes, and over 100 hours of cutscenes to preserve Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia.”

[Watch | CC | 17 mins] Why Your Body Rejects “Popular” Games - “I have a weird handful of friends that… even if they don’t explicitly say it, are less likely to play a game if it’s too ‘popular.’”

Critique

[Read] Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s Ending Poorly Answers a Question It Never Needed to Ask - “It is not an exaggeration to say that there is only one scene in the Remake project that actually matters”

[Watch | CC | 2 hours, 30 mins] Forbidden Siren 2: The Horror Sequel That Changed Everything - “I discuss Siren 2 and how it deviates from its more unforgiving predecessor”.

Artistry

[Read] Familiar Faces – Bringing The Greek Cast Into God Of War Ragnarök: Valhalla - Sony Santa Monica talks about the art and animation challenges of bringing PS2-era characters to the current generation.

[Watch | CC | 8 mins] ARCS - The 12 Principles of Animation in Games - New Frame Plus continues its animation principle series, this time looking at how lifelike characters should move with flowing arcs.

[Watch | 23 mins] How Persona Combines 2D and 3D Art - Acerola uses some fancy tech to show how a single frame of Persona 3 is put together - revealing all sorts of clever tricks to create that famous Atlus style.

[Read] How Petri Alanko scored ‘Alan Wake 2’ with mayhem and miracles - “As players control both characters through contrasting settings, Alanko incorporates two very different styles into his score”.

History

[Read] The original Alone in the Dark did more than invent survival horror—it pioneered new ways to play and new ways to fear - “The game that inspired Resident Evil deserves to be remembered on its own merits.”

[Watch | 57 mins] Square Hired Me to Explain the Final Fantasy 7 Games - The Gaming Brit breaks down the entire FF7 story to get you amped for Rebirth. I mean the entire story - phone games, manga, and all.

[Watch | 3 hours] The Entire History of RPGs - A pretty fascinating look at how the RPG genre has changed in the west. How consoles, Kickstarter, and more have affected the trajectory of DnD-style games.

Beyond Games

[Watch | CC | 17 mins] Rotation without rotating - Given my troubles with pixel art recently, it was interesting to watch this video which looks at how skewing an image gives a better effect than pure rotation.