Reading List (March 2019) (Patreon)

Hello! I’ve been a busy bee this month. Working hard on a big two part video, did a talk in Manchester, doing a secret project, had a quick holiday, and more!

But I found plenty of time to watch videos and read articles. Here are the 30-odd I liked the most.

Top pick

[Watch] Can I stop Fortnite from stealing my dance move? - The ever brilliant People Make Games looks into the legal and ethical ramifications of Fornite’s pinched jigs. Also: you get to see Chris Bratt in shorts. 

Art and Artistry

[Watch] The Animation of Samus - Samus Aran is maybe not the most animated character around. But that’s point of this stoic, hard-edged heroine. Dan charts her animation history. 

[Watch] Mount Wario's Dynamically Developing Music - I spoke a bit about how Mount Wario’s music works in my first ever video. Here’s 8-bit Music Theory with way (way!) more detail.

[Watch | CC] How To Become a Game Animator - Extra Frames’ Dan tells you everything you need to know to become the guy who animated the shrinking horse testicles in Red Dead Redemption 2.

[Watch] Persona 5's All-Out Attack - This is a really fun channel! The dude looks at cool bits of animation in games and shows you how to make them in Unity. In this one: Persona 5’s stylish critical move.

[Read] How Ape Out Creates a Soundscape Worthy of Smashing - Ape Out’s Whiplash-style soundtrack is fab. Here’s how it works. 

Business Lunch

[Read] What It's Like To Start A Game Studio With No Bosses - Union and labour are a big talking point in games right now. Here’s a teeny tiny Canadian studio that’s doing things differently. 

[Read] The attention economy is dead - We’ve hit peak attention. There’s more stuff than we have hours to consume it. What now?

[Watch] DOOM Eternal, Counterculture, and How We Talk About Labor - Some interesting thoughts about how Doom has changed. Including a damning take on id’s stance on the mod community. 

Why We Play

[Read] Apex Legends is a game-changing multiplayer experience for women - Apex’s ping system has been widely championed for all sorts of reasons. Here’s one more. 

[Read] On birdwatching in video games - Sure. Why not.

[Read] How to Play Far Cry New Dawn in 'Dad Mode' - Can you play a violent game about murdering millions of people… in front of your kid? 

[Read] From video game to day job: How SimCity inspired a generation of city planners - See, mum. Video games aren’t all bad.

[Watch | CC] Why this Two Pixel Gap is Among the Most Complicated Things in Super Mario Maker - I’m not even going to try and summarise this video. You’re just going to have to watch it.

Critical Hit

[Read] Bandersnatch - Emily Short, one of the foremost thinkers in interactive fiction, gives her thoughts on Netflix’s first foray into choose-your-own-adventure gaming.

[Read] The Importance of Phones in Devil May Cry 5 - Analogue phones remind me of old games, like Link’s Awakening and Earthbound. Maybe that’s why DMC 5 feels like it came out of a portal from the past.

[Read] Sekiro Is Way Better When You Stop Playing It Like A Souls Game - I’m struggling with Sekiro. Maybe I need to take Keza’s advice…

[Read] The Division 2 and the Severing of Politics from Video Games - Another Ubisoft game, another marketing campaign that looks like the game will have something to say, another game with little to say. 

[Read] Fortnite Creative Mode Is Changing How We Think of Game Design - What happens when you jam the last monster video game hit (Minecraft) into the current monster video game hit (Fornite)?

Like the game’s famous dances, Creative mode produces content that slots perfectly into our social media-powered, meme-obsessed remix culture.

[Watch] Crackdowngrade 3 - The story of Crackdown 3’s development is fascinating. This vid shows how the game falls short of its marketing - and its Xbox 360 predecessors. 

[Read] Below and the difficulty in crafting difficulty - I bounced off Below like a trampoline covered in rubber. But here’s Capy’s defence of its games unrelenting misery. 

History in the Making

[Read] How Final Fantasy 7 Revolutionized Videogame Marketing and Helped Sony Tackle Nintendo - Paste interviews the people who marketed one of the most beloved PlayStation games.

[Read] Streaming and Cloud Computing Endanger Modding and Game Preservation - Streaming games sounds great now - but good luck playing those games when Google’s Stadia servers have been turned off. 

[Read] Insomniac Games: From Purple Dragon to Incredible Spidey - Insomniac’s got a storied history across generations of games. Variety tells that tale.

[Watch] Why People Love Shadow of the Colossus so Much - Super Bunnyhop gives us a retrospective of Team Ico’s quiet, melancholic masterpiece. 

[Watch] The First Game Over - What’s the first game to say “Game Over”? Interesting question. Here’s the answer (maybe).

How Games Get Made

[Read] Meet the sound designer going to great lengths to capture sounds for games - I’d love to be a foley artist. This guy’s got an awesome job.

[Watch] How Overcooked! was Created - Thomas Game Docs has done it again. This time, he’s looking at how Ghost Town made their knockabout kitchen sim, Overcooked.

[Read] How the Resident Evil 2 remake's Mr. X actually works - Eurogamer goes all Mythbusters on Mr. X to figure out exactly how he operates. 

Beyond Bytes

[Watch] How Ian McKellen Acts With His Eyes - Some classic Nerdwriter, looking at the Lord of the Rings’ actor’s subtle acting abilities.

[Watch] Bohemian Rhapsody's Terrible Editing - A Breakdown - A look at the utterly awful editing of this film. Which won an Oscar. For editing…