Reading List (November 2020) (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Hope everyone's doing okay - I've had a good November, due to the million subscriber milestone and the new consoles. But, still stuck inside so hopefully these articles and videos will keep you occupied. Speak soon.

Designer Notes

[Watch | CC | 21 mins] How Alien Isolation Survived its Difficult Development - Noclip talks to Creative Assembly about the choices that lead to Alien Isolation, including the bold move to first person.

[Read] Designing Choices in Visual Novels - The developers of visual novel Arcade Spirits talk about some lessons learned from offering players dialogue choices.

Critical Hit

[Read] PS5's Activities System Makes Playing Open World Games Brutally Efficient - An SSD and bookmarked quests changes the way we'll interact with games.

[Read] Watch Dogs: Legion Is Completely Detached from Reality - WD:L felt like Ubisoft's first "political" game. It's not, really.

[Watch | CC | 12 mins] More Demos, Fewer Conferences - Why watch fake trailers of games when you can just play em?

Culture Club

[Read] Where’s My Review Key? - A PR person explains the complex and mercenary world of handing out free games to people.

[Watch | 6 mins] Why Button Mashing Works (Sometimes) - Fighting game channel Core-A Gaming explains why its okay to pound your fightstick like its been a bad widdle boy.

[Read] Horse fans mod The Sims 3, RDR2 into the horse games they crave - Sure, why not.

[Read] No Man’s Sky players have built entire rave planets - Sure, why not.

Code Monkeys

[Read] Open-Source 2D Level Editor From The Creator of Dead Cells - Might be handy to anyone making a platformer or roguelike.

[Read] Generating an organic grid - A break down of the complex maths behind the grid-less grid-based game, Townscaper.

[Read] The Secrets of Monkey Island’s Source Code - A game preservation group has got the original code for Monkey Island. Here's what they learned.

[Watch | 12 mins] The System Behind Hades' Astounding Dialogue - People Make Games talks to Supergiant about building procedural dialogue for a roguelike.

[Watch | CC | 16 mins] How Spreadsheets Power the Civilian AI of Watch Dogs 2 - Meanwhile, AI and Games is looking at the striking complexity of Watch Dog's San Fran citizens.

History Corner

[Watch | 1 hour] Overblood 2 | Back from the Dead - Charlie goes deep into this cult PS1 classic, which was way too ambitious for its own good.

[Read] The Internet Archive's new Flash library is a nostalgic goldmine - Line Rider! Meat Boy! Helicopter Game! Badger badger badger! What a great project.

Indie Nation

[Watch | CC | 26 mins] How The Stanley Parable Was Made and Broke Up The Dev Team - A great breakdown. Check out the channel for more indie dev stories.

[Read] After 7 Years in Development Hell, No Fairytale Ending for 'Ray's the Dead' - VICE follows the long journey of one under-appreciated game.

Scenes, Sound, Story

[Watch | CC | 9 mins] The Atmosphere of Metroid: Zero Mission - Dan Root celebrated Halloween by looking at the spooky Metroid remake. There's also one on Prime 2.

[Watch | 20 mins] Austin Wintory's Themes are Simple, but Sophisticated - 8-Bit Music Theory breaks down the motifs of the storied game composer who did tunes for Journey, Abzu, and more.

[Watch | CC | 18 mins] Designing The Witcher 3's Most Famous Quest - Lessons from the Screenplay has a new video game channel. There's also a video on Outer Wilds.

[Read] Is Madeline Canonically Trans? - Celeste dev Maddy Thorson explains how Madeline's identity developed over time.

Beyond Bytes

[Watch | CC | 36 mins] The Tragedy of Droids in Star Wars - Pop Culture Detective looks at the slave symbolism of droids.

[Watch | 26 mins] Slow Mo Sound is FAKE... mostly - Find out how the Slo Mo Guys make those super slow sound effects for their videos, because they ain't real.

[Watch | 42 mins] What's the Point of R-Rated Superheroes? - Patrick H Willems wants to know why all these superheroes need to be cutting dudes' heads off.