Reading List (September 2018) (Patreon)

Hello! I've got some stuff for you to read and watch this month. Some bits and bobs on the new Spider-Man, and a handful of articles about YouTube. Should be interesting - have a look.

Top Pick

[Read] First Levels - A fantastic blog, using animated GIFs to show the first, crucial levels of puzzle games. 

Design Space

[Read] Black Hole Heart - I definitely agree with this piece from Electron Dance, about how his love affair with Holedown quickly ended when he realised it was “another game that manufactured progress with the relentless rise of numbers.”

[Read] Alex Hutchinson on Twitter - It’s rare that a designer speaks out on things they’d change about their game. Here, Assassin’s Creed 3 designer Alex Hutchinson looks back at what went right and what went wrong. 

[Watch] GMTK JAM 2018 - Making of THE LINK - A GMTK Jam participant talks about their design process, and thought process, for their jam game, The Link.

[Watch] What Makes a Good Platformer Boss? - Good question. Let’s find out!

[Watch | CC] Celebrating Boss Rushes: On the Verge of Becoming a Genre - And here’s another good video on bosses, this time looking at boss rush games. Furi and Cuphead get a look in.

Critical Hit

[Watch | CC] Was Majora's Mask 3D a Bad Remake? - A very in-depth comparison piece between the N64 and 3DS versions of Majora’s Mask. Remaking games is a tricky business, even if you’re just touching up some rough edges.

[Read] Spider-Man's Take On Police Feels Out Of Touch - I haven’t really been following this whole Spider-Cop thing, but Kotaku’s piece is probably the best place to start if you want to get up to speed.

[Watch] Prey: Mooncrash - Errant Signal has done some great coverage of immersive sims. So it’s only right that Chris would make a very persuasive video about the bizarre Prey DLC that turns it into a roguelike. 

Art of Games

[Watch] Spider-Man PS4 Animation Review - An interesting look at the character animation in the new Spider-Man game

[Read] It’s Easy To Miss One Of Spider-Man’s Coolest Audio Details - God, console games are way too polished. 

[Watch | CC] The Band Behind No Man's Sky's Infinite Music - Game Score Fanfare explains how 65 Days of Static made an infinite soundtrack for the ambitious No Man’s Sky.

[Watch | CC] How to Animate a Smash Bros Character - Great animation stuff from Dan, about making a character fit into a madcap fighting game like Smash.

[Read] Gods And Giants: Gaming’s New Obsession with Norse Mythology - The indie game website asks “Why are so many recent indie games influenced by Norse mythology?”

History Club

[Read] Capsule Monsters - Here’s a look at the early design documents, pitches, and concept sketches for the first Pokemon games

[Read] Exploring The Motherlike: Or, The Genre That Never Was - Paste talks to developers making games that fans say are inspired by the Mother series, only to find that most don’t cite Earthbound as an influence at all.

[Watch] Flash Games Mattered - As Adobe starts to kill off Flash, NakeyJakey looks back at the glory days of online games. 

[Read] Game Localization and Nintendo of America’s Content Policies in the 1990s - Legends of Localization shows how Nintendo of America’s infamous list of rules shaped certain game imports.

[Read] Wide World of Sports Video Games - A lovely online museum, showing video game examples of just about every sport imaginable. 

[Watch] How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes - A very interesting look at what it takes to squish a game down onto an old school console.

[Read] How Sega brought Shenmue back to life on PC - A great look at the challenges behind remastering these Dreamcast cult classics. “The moon in Shenmue 2 is not a texture. It’s an actual 3D object in the distance correctly lit by the sun direction.”

[Read] Shenmue texture differences - Bluemue looks at some very subtle differences in the remaster. 

For the Players

[Read] Here Are Our Fave New Games You Can Finish in a Single Sitting - I love a good few-hour game. And pretty much everything on this list is well worth a play. 

[Read] What if video games could help fight climate change? No, really - “Some of us who are able might retreat into the fictional worlds of video games for a chance to escape, but what if games could actually help us tackle the climate crisis?”

Just Business 

[Read] Brexit is sabotaging the British video games industry - Brexit is looming, and the games industry will be affected just like everything else. 

[Read] Breathing life into Dead Cells - The challenges of marketing Dead Cells. “"When I got back, they had completely axed the tower defense and gone whole-heartedly into the Metroidvania action-platformer thing. So yeah, that was a bit of a surprise”

[Read] The Indie Post-apocalypse - Forget about shifting a disappointing number of units - how about selling practically zero? 

[Watch] How Ubisoft plans an E3 conference - People Make Games won’t stop surprising. This time, looking at Ubisoft’s most recent E3 keynote. 

[Read] Piracy and the four currencies - Piracy isn’t so simple, according to Fortress of Doors. Encouraging players to actually spend money requires a certain way of thinking. 

New Media

[Read] The YouTube stars heading for burnout - This is a terrific piece about the price of being a YouTuber. Burnout, work-life imbalance, stress, and so on.

[Watch | CC] What is Creator Burnout? - YouTube actually has some of their own videos about burnout. Here’s the first one.

[Read] How am I Not Burned Out? - One YouTuber who seems unfazed by it all is Hank Green. Here, he shares his tips for staying sane after 12 years of YouTube.

[Watch] YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticty - Lindsay looks at YouTube business practices, through the lens of cake decorating shows. Naturally.

[Read] YouTubers Are Not Your Friends - On a different note, Polygon looks at Parasocial Relationships - “wherein individuals attach affections to celebrity figures”. 

[Watch | CC] Dead Cells & Stream Integration - And on a completely different note again, Snoman Gaming looks at a completely different side of new media: audience participation in streamed games. Specifically in Dead Cells, where viewers can vote on how best to help (or hinder) their favourite streamers.

Beyond the Binary

[Watch] Shut up about plot holes - Why that “plot hole” you’re complaining about probably isn’t a plot hole. 

[Read] How Will Police Solve Murders on Mars? - “Mars P.D. will have to deal with new blood-spatter patterns, different body decay rates, and space-suit sabotage—and they won’t be able to fire guns indoors.”